Endangered Species Recovering

By Papasian, Melanie H

More than 50 percent of U.S. species listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) before 2000 have stabilized or are improving, according to a study published in the September issue of Ecology Letters.

The study combined 14 years of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration data to measure each species’ recovery. The approach allowed researchers to examine the variables that might affect progress, such as the amount of government funding per species.

The study provides a rebuttal to claims by some in Congress that ESA has failed because more species have not been removed from the endangered list. “The loudest ESA critics define all progress short of complete recovery and delisting as failure,” says Environmental Defense Wildlife Chair Michael Bean, one of the study’s two authors. “Such an all-or-nothing assessment classifies the 50 percent of now stable or improving species as failures and ignores 30 years of improvement.” By this standard, the bald eagle, which has rebounded from fewer than 400 breeding pairs in the 1960s to more than 8,000 breeding pairs today, would be considered a failure because it has not yet been removed from the list of threatened species.

The study’s authors feel that the Endangered Species Act is doing its job. Tim Male, senior ecologist at Environmental Defense and coauthor of the study says, “When given the resources they need, species are fighting their way back from the brink.”

-Environmental Defense news release, 11 August. (M.P.)

Copyright HELDREF PUBLICATIONS Oct 2005