scholarly journals A Database of Habitat Conservation Plans and Related Documents Developed Under the U.S. Endangered Species Act

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Carter ◽  
Jacob Malcom ◽  
Heather Harl
Keyword(s):  
Endangered Species ◽  
Endangered Species Act ◽  
Habitat Conservation ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Data Resource ◽  
Habitat Conservation Plan ◽  
Threatened And Endangered Species ◽  
Conservation Plan ◽  
Conservation Plans ◽  
The U.S

Under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, non-federal parties may be permitted to “take,” or harm, listed threatened and endangered species provided they develop an appropriate “habitat conservation plan” that details how the applicant will minimize and mitigate the impacts of their activities on the species at issue. Despite widespread use of such plans, with more than 700 approved to date, there have been few systematic analyses to determine their effectiveness in protecting imperiled wildlife. This has been driven by a lack of a centralized repository of essential habitat conservation plan documents, from the plans themselves to required monitoring reports. Here we present a new data resource of 6,290 documents related to 601 separate HCPs, assembled through a United States Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, supplemented by web scraping of available HCP documents online. We describe the completeness of responses, characterize the scope of documents, and identify data and research gaps.

scholarly journals Better Representation Is Needed in U.S. Endangered Species Act Implementation

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Malcom ◽  
Andrew Carter
Keyword(s):  
Endangered Species ◽  
Endangered Species Act ◽  
The United States ◽  
Alternative Interpretation ◽  
Gray Wolf ◽  
Picoides Borealis ◽  
Ecological Communities ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
Threatened And Endangered Species ◽  
The U.S

In the United States, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses the concepts of resilience, redundancy, and representation—often known as the “3Rs”—to guide implementation of the Endangered Species Act, which requires the U.S. government to designate imperiled species as threatened or endangered, and take action to recover them. The Service has done little, however, to relate the 3Rs to the statutory requirements of the Act. Here we focus on interpreting the concept of representation given core tenets of science and conservation policy. We show that the Service's current interpretation, which focuses on a narrow set of characteristics intrinsic to species that facilitate future adaptation, falls far short of a reasonable interpretation from the scientific literature and other policy, and has significant consequences for the conservation of threatened and endangered species, including those found in other countries. To illustrate the shortcomings in practice, we discuss the cases of the Lower 48 gray wolf (Canis lupus) delisting, the proposed Red-cockadedWoodpecker (Picoides borealis) downlisting, and the possible downlisting of the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis). We then propose an alternative interpretation of representation that accommodates the Service's narrow interpretation and broadens it to include the importance of intraspecific variation for its own sake as well as extrinsic characteristics such as a species' role in ecological communities. We argue that this interpretation better reflects the intent of the Endangered Species Act, the best available science, and policy needs for conserving imperiled wildlife, all of which recognize the importance not only of preventing global extinction but also of preventing ecological extinction and extirpation across significant portions of a species' range.

scholarly journals Data indicate the importance of expert agencies in conservation policy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Evans ◽  
Jacob W. Malcom ◽  
Ya-Wei Li
Keyword(s):  
Endangered Species ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Endangered Species Act ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
Marine Fisheries ◽  
Threatened And Endangered Species ◽  
Using Data ◽  
National Marine Fisheries Service ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Imperiled Species

ABSTRACTData on the implementation of laws and policies are essential to the evaluation and improvement of governance. For conservation laws like the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), such data can inform actions that may determine the persistence or extinction of species. A central but controversial part of the ESA is section 7, which requires federal agencies to conserve threatened and endangered species. One way they do this is by consulting with expert agencies for the ESA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), on actions they may undertake that impact listed species. Using data from all 24,893 consultations recorded by NMFS from 2000 through 2017, we show that federal agencies misestimated the effects of their actions on listed species in 21% of consultations, relative to the conclusions reached by NMFS. In 71% of these cases the federal agency underestimated the effects of their action. Those discrepancies were particularly important for the conservation of 14 species in 22 consultations, where the agency concluded that its action would not harm a species, while NMFS determined the action would jeopardize the species’ existence. Patterns of misestimation varied among federal agencies, and some of the agencies most frequently involved in consultation also frequently misestimated their effects. Jeopardy conclusions were very rare—about 0.3% of consultations—with a few project types more likely to lead to jeopardy. These data highlight the importance of consultation with the expert agencies and reveal opportunities to make the consultation process more effective.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTThe US Endangered Species Act is the strongest environmental law any nation has enacted to conserve imperiled species. However, policy debates over how the Act should be implemented continue to this day. This study provides the first comprehensive evaluation of how the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) implements one of the Act’s most important conservation programs – consultations under section 7. Our results reveal novel insights into the importance of NMFS role in ensuring federal actions do not jeopardize the existence of listed species. By using data to inform policy debate, we identify approaches to implementing section 7 that would undermine the conservation of imperiled species, and those that could improve the efficiency of the program without sacrificing these protections.

scholarly journals Same law, diverging practice: comparative analysis of Endangered Species Act consultations by two federal agencies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Evansen ◽  
Ya-Wei Li ◽  
Jacob Malcom
Keyword(s):  
Endangered Species ◽  
Wildlife Conservation ◽  
Endangered Species Act ◽  
Sea Turtle ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
Turtle Species ◽  
Threatened And Endangered Species ◽  
National Marine Fisheries Service ◽  
The U.S

ABSTRACTEvaluating how wildlife conservation laws are implemented is critical for safeguarding biodiversity. Two agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service (FWS and NMFS; Services collectively), are responsible for implementing the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), which requires federal protection for threatened and endangered species. FWS and NMFS’ comparable role for terrestrial and marine taxa, respectively, provides the opportunity to examine how implementation of the same law varies between agencies. We analyzed how the Services implement a core component of the ESA, section 7 consultations, by objectively assessing the contents of >120 consultations on sea turtle species against the requirements in the Services’ consultation handbook, supplemented with in-person observations from Service biologists. Our results showed that NMFS consultations were 1.40 times as likely to have higher completeness scores than FWS consultations given the standard in the handbook. Consultations tiered from an FWS programmatic consultation inherited higher quality scores of generally more thorough programmatic consultations, indicating that programmatic consultations could increase the quality of consultations while improving efficiency. Both agencies commonly neglected to account for the effects of previous consultations and the potential for compounded effects on species. From these results, we recommend actions that can improve quality of consultation, including the use of a single database to track and integrate previously authorized harm in new analyses and the careful but more widespread use of programmatic consultations. Our study reveals several critical shortfalls in the current process of conducting ESA section 7 consultations that the Services could address to better safeguard North America’s most imperiled species.

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