USFW Proposes Listing Red-Crested Cockatoo

Yesterday, according to this press release, the US Fish and Wildlife Service issued a proposed rule listing the Indonesian Red-Crested Cockatoo as threatened under the Endangered Species Act after protracted foot dragging. According to the release, this is significant, even though the US cannot, of course, enforce the ESA abroad, because "[a]ddition of a foreign species to the federal list of threatened and endangered species places restrictions on the importation of either the animal or its parts."

As this Federal Register notice explains, groups first petitioned Fish and Wildlife to make this listing eighteen years ago. (This is the ossification that Cass Sunstein, my old environmental law professor, talks about.) In July 2008, Fish and Wildlife was still talking about its intent to "promptly publish" a proposal to list the Red-Crested Cockatoo. See 73 FR 44062 (July 29, 2008). After years of litigation, the Center for Biological Diversity sued again when the proposal was not published. A settlement in that suit, Center for Biological Diversity v. Salazar (N.D. Cal case no. 09-cv-02578-CRB, June 29, 2009) required Fish and Wildlife to publish their listing plan by October 30.

More on the listing can be read on ESA blawg, here.