The fate of 95 species of Southwestern wildlife is
hanging in the balance. It’s been over a year since the species
were proposed for listing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
and the nonprofit Southwestern Center for Biodiversity says it will
sue if nothing is done by June 13.
Seventy-one
of these species, including the San Xavier talsussnail, found so
far only on a tiny tract of private land in Pima County, Ariz.,
were proposed as endangered, the rest as threatened. Most live in
California or Arizona and include mammals, reptiles, fish, insects
and flowering plants.
The Endangered Species Act
gives the federal agency a year to designate a species as
threatened, endangered or stabilized after it has been proposed for
listing. But Susan Saul, a spokeswoman for the federal agency, says
funding cuts and a year-long 1995 congressional moratorium caused a
backup of listing activity for endangered species. What’s more, the
Fish and Wildlife Service has only $145,000 each year to spend on
evaluating and listing all endangered species, and Saul estimates
the agency needs over $5.2 million to deal with the backlog.
Lawsuits don’t speed up the process, she adds, they just change the
order of species getting attention, “and that makes the system less
effective in the long run.”
Kieran Suckling of
the Tucson, Ariz.-based Southwest Center for Biodiversity finds the
agency’s explanations wanting, since it hasn’t completed a listing
for an endangered species in the Southwest in 10 years. He says the
money is available in the agency; it’s just a question of pulling
it from other programs and directing it towards endangered
species.
“Every time we get a
judge behind us, (the agency) seems to magically find the money,”
he says, “but the money doesn’t flow until the court order does.”
*Emily Miller
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Tell it to the judge.
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