The results discredit many of the claims about the onerous nature of section 7. As illustrated by Figure 4, of the 88, consultations recorded by the FWS from January through April , only 7. And as illustrated by Figure 5, the median recorded time for informal consultations was 13 days, compared with 62 days for formal consultations—which are required when the service determines that the proposed action could result in jeopardy for a federally listed endangered species. While 20 percent of the formal consultations did exceed the FWS statutory limit of days for formal consultations, the large majority of these were completed by a mutually agreed upon extension.
As this study indicates, nearly 99 percent of all formal and informal consultations recorded by the FWS during this time frame were completed within established timelines. A common charge against the ESA is that it is inflexible and rigid and therefore unable to adapt to change.
Yet previous administrations have made extensive efforts over many years to improve species conservation efforts through proactive, innovative, and voluntary measures. While the language of the ESA is practically identical to what it was nearly 30 years ago in —the last time that Congress significantly amended it—the administration of the law is now dramatically different.
Unlike in the past, when landowners encountered strict prohibitions limiting their actions see examples below , today, landowners can—and do—enter into a variety of novel conservation agreements.
These tailored agreements are designed to keep declining species off the endangered list or to hasten the recovery of those already on the list, while also giving landowners a strong measure of much sought regulatory predictability. Through such agreements, along with related policy initiatives and innovative regulatory efforts, ESA administrators have shown the act to be flexible, adaptable, and responsive to needs that arise. The next sections discuss some of the innovations developed to facilitate implementation of conservation practices on public and private lands under the ESA.
For very few activities—principally scientific research and actions to enhance the propagation or survival of a listed species—permits could be issued to allow otherwise prohibited taking. The result of this broad prohibition, and the narrow set of activities potentially exempted from it, was that many otherwise lawful activities could unintentionally conflict with the ESA with no mechanism available to secure an exemption from its prohibitions. As a result, anyone engaged in an otherwise lawful activity had a means of complying with the act by getting an incidental take permit.
To secure such a permit, however, an applicant had to develop and commit to implement a habitat conservation plan that minimized and mitigated the adverse effects of the authorized taking to the maximum extent practicable.
Implementation of this statutory provision has been highly innovative. On its face, the provision seemed to contemplate permits for discrete projects undertaken at one site by an individual landowner. While often used for such projects, more creative use has been made by units of local government that have zoning or similar land use authority. Countywide habitat conservation plans in California, Texas, Utah, and elsewhere have made possible the issuance of a single permit that authorizes all development activities that are consistent with local zoning ordinances, as well as the integration of conservation and development over a period of many decades.
For local governments and local landowners to be able to rely on such permits, they needed assurance that a plan, once approved, would be stable and would not be revised each time new information surfaced about the needs of listed species or the impacts of permitted development on listed species.
The FWS and the NMFS acknowledged the legitimacy of the need for permittee assurance by announcing a no surprises policy—that the services would not revisit permits and require additional mitigation in the face of unforeseen circumstances. That innovative assurance, though controversial at the time, 29 has been highly successful at motivating both local governments and landowners to pursue habitat conservation plans and their associated incidental take permits.
Those plans have made possible the establishment of thoughtfully designed systems of conservation reserves, while at the same time facilitating all manner of development activities. Habitat conservation plans have also fostered a practice known as conservation banking. This practice grew out of a realization that conservation measures would need to offset the effects of foreseeable future development on listed species. Rather than wait to implement compensatory mitigation measures when development occurs, conservation banking permits mitigation ahead of development, thus providing development interests with a ready-made mitigation option.
Significantly, conservation banking became a way for entrepreneurial landowners to turn rare species on their land into assets and a means of generating income, rather than liabilities. By investing in conservation of those species and generating mitigation credits that the FWS and the NMFS recognized, conservation bankers could generate income for themselves while providing development interests with a preapproved means of meeting their mitigation obligations.
Through this innovative financing mechanism, scores of conservation banks have been established and used to protect habitat essential to species conservation.
If those activities attracted an endangered species to their land or expanded the number or distribution of a species that was already present there, the likely result for landowners was new land use restrictions to avoid any taking of the affected species.
To resolve this dilemma, in the mids, the FWS aggressively promoted what are called safe harbor agreements. Landowners have responded favorably to this approach. For the red-cockaded woodpecker, the endangered species for which safe harbor agreements were first developed, there are now statewide agreements in eight states in which hundreds of forest landowners who collectively own hundreds of thousands of acres of forest participate.
Although safe harbor agreements were a novel idea, an amendment to the ESA was not required to bring them about. Instead, it only took the creativity to fashion an innovative application of a provision that had been part of the law since its inception in In authorizing safe harbor agreements and the permits that effectuate them, the FWS recognized that enabling private landowners to manage their land to attract or increase an endangered species would enhance the survival of those species.
While the jury is still out for many safe harbor agreements, the agreements for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker have resulted in demonstrable benefits.
Red-cockaded woodpecker numbers have increased rangewide in response to recovery and management programs, from an estimated 4, active clusters in to 6, in On private lands, more than 40 percent of the known red-cockaded woodpeckers are benefiting from management approved by the FWS through memorandums of agreement, safe harbor agreements, and habitat conservation plans.
The success of safe harbor agreements in incentivizing beneficial management for listed species led to the development of somewhat analogous agreements for so-called candidate species—seriously declining species formally recognized by the FWS as warranting proposed listing but lacking sufficient funds to do so. While landowners and others have no legal duty to protect or avoid harming candidate species, they often share a desire to keep candidate species from needing to be listed.
However, a familiar dilemma can arise: If landowners, for example, seek to help conserve a candidate species on their land and that species nevertheless becomes a listed species, then landowners may face greater land use restrictions because of their earlier voluntary efforts, which helped preserve or expand a given population.
The administrative solution was the establishment of a new program that offered a candidate conservation agreement with assurances CCAA. Landowners who enter into a CCAA agree to undertake specified conservation measures on their property for a candidate species. As the population and range of the species decreases, the species becomes more threatened. This decline is measured over 10 years or three generations of the species, whichever is longer.
A generation is the period of time between the birth of an animal and the time it is able to reproduce. Mice are able to reproduce when they are about one month old. Mouse populations are mostly tracked over year periods. An elephant's generation lasts about 15 years. So, elephant populations are measured over year periods. A species is vulnerable if its population has declined at least 50 percent and the cause of the decline is known. Habitat loss is the leading known cause of population decline.
A species is also classified as vulnerable if its population has declined at least 30 percent and the cause of the decline is not known.
A new, unknown virus, for example, could kill hundreds or even thousands of individuals before being identified. An area of occupancy is where a specific population of that species resides. This area is often a breeding or nesting site in a species range. The species is also vulnerable if that population declines by at least 10 percent within 10 years or three generations, whichever is longer.
A species is vulnerable if it is restricted to less than 1, mature individuals or an area of occupancy of less than 20 square kilometers 8 square miles. These formulas calculate the chances a species can survive, without human protection, in the wild. Vulnerable Species: Ethiopian Banana Frog The Ethiopian banana frog Afrixalus enseticola is a small frog native to high- altitude areas of southern Ethiopia.
It is a vulnerable species because its area of occupancy is less than 2, square kilometers square miles. The extent and quality of its forest habitat are in decline. Threats to this habitat include forest clearance, mostly for housing and agriculture. Vulnerable Species: Snaggletooth Shark The snaggletooth shark Hemipristis elongatus is found in the tropical , coastal waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Its area of occupancy is enormous, from southeast Africa to the Philippines, and from China to Australia. However, the snaggletooth shark is a vulnerable species because of a severe population reduction rate. Its population has fallen more than 10 percent over 10 years. The number of sharks is declining due to fisheries, especially in the Java Sea and Gulf of Thailand. They are sold in commercial fish markets, as well as restaurants.
Galapagos kelp is classified as vulnerable because its population has declined more than 10 percent over 10 years. Climate change is the leading cause of decline among Galapagos kelp. El Nino , the natural weather pattern that brings unusually warm water to the Galapagos, is the leading agent of climate change in this area. Galapagos kelp is a cold-water species and does not adapt quickly to changes in water temperature.
Endangered Species 1 Population reduction rate A species is classified as endangered when its population has declined between 50 and 70 percent. A species is classified as endangered when its population has declined at least 70 percent and the cause of the decline is known. A species is also classified as endangered when its population has declined at least 50 percent and the cause of the decline is not known.
When a species population declines by at least 20 percent within five years or two generations, it is also classified as endangered. Endangered Species: Siberian Sturgeon The Siberian sturgeon Acipenser baerii is a large fish found in rivers and lakes throughout the Siberian region of Russia.
The Siberian sturgeon is a benthic species. Benthic species live at the bottom of a body of water. The Siberian sturgeon is an endangered species because its total population has declined between 50 and 80 percent during the past 60 years three generations of sturgeon.
Overfishing, poach ing, and dam construction have caused this decline. It is an endangered species because it has a very small population. The bird is only found on a single island, meaning both its extent of occurrence and area of occupancy are very small. The Tahiti reed-warbler is also endangered because of human activity.
The bird nests in bamboo and feeds on flowers and insects that live there. As development and invasive species such as Miconia destroy the bamboo forests, the population of Tahiti reed-warblers continues to shrink. Ebony is an endangered species because many biologists calculate its probability of extinction in the wild is at least 20 percent within five generations. Ebony is threatened due to overharvest ing. Ebony trees produce a very heavy, dark wood.
When polished, ebony can be mistaken for black marble or other stone. For centuries, ebony trees have been harvested for furniture and sculptural uses such as chess pieces. Most ebony, however, is harvested to make musical instruments such as piano key s and the fingerboard s of stringed instruments.
A species is classified as critically endangered when its population has declined at least 90 percent and the cause of the decline is known. A species is also classified as endangered when its population has declined at least 80 percent and the cause of the decline is not known. A species is also classified as critically endangered when the number of mature individuals declines by at least 25 percent within three years or one generation, whichever is longer.
It is critically endangered because its extent of occurrence is less than square kilometers 39 square miles. The major threat to this species is loss of its cloud forest habitat. People are clearing forests to create cattle pasture s. The Transcaucasian racerunner is a critically endangered species because of a huge population decline, estimated at more than 80 percent during the past 10 years. Threats to this species include the salination , or increased saltiness, of soil.
Fertilizers used for agricultural development seep into the soil, increasing its saltiness. Racerunners live in and among the rocks and soil, and cannot adapt to the increased salt in their food and shelter. The racerunner is also losing habitat as people create trash dumps on their area of occupancy.
Critically Endangered Species: White Ferula Mushroom The white ferula mushroom Pleurotus nebrodensis is a critically endangered species of fungus. The mushroom is critically endangered because its extent of occurrence is less than square kilometers 39 square miles. It is only found in the northern part of the Italian island of Sicily, in the Mediterranean Sea.
The leading threats to white ferula mushrooms are loss of habitat and overharvesting. A study published last month found that ocean deoxygenation could have a major impact on zooplankton , one of the building blocks for the ocean food web. Deoxygenation also causes increased algal growth, like the red tides that choked the coasts of Florida this past year and killed hundreds of manatees and tens of thousands of fish.
A related issue in the Arctic also appears to be another emerging threat. Meanwhile, on top of the obvious weather-related changes, climate change could create an additional unexpected threat to some species: wildlife trafficking. The tiny bit of good news related to climate change? The more we know about exactly how climate change threatens certain species — or about how they can adapt to it — the better we can do at protecting them from extinction.
Mayer adds that the recent election in Madagascar could be just as bad. Former president Andry Rajoelina, whose previous tenure was marked by a dramatic increase in illegal logging, deforestation and biodiversity loss , was reelected last month, although as of press time the election remains mired in protests and accusations of fraud.
Johnson expects funding to remain an issue in , as will further attacks against the Endangered Species Act. Others echoed those thoughts and fears about the ESA. Many of our experts expressed cautious optimism about these new government representatives. But outside of Washington, things are speeding up. For instance, due to global warming, the water temperature in lakes and rivers is likely to increase.
Thus, oxygen levels are likely to decrease and animals and plants may die off because of a lack of oxygen. Illegal hunting and poaching still is a big problem and can cause the extinction of whole species. Since people are greedy and often want to make as much money as possible, they kill animals just to get their precious parts like their ivory or fur. If these animals are not properly protected by governments or other agencies, they will be an easy target and will eventually become extinct.
Since our world population consumes large amounts of fish, many fish have to be caught in order to meet this demand. Especially for fishes people love to consume, this could lead them to become an endangered species. The industrial revolution and our increased need for consumption have led to an increase in many different forms of pollution.
Acid rain, water pollution, air pollution and other kinds of pollution can harm many species in an extremely adverse way. If they are not able to adapt to the higher levels of pollution, they will be in danger to die out. Especially for animals that have a low reproduction rate, this can cause big problems since they may likely not be able to sustain their species. Invasive species can affect local species in an adverse way since on the one hand, they can carry diseases that local species are not able to fight.
On the other hand, invasive species may displace the local species and thus the local species may be in danger of becoming extinct. Animals that have a low genetic variation are at greater risk for extinction than animals with a high genetic variation. The rationale for this is that animals with low genetic variations could potentially be wiped out by one big epidemic. Due to low genetic variation, all animals of this species will be hit by the disease and they will likely not be able to fight it at all.
Moreover, also the adaption to new living conditions will be harder if animals have low genetic variation since they will be more sensitive to altered living conditions. Diseases like Ebola can cause thousands of deaths among certain species like monkeys and therefore diminish their numbers dramatically. In the worst case, epidemics can cause whole species to become extinct if the animals only occur in one region and thus can be all affected by the deadly threat.
Highly specialized animals or plants are more likely to become endangered or extinct since they are not flexible at all in their living conditions.
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