After years of the process that moves plants and wildlife onto the Endangered Species Act list devolving into a fight between those acting on behalf of the candidates and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service administrators that try and protect them, a 2011 settlement was reached in order to alter the way that the country protects its threatened and endangered species.
For years, candidate species have lingered on the government's list, with many groups taking action in the form of suing in order to get their attention. Although these groups act with the intention of representing the best interests of these species, the resulting lawsuits means that the service spends more time in court than focusing on the most important thing: biology.
Only four species in the continental U.S. have been listed in the two years that President Barack Obama took office and as of November of 2010, 251 were still waiting for protection. To make matters worse, most of them have been waiting for more than 20 years.
The 2011 settlement led to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreeing prioritize these 251 candidate species and make a final decision on each of them by September of this year. Furthermore, the WildEarth Guardians - the organization that has taken the agency to court the most - agreed to stop suing and reduce the amount of petitions that it introduces for new species consideration.
"What we have recognized alongside the service is that we don't want to continue doing the same thing we've been doing, because we've gotten into a situation where the best we can do is get more species added to the end of a very long waiting line that's not moving," said Nicole Rosmarino, the wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians, back when the agreement was made. "And that's not serving anybody, particularly not the species stuck in that waiting line."
The move was made in order to help species become recognized under the Endangered Species Act and get the aid that they deserve.
"We have this act that's tremendously effective in pulling species back from the brink, but it doesn't work until a species is formally listed under it," Rosmarino said. "Here, you have these hundreds of species where the Fish and Wildlife Service has already recommended that there's a problem, that they are imperiled, and yet, the protections of the Endangered Species Act haven't been brought to bear to pull them back from the brink."
Although the act has helped endangered and threatened animals get the recognition that they deserve since the agreement, there have still been roadblocks. Just this week, U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen forced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reassess their refusal to list wolverines as threatened or endangered, which, although a win for endangered species, still shows the stubborn nature of the agency.
Clearly, the fight between science and politics is still going on, but progress is still being made for endangered and threatened species candidates.
