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#endangered species act
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This is from last summer (I found it while trying to clean up browser tabs--oops.) Anyway, it's one of many examples of critically endangered species showing an upturn in population with support. The Devils Hole pupfish is particularly imperiled because it is only found in one flooded cavern in Nevada's Amargosa Desert; the species is likely descended from fish that were washed in there by flooding thousands of years ago, and have managed to eke out a living in the hot, oxygen-deficient water ever since.
This is one of the first species ever listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Devils Hole is threatened by groundwater depletion from well drilling, and after the pupfish's ESA listing there were numerous legal battles between conservationists and farmers over water usage. Water levels reached their lowest point in the early 1970s, but have been slowly rising since then.
Scientists are excited because the current wild population (at least as of last fall) is at 263 fish. That's up from just 35 in 2013, the lowest recorded population ever. There are a few hundred more in captivity, being used to breed more young for reintroduction. The hope is that this fall's wild count will break 300, a good sign for the world's most endangered fish.
By the way, THIS is the entirety of the Devils hole pupfish's habitat, the only place in the world where they are found:
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hope-for-the-planet · 6 months
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A historic legal agreement approved in federal district court yesterday afternoon commits the Environmental Protection Agency to a suite of proposed reforms to better protect endangered species from pesticides. The settlement, which covers more than 300 pesticide active ingredients, marks the culmination of the largest Endangered Species Act case ever filed against the EPA. Under the agreement’s terms, the EPA will develop strategies to reduce the harm to endangered species from broad groups of pesticides, including herbicides and insecticides, while taking further steps to target meaningful, on-the-ground protections to endangered species most vulnerable to harm from pesticides.
Thanks @walking-on-a-scream for the submission!
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ed-nygma · 5 months
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This was quite haunting to read.
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mindblowingscience · 3 months
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Researchers at the California Academy of Sciences described 153 new animal, plant, and fungi species in 2023, enriching our understanding of Earth's biodiversity and strengthening our ability to regenerate the natural world. The new species include 66 spiders, 20 sea slugs, 18 plants, 13 sea stars, 12 geckos, 10 beetles, five fishes, four worms, two wasps, one sea snail, one scorpion, and one legless skink. More than a dozen Academy scientists—along with several international collaborators—described the new-to-science species. This year's discoveries coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and include several threatened plant and animal species that meet the criteria for formal ESA protections. These protections include prohibiting any harmful treatment of protected species; requiring further protection for land where endangered species occur; and implementing recovery plans for threatened populations.
Continue Reading.
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reasonsforhope · 1 year
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“The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been successful in preventing the extinction of hundreds of wildlife species and in promoting the recovery of thousands more since its inception in 1973. Some of the species that have been successfully recovered and removed from the list of threatened and endangered species include American alligators, bald eagles, peregrine falcons and humpback whales.
According to the Center of Biological Diversity, a leading U.S.-based non-profit with the simple mission of “saving life on Earth,” the ESA has protected more than 1,600 species in the U.S., preventing the extinction of 99 percent of the species listed under it.
Without the ESA, at least 227 species would likely have gone extinct by now since the law’s passage in 1973. In addition, 110 species have seen tremendous recovery since being protected by the act.
The ESA also supports conservation outside the U.S., as the federal government uses the law to enforce the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a global agreement between nations to regulate trade on species under threat. Examples of the ESA’s reach beyond U.S. borders is in helping save giant pandas as well as several species of tiger...
Overall, the ESA has played a crucial role in the conservation of threatened and endangered species in the U.S., and it continues to be a key tool for protecting and recovering these species. This groundbreaking piece of legislation, now in its 50th year, has done incredible things for American wildlife. It has protected species of plants and animals and brought them back to sustainable population numbers. However, [those] success stories don’t make the act perfect. There is still work to be done to improve the ESA’s effectiveness and ensure that it can preserve the species that we all love and know today.” -via The Environmental Magazine, headline via a reprint from Good News Network. 1/12/23
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sitting-on-me-bum · 4 months
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Known from just a handful of sites around the North American Great Lakes, buck bog moths just gained Endangered Species Act protection. Sadly their boggy peatlands habitat is still disappearing.
Center for Biological Diversity
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sixth-extinction · 11 months
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Various objects carved from "mermaid ivory," from the private collection of professor Lorelei Crerar. [x]
Manatees and dugongs are protected species, but because the Steller's sea cow has been extinct for over 200 years, trade in their bones is actually legal under the Endangered Species Act and related international laws.
Steller's sea cow bones are sometimes called "mermaid ivory," although this nickname is sometimes used for walrus bones as well. When tested, some of Crerar's collection came back containing whale or dolphin DNA, but some were genuine Steller's sea cow bones from a previously unknown population.
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endlingmusings · 5 months
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[ Bachman's warblers, illustrated by Robert Havell, are one of the 21 species being delisted from the Endangered Species Act. ]
"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is delisting 21 species from the Endangered Species Act due to extinction. Based on rigorous reviews of the best available science for each of these species, the Service determined these species are extinct and should be removed from the list of species protected under the ESA. Most of these species were listed under the ESA in the 1970s and 80s and were in very low numbers or likely already extinct at the time of listing. “Federal protection came too late to reverse these species’ decline, and it’s a wake-up call on the importance of conserving imperiled species before it’s too late,” said Service Director Martha Williams. “As we commemorate 50 years of the Endangered Species Act this year, we are reminded of the Act’s purpose to be a safety net that stops the journey toward extinction. The ultimate goal is to recover these species, so they no longer need the Act’s protection.” In September 2021, the Service proposed delisting 23 species from the ESA due to extinction. Following public comment on the proposed rule, the Service is withdrawing the delisting proposal for one species — Phyllostegia glabra var. lanaiensis (a Hawaiian perennial herb in the mint family that has no common name) — due to new surveys identifying new, potentially suitable habitats for the species. Although the delisting proposal included the ivory-billed woodpecker, the Service will continue to analyze and review the information before deciding whether to delist the ivory-billed woodpecker. The 21 species extinctions highlight the importance of the ESA and efforts to conserve species before declines become irreversible. The circumstances of each also underscore how human activity can drive species decline and extinction by contributing to habitat loss, overuse, and the introduction of invasive species and diseases."
- Excerpt from "Fish and Wildlife Service Delists 21 Species from the Endangered Species Act due to Extinction" via The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service website.
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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
December 27, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
DEC 28, 2023
Fifty years ago tomorrow, on December 28, 1973, President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law. Declaring that Congress had determined that “various species of fish, wildlife, and plants in the United States have been rendered extinct as a consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation,” the act provided for the protection of endangered species. 
Just over a decade before, in 1962, ecologist Rachel Carson had published Silent Spring, documenting how pesticides designed to eliminate insects were devastating entire ecosystems of linked organisms. The realization that human destruction of the natural world could make the planet uninhabitable spurred Congress in 1970 to create the Environmental Protection Agency. And in 1973, when Nixon called for stronger laws to protect species in danger of extinction, 194 Democrats and 160 Republicans in the House—99% of those voting—voted yes. Only four Republicans in the House voted no.    
Such strong congressional support for protecting the environment signaled that a new era was at hand. While President Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon, tended to dial back environmental protections when he could in order to promote the development of oil and gas resources, President Jimmy Carter pressed the protection of the environment when he took office in 1977. 
In 1978, Carter placed 56 million acres of land in Alaska under federal protection as national monuments, doubling the size of the national park system. “These areas contain resources of unequaled scientific, historic and cultural value, and include some of the most spectacular scenery and wildlife in the world,” he said. In 1979 he had 32 solar panels installed at the White House to help heat the water for the building and demonstrate that it was possible to curb U.S. dependence on fossil fuels. Just before he left office, Carter signed into law the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, protecting more than 100 million acres in Alaska, including additional protections for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Oil companies, mining companies, timber companies, the cattle industry, and local officials eager for development strongly opposed Carter’s moves to protect the environment. In Alaska, local activists deliberately broke the regulations in the newly protected places, portraying Carter as King George III—against whom the American colonists revolted in 1776—and insisting that the protection of lands violated the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness promised in the Declaration of Independence. 
For the most part, though, opposition to federal protection of the environment showed up as a drive to reform government regulations that, opponents argued, gave far too much power to unelected bureaucrats. In environmental regulations, the federal government’s protection of the public good ran smack into economic development.
In their 1980 presidential platform, Republicans claimed to be committed to “the conservation and wise management of America’s renewable natural resources” and said the government must protect public health. But they were not convinced that current laws and regulations provided benefits that justified their costs. “Too often,” they said, “current regulations are…rigid and narrow,” and they “strongly affirm[ed] that environmental protection must not become a cover for a ‘no-growth’ policy and a shrinking economy.”
In his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination, Ronald Reagan explained that he wanted to see the U.S. produce more energy to fuel “growth and productivity. Large amounts of oil and natural gas lay beneath our land and off our shores, untouched because the present Administration seems to believe the American people would rather see more regulation, taxes and controls than more energy.” 
In his farewell address after voters elected Reagan, Carter urged Americans to “protect the quality of this world within which we live…. There are real and growing dangers to our simple and our most precious possessions: the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land which sustains us,” he warned. “The rapid depletion of irreplaceable minerals, the erosion of topsoil, the destruction of beauty, the blight of pollution, the demands of increasing billions of people, all combine to create problems which are easy to observe and predict, but difficult to resolve. If we do not act, the world of the year 2000 will be much less able to sustain life than it is now.” 
“But,” Carter added, “[a]cknowledging the physical realities of our planet does not mean a dismal future of endless sacrifice. In fact, acknowledging these realities is the first step in dealing with them. We can meet the resource problems of the world—water, food, minerals, farmlands, forests, overpopulation, pollution if we tackle them with courage and foresight.”
Reagan began by appointing pro-industry officials James G. Watt and Anne M. Gorsuch (mother of Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch) as secretary of the interior and administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, respectively; they set out to gut government regulation of the environment by slashing budgets and firing staff. But both resigned under scandal in 1983, and their replacements satisfied neither those who wanted to return to the practices of the Carter years nor those who wanted to get rid of those practices altogether. 
Still, with their focus on developing oil and gas, when workers repairing the White House roof removed the solar panels in 1986, Reagan administration officials declined to reinstall them. 
Forty years later, we are reaping the fruits of that shift away from the atmosphere that gave us the Endangered Species Act and toward a focus on developing fossil fuels. On November 30 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), an agency of the United Nations, reported that global temperatures in 2023 were at record highs both on land and in the seas, Antarctic sea ice extent is at a record low, and devastating fires, floods, outbreaks of disease, and searing heat waves have pounded human communities this year.
The WMO released this provisional report the same day that the U.N. Climate Change negotiations, known as COP28, began in the United Arab Emirates. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged leaders to commit to act to address climate change, while there was still time to avoid “the worst of climate chaos.” After a year in which countries staggered under extreme weather events, climate change is on people’s minds: nearly 80,000 people, including world leaders and celebrities, registered to attend COP28.
After the convention ended on December 13, Umair Irfan of Vox summarized the agreement hashed out there. For the first time in 27 such conventions, countries explicitly called for the phasing out of fossil fuel…but they didn’t say when or by how much. After taking stock of what countries are doing to address climate change, the meeting concluded that efforts to reduce emissions, invest in technology, adapt to warming, and help suffering countries are all falling short. 
In addition to acknowledging the need to move away from fossil fuels, COP28 agreed to cut methane, boost renewable energy considerably, and help countries that are dealing with the fallout from climate change: island nations, for example. But emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, and the hope of limiting warmer temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius now seems a long shot. Still, renewable energy capacity grew nearly 10% in 2022, led by solar and wind power. 
Today President Joe Biden used the anniversary of the Endangered Species Act to reclaim the spirit of the era in which it was written, urging Americans to protect ecosystems and biodiversity, “honor all the progress we have made toward protecting endangered species,” and to “come together to conserve our planet.” He noted that thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden-Harris administration has been able to invest billions of dollars in forest management, ecosystem restoration, and protection of watersheds, as well as making historic investments in addressing climate change, and that, as president, he has protected more lands and waters than any president since John F. Kennedy.
And yet the forces that undermined that spirit are still at work. In the 2022 West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency decision, the Supreme Court claimed that Congress could not delegate “major questions” to executive agencies, thus limiting the EPA’s ability to regulate the emissions that create climate change; and House Republicans this summer held a hearing on “the destructive cost of the Endangered Species Act,” claiming that it “has been misused and misapplied for the past 50 years” with “disastrous effects on local economies and businesses throughout the United States.” Chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources Bruce Westerman (R-AR) accused the Biden administration of stifling “everything from forest management to future energy production through burdensome ESA regulations.”
While in 1980 voters could react to such a contrast between the parties’ environmental visions ideologically, in 2023, reality itself is weighing in. Brady Dennis of the Washington Post noted today that in this era of rising waters and epic storms, North Carolina has become the fourth state, along with South Carolina, New York, and New Jersey, to require home sellers to disclose their home’s flooding history and flood risk to prospective buyers.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
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kp777 · 1 month
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trixclibrarian · 6 months
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ohinteresting · 9 months
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(June 21, 2023) The Biden administration moved on Wednesday to make it easier to protect wildlife from climate disruptions and other threats, restoring protections to the Endangered Species Act that President Donald J. Trump had removed. Three separate regulations proposed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries service would make it harder to remove a species from the endangered list and restore a provision that strengthens protections for threatened species, the classification one step below endangered. The rules also eliminate a Trump-era policy that would have allowed regulators to factor in economic assessments, like estimates of lost revenue for oil and gas operations, when deciding whether a species warrants protection.
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melyzard · 2 months
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*link is to list of species currently protected by the ESA and how it has helped them recover over the years
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reasonsforhope · 1 year
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"A large research project studying endangered species in Australia has tallied 29 recovered species—all animals that can be safely de-listed from the country’s endangered species list.
Australia’s Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act currently lists 446 species of animals in genuine need of protection, but 29 of those are no longer in need—15 mammals, 8 birds, 4 frogs, a reptile, and a fish.
Among these critters are the golden, Western barred, and Eastern barred bandicoots, Western quoll, sooty albatross, waterfall frog, Flinder’s Range worm-lizard, yellow-footed rock wallabies, greater bilby, humpback whale, growling grass frog, Murray’s cod, and others.
Australia has been a focus of endangered species conservation for decades because so many of the animal varieties are found nowhere else.
Invasive predators introduced and living here for decades, including foxes and cane toads, have proven highly disruptive to local wildlife like bandicoots and bilbies.
Unlike America’s ESL, the EPBC doesn’t mandate that species be reviewed regularly for recovery. These large scientific papers are rare and represent moments to celebrate for Australia’s conservationists."
-via Good News Network, 2/28/23
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plethoraworldatlas · 2 months
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The Center for Biological Diversity today petitioned for federal protection of Sierra Nevada red foxes in the Oregon and California Cascades, from Lassen Peak to Mt. Hood. The petition asks that the fox be listed as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act.
“These precious mountain foxes need our help if they’re going to have any chance at survival in our rapidly warming world,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center. “The problems facing the Sierra Nevada red fox are complex and mounting, as they are for so many species in the mountains of western North America.”
In response to a previous Center petition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service protected a fox population near Sonora Pass in the Sierra Nevada as endangered. But in 2015 the Service denied the fox protection in the Cascades, citing lack of information.Since then, considerable research has shown that fox populations in Lassen, Crater Lake National Park, the Central Cascades and Mt. Hood are isolated, exceedingly small and facing multiple threats.
The fox once ranged throughout high-elevation areas of the Cascades in forests and alpine meadows. But the species has been lost from large portions of its range, including Mt. Shasta. Poisoning as part of historic predator eradication efforts and trapping were primary drivers of the fox’s historic decline.
Today the fox is threatened by habitat loss caused by fires, logging, livestock grazing and development, increased recreation and climate change, which is pushing the fox’s habitat off the top of mountains.
An additional threat is competition and predation from coyotes, which have proliferated in the Cascades in the absence of wolves. Coyotes are likely to move uphill as snowpacks recede with warming.
“The harms we’re doing to the natural world are accumulating and interacting in complex ways to the detriment of animals like the Sierra Nevada red fox,” said Greenwald. “Historic killing of predators, including wolves and the fox, have left the fox vulnerable to coyotes and risks inherent to small populations. And now, increased interest in outdoor recreation and global warming represent new and growing threats to the fox.”
The fox’s surviving populations are critically small. The population found in the Lassen area, for example, was recently estimated to contain fewer than 10 breeding adults. The other populations are not much bigger.
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yes-i-am-happyaspie · 2 years
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On May 31st California court ruled that bees should be classified as a type of fish in order to protect them under the state's endangered species act
[News Reference]
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