FWS Makes Annual Announcement of Candidate Species for ESA

Apparently, though, it hasn't succeeded in actually protecting many of those in the past ten months.

On Friday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released its Candidate Notice of Review (CNR), an annual list of plants and animals that are considered candidates by the agency for Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection. The press release can be read here, and the list here.

According to FWS, "[c]andidate species [included on the list] are plants and animals for which the Service has enough information on their status and threats to propose them as threatened or endangered, but [for which] developing a proposed listing rule is precluded by higher priority listing actions." Apparently, four species have been removed from the list, five have been added, and eight have had their priority changed since last year.

The author of ESABlawg, a DoJ alumnus, explains the significance of inclusion on the list as follows:

The candidate list is the one significant place where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service takes into account priorities when implementing the Endangered Species Act. Under this three-part priority ranking system,

(1) threats to species are considered in magnitude as either “high” or “moderate to low”;
(2) immediacy of threats are categorized as either “imminent” or “nonimminent”; and
(3) three categories are created for taxonomic status: with
(a) species that are the sole members of a genus;
(b) full species (in a genus that has more than one species); and
(c) subspecies, distinct population segments of vertebrate species, and species for which listing is appropriate in a significant portion of their range rather than their entire range.

The result of the ranking system is that FWS assigns each candidate a listing priority number of 1 to 12.

This system has two important limitations. First, as FWS notes, it still results in lumping all the species together on the candidate list. . . . Second, it does not attempt to assign any value to one species over another based on biological characteristics or other traits. In other words, it does not matter whether a species is a plant that is in trial testing as a potential cure for cancer, nor a keystone species representative of an entire ecosystem that also creates habitat for dozens of other species. Either way, the ranking system assigns a 1 to 12 based on the individual status of the species, and all species struggle equally on the candidate list until FWS finds the money (or a court orders FWS) to list the species.

The Center for Biological Diversity--possibly the primary organization pressing for these court orders--notes that "The majority of candidates [on the CNR] are rated as either priority 2 or 3, meaning they are in immediate danger of extinction."

In a press release about the CNR, which also detailed full ESA listing activity, the Center for Biological Diversity noted that the Interior Department has only moved one species, a rare Hawaiian plant, under the umbrella of ESA protection since President Obama took office. CBD is extremely critical of this record, saying:

This review shows that the Obama administration has not substantially improved the dismal record of the Bush administration in providing protection to the nation’s critically endangered wildlife. . . . Protection of only one species in 10 months reflects a failure to enact substantial reforms in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

(FWS is moving toward listing the flat-tailed horned lizard in 2010, but this was just mandated by the federal district court in Arizona implementing a Ninth Circuit decision won by CBD in July.)

Maybe I'm naive, but I'm inclined to cut the Obama Administration a little slack, since turning around a bureaucratic ship can be quite a slow process. But it would be interesting to know what the process story is: According to the full CBD press release, the Bush Administration averaged 7-8 listings a year, and the Clinton Administration 65.