Extinction and the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Greenwald N
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6482936 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:The U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) is a powerful environmental law protecting imperiled plants and animals, and a growing number of marine species have been protected under this law as extinction risk in the oceans has increased. Marine mammals and sea turtles comprise 38% of the 163 ESA-listed marine "species", which includes subspecies and distinct population segments, yet analyses of recovery trends after listing are lacking. Here we gathered the best available annual abundance estimates for geographically delimited populations of all 62 marine mammal and sea turtle species listed under the ESA. Of these, we chose representative populations of species that were listed before 2012, occur and reproduce in U.S. waters, and have data of sufficient quality and timespan for trend analyses. Thus, we quantitatively analyzed population trends, magnitude of population change, and recovery status for 23 and 8 representative populations of 14 marine mammal and 5 sea turtle species, respectively. Using generalized linear and non-linear models, we found that 18 marine mammal (78%) and 6 sea turtle (75%) populations significantly increased after listing; 3 marine mammal (13%) and 2 sea turtle (25%) populations showed non-significant changes; while 2 marine mammal (9%), but no sea turtle populations declined after ESA protection. Overall, the 24 populations that increased in abundance were from species listed for 20 years or more (e.g., large whales, manatees, and sea turtles). Conservation measures triggered by ESA listing such as ending exploitation, tailored species management, and fishery regulations, and other national and international measures, appear to have been largely successful in promoting species recovery, leading to the delisting of some species and to increases in most populations. These findings underscore the capacity of marine mammal and sea turtle species to recover from substantial geographical population declines when conservation actions are implemented in a timely and effective manner.
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Project description:Despite its successes, the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) has proven challenging to implement due to funding limitations, workload backlog, and other problems. As threats to species survival intensify and as more species come under threat, the need for the ESA and similar conservation laws and policies in other countries to function efficiently has grown. Attempts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to streamline ESA decisions include multispecies recovery plans and habitat conservation plans. We address species status assessment (SSA), a USFWS process to inform ESA decisions from listing to recovery, within the context of multispecies and ecosystem planning. Although existing SSAs have a single-species focus, ecosystem-based research can efficiently inform multiple SSAs within a region and provide a foundation for transition to multispecies SSAs in the future. We considered at-risk grassland species and ecosystems within the southeastern United States, where a disproportionate number of rare and endemic species are associated with grasslands. To initiate our ecosystem-based approach, we used a combined literature-based and structured World Café workshop format to identify science needs for SSAs. Discussions concentrated on 5 categories of threats to grassland species and ecosystems, consistent with recommendations to make shared threats a focus of planning under the ESA: (1) habitat loss, fragmentation, and disruption of functional connectivity; (2) climate change; (3) altered disturbance regimes; (4) invasive species; and (5) localized impacts. For each threat, workshop participants identified science and information needs, including database availability, research priorities, and modeling and mapping needs. Grouping species by habitat and shared threats can make the SSA process and other planning processes for conservation of at-risk species worldwide more efficient and useful. We found a combination of literature review and structured discussion effective for identifying the scientific information and analysis needed to support the development of multiple SSAs. Article impact statement: Species status assessments can be improved by an ecosystem-based approach that groups imperiled species by shared habitats and threats.
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Project description:Separating myth and reality is essential for evaluating the effectiveness of laws. Section 7 of the US Endangered Species Act (Act) directs federal agencies to help conserve threatened and endangered species, including by consulting with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) or National Marine Fisheries Service on actions the agencies authorize, fund, or carry out. Consultations ensure that actions do not violate the Act's prohibitions on "jeopardizing" listed species or "destroying or adversely modifying" these species' critical habitat. Because these prohibitions are broad, many people consider section 7 the primary tool for protecting species under the Act, whereas others believe section 7 severely impedes economic development. This decades-old controversy is driven primarily by the lack of data on implementation: past analyses are either over 25 y old or taxonomically restricted. We analyze data on all 88,290 consultations recorded by FWS from January 2008 through April 2015. In contrast to conventional wisdom about section 7 implementation, no project was stopped or extensively altered as a result of FWS finding jeopardy or adverse modification during this period. We also show that median consultation duration is far lower than the maximum allowed by the Act, and several factors drive variation in consultation duration. The results discredit many of the claims about the onerous nature of section 7 but also raise questions as to how federal agencies could apply this tool more effectively to conserve species. We build on the results to identify ways to improve the effectiveness of consultations for imperiled species conservation and increase the efficiency of consultations.
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