Scientists Seek to Add 225 Species to Endangered List
Associated Press
Wednesday 05 May 2004
Scientists, including acclaimed wildlife biologist Jane Goodall, joined environmental groups Tuesday in
petitioning the government to add 225 plants and animals to the endangered species list.
The species are not new to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; four-fifths have been on the agency's
waiting list for a decade. Some have been waiting since 1975. The average is 17 years.
Goodall, known for her pioneering research on chimpanzees, signed the petitions, joined by other
prominent scientists including biologists E.O. Wilson of Harvard University and Paul Ehrlich of
Stanford University.
"Wildlife is facing serious threats almost everywhere," Goodall said in a statement. She accused
the Bush administration of seeking to undermine the Endangered Species Act.
Robert Hass, former poet laureate of the United States, said it's not too late to save the 225 plants
and animals "languishing on the federal candidate list. It's time to open the doors of the ark and let
them in."
Eleven individuals and three environmental organizations filed the petitions, said Brian Nowicki, a
conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, which organized the effort.
A spokesman for the Interior Department accused the Tucson-based group of misrepresenting the
realities of the endangered species program. Hugh Vickery attributed a decline in listing new species
to "a flood of lawsuits" filed by the center and other plaintiffs since 1997.
The 225 species listed in the petitions are from 39 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana and
Northern Mariana islands and American Samoa. Nearly half are from Hawaii.
More than 1,200 species have been placed on the endangered list since the Endangered Species
Act became law in 1973, Nowicki said. The Bush administration has listed only 31 species as
endangered, in contrast to an average of 65 a year by the Clinton administration and 59 a year under
the first President Bush.
Go to Original
Group Urges Species Protection
Beth Casper
Statesman Journal
Wednesday 05 May 2004
A request includes one type of plant and two animal species in Oregon
Two rare Oregon frogs and a plant need federal protection before they disappear, says a national
group that has won lawsuits against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding these issues in the
past.
The Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Ariz., formally asked the federal agency Tuesday to
list 225 plants and animals on the endangered-species list in an attempt to prevent them from going
extinct.
It is, by far, the largest request for listings in the history of the Endangered Species Act, which
passed in 1973.
Federal officials concede that the species identified are at risk, but they say that the cost of
protection is prohibitive.
All of the 225 species are on the candidate list, which means that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service recognizes their plight but has other, higher-priority species to protect.
Candidate species get no protection. There are 257 candidate species.
"They are using the candidate list as a purgatory and a means to avoid listing," said Noah
Greenwald, conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Portland. "Since some of
these species have been waiting for 20 to 30 years in cases, we feel that they can’t wait any longer. It’
s just sad to see this poor implementation of the Endangered Species Act."
But U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials say that it would cost $153 million to move all the
candidate species to the threatened or endangered list.
"That is a huge amount of money," said Betsy Lordan of the agency. "You can’t just go to
Congress and ask for $153 million to clear up the backlog - you’d get laughed at."
Lordan also said that the center’s action is redundant because the agency already has reviewed
each of the 225 species.
"They are on the candidate list - not because listing is not warranted but because it is precluded by
other, higher listing priorities, which is another way of saying that we don’t have the money to list them
now," Lordan said. "So I would question what the center hopes to achieve by re-petitioning these
species."
Three Oregon species have been on the candidate list for many years and were included Tuesday
in the center’s request for listing:
Oregon spotted frog: found in the Cascades from the Washington border to the Klamath River
Basin. Candidate since 1991.
Columbia spotted frog: found in Eastern Oregon. Candidate since 1991.
Northern wormwood: a plant found along the Columbia River between Hood River and the John
Day River. Candidate since 1985.
A recent report by the Center for Biological Diversity stated that systematic delays, including
lengthy waits on the candidate list, contributed to the extinction of 83 species between 1974 and
1994.
But Russ Brooks, managing attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation’s northwest center in Seattle,
said that listing a species doesn’t help recover the species.
"It seems to me that listing a species on the endangered species list is really a death sentence for
that species," said Brooks, whose group represents private-property owners and others. "The history
of the ESA shows that the only way - or often - that species comes off the endangered list is if it goes
extinct. - The ESA should be recovering species. It is not recovering species that are currently listed. I
don’t know what the Center for Biological Diversity thinks it is doing by asking for the listing of these
225 species."
Others think that placing a species on the endangered-species list is the most basic of protections
to prevent extinction.
"Listing does matter," said Joe Bowersox, associate professor of politics in environmental and
natural-resources policy at Willamette University. "The Endangered Species Act, for all of its
criticisms by both environmentalists as well as commodity interests, it is still the No. 1 way to go
about protecting at a national level sensitive, threatened and endangered species."
The center’s actions, through lawsuits and formal requests, have helped to get listings for 339
species across the country - 25 percent of the species on the federal list.
The protection of imperiled species has worsened under the Bush administration, Greenwald said.
For example, he said, the Clinton administration listed 394 species compared with the Bush
administration’s 39.
"Other administrations have managed to list far more species," he said. "This is an administration
clearly opposed to listing."
And the budget argument doesn’t pass muster for Greenwald, who said that the Fish and Wildlife
Service needs to ask for more money to be granted more money.
"Fish and Wildlife says they need $153 million to address the backlog, but their request to
Congress is $12.3 million," Greenwald said. "They request way less than they need - They’ve
essentially created their own budget crisis."
The finger-pointing goes both ways. Federal agency officials said that groups such as the Center for
Biological Diversity cause the budget woes.
"The center and other plaintiffs, beginning in 1997, have filed a flood of lawsuits requiring the service
to designate critical habitat for already listed species," said Hugh Vickery of the agency. "This has
diverted staff and resources from the listing of new species."
Critical habitats are areas that are essential to a species’ survival.
Vickery said that the listing budget has increased in the past several years but that $153 million
would be a tenfold increase, something that no administration or Congress ever has indicated that it
would support.
"It’s the whole budget process that is fundamentally flawed," said Susan Ash, conservation director
for the Audubon Society of Portland. "More money needs to be appropriated from Congress instead of
the continued bowing down to industry interests - that cycle has got to change." |
