by Linda Castro, Assistant Policy Director
The federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) was enacted by the 93rd Congress and signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1973. Upon signing the ESA, President Nixon remarked that, “Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed.”
The ESA’s purpose is to conserve endangered and threatened plants and animals and the habitats in which they are found, with endangered and threatened being two different levels of vulnerability for a species. Endangered species are those in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of their range. Threatened species are likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of their range.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries share responsibility for implementing the ESA. The FWS is responsible for land and freshwater species and several marine mammal species while NOAA Fisheries is responsible for most marine and anadromous species (i.e., those that live part of their lives in fresh water and part of their lives in the ocean, such as salmon).
The law requires federal agencies, in consultation with the FWS and/or the NOAA Fisheries, to ensure that actions they propose to take are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any listed species or result in the destruction or adverse modification of designated “critical habitat” of such species. (Generally, critical habitat is a specific area that contains physical or biological features that are deemed essential to conservation of a particular species.) The ESA also prohibits any action that causes a “taking” of any listed species of endangered fish or wildlife. Taking includes a number of activities such as harming, hunting, wounding, killing, or collecting.
One well-known ESA ongoing success story is that of the California condor, which was listed as endangered in 1967 under the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966, the predecessor to the ESA. The California condor’s numbers dropped to only 22 that were surviving in the wild. As a result of the listing which led to captive breeding programs and other important partnerships, the total wild free-flying condor population is now more than 300!
However, other species such as the Mojave desert tortoise (also known as Agassiz’s desert tortoise), continue to see steady declines in their populations, despite its ESA listing in 1990. Between 2001 and 2020, population densities in tortoise conservation areas went down by an average of one percent per year in California’s Eastern Mojave and Colorado Deserts.
Unfortunately, the issue of protecting threatened and endangered species from extinction has increasingly transitioned from being a nonpartisan to partisan issue, especially in the past decade or so. (As a reminder, President Nixon was a Republican.) More and more frequently, we have seen anti-ESA bills from Members of Congress, usually on the Republican side of the aisle, as well as attempts to reduce funding for federal agencies to implement the ESA. All of these actions are extremely troubling, given that our health is so interrelated to the health of our planet and other species that live on it. One example of this type of bill has repeatedly come from Republican U.S. Senators and Representatives since a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case (Cottonwood Environmental Law Center v. U.S. Forest Service) reaffirmed the duty of the U.S. Forest Service to consult with the FWS and/or NOAA Fisheries with regard to endangered species and their critical habitat. Republican Senators and Representatives have repeatedly introduced bills that would eliminate the important and commonsense interpretation of the ESA that requires the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior to reinitiate consultation with the FWS and/or NOAA Fisheries under the ESA when a new species is listed or critical habitat is designated under the ESA or when new information reveals that an existing land use management plan may affect a listed species or critical habitat in a manner or to an extent that was not previously considered. This proposed legislative language has garnered the nickname of “The Cottonwood Fix” despite the fact that the only “fix” it would provide is for those who wish to develop and log federal public lands without adequate consideration for newly listed endangered species and/or their habitats.
We already saw direct and indirect attacks on the Endangered Species Act in the last Trump administration; there is every reason for us to expect more this time around. Unfortunately, the threat that these bills will become law and signed by the President has become far more real with the make up of the current Congress and the new presidential administration.
Image: Endangered California tiger salamander
