Since I am posting a lot of articles and commentaries about the Endangered Species Act…and abuses of that law….I am posting source information from the US Fish and Wildlife Service to provide background:

From US Fish and Wildlife Service

Listing and Critical Habitat | Overview

Miami blue butterfly, a species that is a candidate for listing as endangered.

Photo credit: H.L. Salvato

Before a plant or animal species can receive the protection provided by the Endangered Species Act, it must first be added to the Federal lists of threatened and endangered wildlife and plants. The List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife (50 CFR 17.11) and the List of Endangered and Threatened Plants (50 CFR 17.12) contain the names of all species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, insects, plants, and other creatures that have been determined by the Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service (for most marine life) to be in the greatest need of Federal protection.

A species is added to the list when it is determined to be endangered or threatened because of any of the following factors:

• the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range;
• overutilization for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes;
• disease or predation;
• the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms;
• the natural or manmade factors affecting its survival

But how exactly does a species become listed under the ESA? The process is cumbersome, complex, and generally poorly understood. It can happen two different ways: through the petition process or through the candidate assessment process. The ESA provides that any interested person may petition the Secretary of the Interior to add a species to, or to remove a species from, the list of endangered and threatened species. Through the candidate assessment process, FWS biologists identify species as listing candidates.

For all the details, download the Listing fact sheet. [328KB]

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 22nd, 2011 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Center for Biological Diversity, climate change, endangered species act, environment water and energy, global warming, litigious environmental groups, politics, Western Watershed Project, WildEarth Guardians. Tags for this post: center for biological diversity, climate change, critical habitat, endangered species act, global warming, litigious environmental groups, US fish and wildlife, western watershed project, wildearth guardians. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.