Status of the Recovery Mandate Under Section 7(a)(1) of the U.S. Endangered Species Act

The U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) is widely considered to be one of the strongest laws for protecting imperiled wildlife, with nearly all species protected under the law still existing today. Among the ESA's strongest provisions, at least as written, is the requirement under section 7(a)(1) that federal agencies use their authorities to help recover imperiled species. New initiatives like 30 x 30, the campaign to conserve at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030, offer opportunities to reinvigorate and expand 7(a)(1) programs to play a significant role in biodiversity conservation. To gauge the current status of 7(a)(1) plans and assess their effectiveness, we collected all section 7(a)(1) materials available to the public through internet searches and direct requests to agencies. We evaluated the scope of existing 7(a)(1) programs and found that despite the clear potential benefits of strong programs, the section has been significantly underused by federal agencies. Further, we show that existing plans are highly inconsistent in content and style, and we trace that inconsistency to the lack of policy guidance for their creation and implementation. Based on these findings, we recommend five strategies for improving 7(a)(1) implementation: establishment of formal guidance from the federal wildlife agencies, tailored guidance from other federal agencies to help them meet their 7(a)(1) obligation, dedicated funding, integration of 7(a)(1) into existing initiatives and opportunities, and top-level executive branch coordination and cooperation.

Download Full-text

Status of the recovery mandate under section 7(a)(1) of the U.S. Endangered Species Act

10.31219/osf.io/hmab9 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Meg Evansen ◽

Heather Harl ◽

Andrew Carter ◽

Jacob Malcom

Keyword(s):

Endangered Species ◽

Endangered Species Act ◽

Federal Agencies ◽

Current Status ◽

The Public ◽

Potential Benefits ◽

Internet Searches ◽

Policy Guidance ◽

The U.S ◽

Imperiled Species

The U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) is widely considered to be one of the strongest laws for protecting imperiled wildlife, with nearly all species protected under the law still existing today. Among the ESA’s strongest provisions, at least as written, is the requirement under section 7(a)(1) that federal agencies use their authorities to help recover imperiled species. New initiatives like 30x30, the campaign to conserve at least thirty percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030, offer opportunities to reinvigorate and expand 7(a)(1) programs to play a significant role in biodiversity conservation. To gauge the current status of 7(a)(1) plans and assess their effectiveness, we collected all section 7(a)(1) materials available to the public through internet searches and direct requests to agencies. We evaluated the scope of existing 7(a)(1) programs and found that despite the clear potential benefits of a strong 7(a)(1) program, the section has been significantly underused by federal agencies. Further, we show that existing plans are highly inconsistent in content and style, and we trace that inconsistency to the lack of policy guidance for their creation and implementation. Based on these findings, we recommend four strategies for improving 7(a)(1) implementation: establishment of formal guidance from federal wildlife agencies, tailored guidance from other federal agencies to help them meet their 7(a)(1) obligation, and dedicated funding.

Download Full-text

Data indicate the importance of expert agencies in conservation policy

10.1101/424911 ◽

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.

Download Full-text

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

10.1101/165647 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

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.

Download Full-text

Extinction and the U.S. Endangered Species Act

10.7287/peerj.preprints.27471 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Noah Greenwald ◽

Kieran F Suckling ◽

Brett Hartl ◽

Loyal Mehrhoff

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Endangered Species ◽

Endangered Species Act ◽

The United States ◽

Species Extinction ◽

Number Of Species ◽

The U.S ◽

Species Extinctions

The United States Endangered Species Act is one of the strongest laws of any nation for preventing species extinction, but quantifying the Act’s effectiveness has proven difficult. To provide one measure of effectiveness, we identified listed species that have gone extinct and used previously developed methods to update an estimate of the number of species extinctions prevented by the Act. To date, only four species have been confirmed extinct with another 22 possibly extinct following protection. Another 71 listed species are extinct or possibly extinct, but were last seen before protections were enacted, meaning the Act’s protections never had the opportunity to save these species. In contrast, a total of 39 species have been fully recovered, including 23 in the last 10 years. We estimate the Endangered Species Act has prevented the extinction of roughly 291 species since passage in 1973, and has to date saved more than 99 percent of species under its protection.

Download Full-text

Endangered Science: The Regulation of Research by the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection and Endangered Species Acts

Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences ◽

10.1525/hsns.2012.42.1.30 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 42 (1) ◽

pp. 30-61 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Etienne Benson

Keyword(s):

Endangered Species ◽

Environmental Regulation ◽

Marine Mammal ◽

Animal Rights ◽

Wildlife Conservation ◽

The United States ◽

Professional Autonomy ◽

Federal Agencies ◽

Biological Research ◽

The Public

The Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act have been cornerstones of federal wildlife conservation policy in the United States since their enactment in the early 1970s. These laws prohibited the taking of members of protected populations without a permit, where “taking” was defined so broadly as to include harassment or disturbance, as well as capture or killing. Because most forms of biological research on protected species involved some sort of taking, and because such research was deemed vital to the achievement of conservation goals and the advancement of human knowledge, the laws established procedures under which proposed scientific takes could be permitted after review by federal regulators, scientists, the public, and, in some cases, the courts. Although there was relatively little controversy over the need for or nature of these permit procedures during the debates leading up to the enactment of the laws, they became the source of concern on the part of many zoologists, biologists, and ecologists as soon as federal agencies began to implement them. From these scientists’ perspective, certain forms of environmental regulation undermined their professional autonomy and threatened to hamper the production of the very knowledge necessary for effective environmental protection. Their efforts to block, weaken, or work around such regulation brought them into conflict with environmental and animal rights activists, regulators, and other members of the scientific community and resonated with a broader backlash against environmental regulation.

Download Full-text