A Brighter Future For Hundreds Of U.S. Species

The future of hundreds of America's most iconic and imperiled plants and animals just got considerably brighter.

The Obama administration signed a landmark agreement with the Center for Biological Diversity that, combined with a previous agreement, will propel 757 species toward protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The deal touches species in every corner of the nation: the walrus and yellow-billed loon in Alaska, fisher and golden trout on the West Coast, wolverine and sage grouse in the Northern Rockies, gray wolf and pygmy owl in the Southwest, Eastern massasauga rattlesnake and Arkansas darter in the Midwest, New England cottontail and long-eared bat in the Northeast, Miami blue butterfly and Alabama map turtle in the Southeast, and the colorful scarlet Hawaiian honeycreeper.

It also includes 403 fresh-water species in the Southeast, 42 tiny springsnails in Nevada's Great Basin and 32 mollusks in the Pacific Northwest.

These plants and animals are dangerously close to extinction and will now get a fighting chance at survival.

The agreement reached Tuesday caps a decade-long campaign by the Center for Biological Diversity to save 1,000 of America's most endangered, least protected species. Over the years, the Center wrote scientific listing petitions and/or filed litigation to protect all 757.

The deal sets legally binding deadlines between now and 2018 for the government to make protection decisions on species in all 50 states.

It's a watershed moment for the Endangered Species Act, America's foremost tool for protecting plants and animals facing the grim prospect of disappearing forever. Signed in 1973, the Act has a long record of success -- think of where bald eagles, grizzly bears, gray wolves and peregrine falcons would be without it.

But the Act only works for species that actually arrive on the endangered species list. And, for many imperiled species, the wait has simply been too long. (At least 24 species that were put on the "waiting list" for protection have gone extinct while they waited.)

Although today there are about 1,300 species protected under the Endangered Species Act, more species need help. Habitat destruction, climate change, pollution, human overpopulation and a host of other factors continue to push some of this country's most vulnerable species to the brink.

This historic agreement will not only put hundreds of species on the fast-track toward protection, it will protect the wild places, clean water and clean air we all need to survive.

 

Comments

[Deep Thinking Man]

05:40 PM on 07/17/2011

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outposts/2009/03/photo-a-gray-wo.html

http://www.cnie.org/NLE/CRSreports/10Sep/RL34238.pdf

http://www.humanesociety.org/animals/wolves/facts/faq_gray_wolf.html

http://news.discovery.com/animals/gray-wolf-off-endangered-species-list-110504.html


http://articles.cnn.com/2008-03-28/tech/gray.wolves_1_wolf-recovery-coordinator-ed-bangs-wolves?_s=PM:TECH

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/41281/

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3756063

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/translating-uncle-sam/stories/are-gray-wolves-still-endangered

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23275622/ns/us_news-environment/t/western-gray-wolves-coming-endangered-list/

hey Kieran,
wolves are being murdered, and it started last month. to avoid a govt. shut-down, my politicians, both Rems and RepBags, slipped a "rider clause" in, so the murdering goes on...probably to extinction !!!!!!

[Mississippi Red]

05:38 PM on 07/14/2011

dkrypt has no idea what he is talking about. None at all for the most part. Except that it is true that the CBD does a fair to poor job of choosing which species they try to get listed. The CBD really needs to do a better job of integrating scientific data. They often seem to simply try to list everything they can to see what might go through. This isn't a good idea at all. And the ESA is so limited- it really needs to be rebooted using state of the art knowledge of which conservation strategies have a shot at being effective.

And dkrypt- healthy ecological communities contribute way more to the economy than the combined GDP of all the countries of the earth. Just calculate the cost of replacing nature...

[Chad Wheeler]

05:38 PM on 07/14/2011

Thank you for some good news, for a change.

[sheila]

01:09 PM on 07/14/2011

too bad about the threatened desert tortoises at Ivanpah, though, eh? never mind the 3000 tortoises that will be mulched for Chevron profits and CBD's sellout "mitigation" (as if there is such a thing). sorry, dude, you blew that one completely. western watersheds gets your donation this year.

[Paul Taylor Examiner]

11:53 AM on 07/14/2011

The Center for Biological Diversity is a parasitic-green litigant that games the Species Act for fun and profit. The Center's extinction must be hastened by reform of I.R.S. Code Section 501(c)(3).
Militant and litigious eco-groups have become an "axis of antagonism" that we can no longer afford.
ECOPOLITICS

[surfcityart]

01:29 PM on 07/14/2011

Can we stay at your house?

[Mississippi Red]

05:42 PM on 07/14/2011

I hope you don't use wood for anything. Or need clean water. Or clean air. If you do, you need healthy ecosystems. The CBD is overenthusiastic and is nowhere near as rigorous as they should be when deciding which species they should try to get listed. But I had rather the IBD be a bit overenthusiastic in what they are trying to acheive than overenthusiastic energy companies ready and willing to kill anything to make a buck.

[mashtoe]

10:52 AM on 07/14/2011

As long as our policy is to overpopulate the nation then nothing in the environment is safe. You are delusional. As our population in the US keeps growing due to direct federal interference (legal and amnesty for illegal immigration) then we will have no choice but to drill and mine and deforest. These policies make a few very wealthy and an overpopulated nation has no upward mobility. And concerns for the environment evaporate in overpopulated nations. So this policy of immigration is great for the oligarchs. And they are the main supporters. So if you really are concerned about the environment you must fight against immigration and fight for family planning.

[dkrypt]

09:33 AM on 07/14/2011

Harming the economy in the name of other species.

News flash: 99.99%+ of all species that have ever existed are already extinct. New species are created every day. Billions of new species will come and go in the future.

Fiddling with the few species which we happen to notice accomplishes nothing but waste, and could harm the species which the "endangered" species compete with (including humans).

But carry on. Governance via emotion is so much better than governance by logic /sarcasm

[doubleB]

10:16 AM on 07/14/2011

Ever heard the euphemism "canary in the coal mine"? There's a reason it's a euphemism. The rate of extinctions has picked up noticably during our reign and if we keep up our unsustainable practices, pretty soon we'll be putting ourselves on the list.

[dkrypt]

10:40 AM on 07/14/2011

We can only estimate, badly, the current and past rates of extinction, because we can only estimate, badly, how many species exist today (and our estimates for past species are even worse).

We need to concern ourselves with the economy and our debt. These random and questionably species-saving activities add to our debt.

[karen lyons kalmenson]

09:32 AM on 07/14/2011

every species is a treasure
a gift from mother earth
not for man to exploit
at his leisure
man unkind needs to
learn to share
tend to other beings
learn to care
who he will turn
this eden
our wonderful earth
into an unfit,
planet dearth