Category Archives: Endangered Species Act

Oil, Politics and Lizards

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The US Fish and Wildlife Service announced yesterday that the dunes sagebrush lizard (Sceloporus arenicolus) would not be listed under the Endangered Species Act because voluntary conservation methods undertaken by private landowners in Texas and New Mexico have worked so well.

The most interesting thing about the dunes sagebrush lizard is that its habitat happens to be among the richest oil-producing regions in the lower-48 states. A listing would curtail drilling for oil and gas in the region, so it’s no surprise that the oil industry has fought against a federal listing for the lizard for decades.

Is the decision a victory for the oil industry? For conservation agreements? For the lizard?

That certainly depends on your point of view. You can see two different points of view on display in these articles. The Reuters report buries the information that environmental groups are unhappy with the ruling, and gives only a tepid quote from one of the organizations that disagrees. Read the Reuters piece here.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram puts environmentalists’ displeasure at the top of the story and includes a more forceful quote from the same source. Read the Star-Telegram report here.

A KXAN TV story provides some helpful details.

Photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife

Rattlesnakes and Grizzlies: Endangered?

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Face to face with an eastern rattlesnake or a grizzly bear, you might not feel that it was the animal that was endangered. However, the eastern rattlesnake came closer to a possible Endangered Species Act listing earlier this month when the US Fish and Wildlife Service began a 12-month review of the species’ status.

Read more in the Chicago Tribune.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada found no solid evidence of decline in the nation’s grizzly bear population overall, so it denied the species endangered species status, instead designating the western population a species of “special concern.”

Read all about it in the Ottawa Citizen.

Rattlesnakes and Grizzlies: Endangered?

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Face to face with an eastern rattlesnake or a grizzly bear, you might not feel that it was the animal that was endangered. However, the eastern rattlesnake came closer to a possible Endangered Species Act listing earlier this month when the US Fish and Wildlife Service began a 12-month review of the species’ status.

Read more in the Chicago Tribune.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada found no solid evidence of decline in the nation’s grizzly bear population overall, so it denied the species endangered species status, instead designating the western population a species of “special concern.”

Read all about it in the Ottawa Citizen.

Trees and Levees

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The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) announced last week that it had sued the United States Army Corps of Engineers (Corps).

According to a press release:

DFG claimed in its lawsuit that the Corps failed to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and federal Administrative Procedure Act when it adopted a national policy requiring the removal of virtually all trees and shrubs on federal levees. The Corps developed its national levee vegetation removal policy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The department says that the levees provide the last available riparian habitat for several endangered species including Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Valley elderberry longhorn beetle, riparian brush rabbit, Western yellow-billed cuckoo and Swainson’s hawk.

Read the California Department of Fish and Game press release here.
Local media has not added anything to the story so far. Try this piece from Fox40 TV Sacremento.

Photo: Riparian brush rabbit, by Lee Eastman, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Trees and Levees

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The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) announced last week that it had sued the United States Army Corps of Engineers (Corps).

According to a press release:

DFG claimed in its lawsuit that the Corps failed to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and federal Administrative Procedure Act when it adopted a national policy requiring the removal of virtually all trees and shrubs on federal levees. The Corps developed its national levee vegetation removal policy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The department says that the levees provide the last available riparian habitat for several endangered species including Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Valley elderberry longhorn beetle, riparian brush rabbit, Western yellow-billed cuckoo and Swainson’s hawk.

Read the California Department of Fish and Game press release here.
Local media has not added anything to the story so far. Try this piece from Fox40 TV Sacremento.

Photo: Riparian brush rabbit, by Lee Eastman, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Proposed ESA Listing for 2 Washington Plants

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The US Fish and Wildlife Service would like to add the Umtanum desert buckwheat and White Bluffs bladderpod to the federal endangered species list, says the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

The two plants are found only in Washington State’s Hanford Reach National Monument, and were discovered during a survey of the area in 1995.

Read more in the Spokane Spokesman-Review.
Find the Federal Register listing, here. The comment period is open until July 16.

Proposed ESA Listing for 2 Washington Plants

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The US Fish and Wildlife Service would like to add the Umtanum desert buckwheat and White Bluffs bladderpod to the federal endangered species list, says the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

The two plants are found only in Washington State’s Hanford Reach National Monument, and were discovered during a survey of the area in 1995.

Read more in the Spokane Spokesman-Review.
Find the Federal Register listing, here. The comment period is open until July 16.

ESA Truce Is Tested Already

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When two environmental groups reached an agreement with the US Fish and Wildlife Service last year, pending court cases on the endangered species status of hundreds of species were settled as well.

An article last week in the Washington Post says that the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s decisions on dozens of freshwater snails, and some other 500 species so far was the easy part.

Now a decision is needed on two species that could have significant impact on development in the West, the article says: the dunes sagebrush lizard and the lesser prairie chicken. With oil wells and wind turbines at stake, any decision is likely to mean some angst for the Obama administration, the article says, and may threaten the fragile legal settlement with the environmental groups.

Read the entire Washington Post article, here.

Photo: Lesser prairie chicken, courtesy of the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture

Maps Will Describe Critical Habitat in ESA Listings

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USFWS critical habitat portalIs a picture worth a thousand words? The US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) think a map is worth several pages of text. Both governmental entities are planning on replacing the long written descriptions of critical habitat for Endangered Species Act (ESA) listings in the Federal Register with a map. Make that an on-line map.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service says that the map will be an easier way to describe an area. Up until now, the areas have been described in the Federal Register like this:

Land bounded by the following UTM Zone 18, NAD 83 coordinates (E,N): 733143, 99288; 733053, 99268; 733055, 99291; 733065, 99309; 733055, 99320; 733048, 99344; 733053, 99364; 733090, 99377; 733140, 99370; 733143, 99288.

While surely no one will miss that kind of prose style, providing a link instead of including all the necessary information in the Federal Register notice will mean that the vital information about the listing will not be in one place, which was always at least part of the point of the Federal Register. It’s also easy to imagine maps being created in formats that become obsolete or the funding for maintain the database getting cut.

The change takes effect on May 31, 2012. All ESA listings after that date will include a link to an on-line map instead of a written description.

Read the US Fish and Wildlife Service press release here.
It will send you to this web page on Critical Habitat for more information.
That page will send you to this example of an on-line map designating critical habitat.

Photo: The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Critical Habitat Portal

Listings: Mussels on Fed. List; Eagles off Oregon’s

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Mature and juvenile spectaclecase mussels

Last month the US Fish and Wildlife Service added two more freshwater mussel species, the sheepnose and the spectaclecase, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Read the press release here. 

According to the press release, sheepnose are currently found in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Spectaclecase mussels are currently found in Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

(This is not to be confused with the addition, in February, of two other freshwater mussel species, rayed bean and the snuffbox, to the list as endangered species. That press release is here.)

Also in March, the state of Oregon removed the bald eagle from the state’s Endangered Species List. Read the press release here. (Only the first paragraph is about the de-listing.) The eagle was removed from the federal list in 2007.

Read a (brief) story about it in the Albany (Or.) Democrat-Herald.

Photo by USFWS; Tamara Smith