An endangered California condor soars through the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge in California...
Image Credit: USFWS
Science-Driven Strategies For More Effective Endangered Species Recovery
The US Endangered Species Act Can Protect More Species, More Effectively, Through Expanded Partnerships And Science-Driven Implementation Ecologists Say In The Winter 2016 Edition Of Issues In Ecology
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, 6 January 2016
Contact: Liza Lester, 202-833-8773 ext. 211, LLester@esa.org
The Endangered Species Act (ESA), which quietly passed its 42nd birthday last week, has shielded hundreds of species in the United States from extinction and dramatically achieved full recovery for a celebrated few. Flexibility of implementation is one of the ESA’s great strengths, allowing for adaptation in response to new knowledge and changing social and environmental conditions.
In a report released by the Ecological Society of America today, 18 conservation researchers and practitioners propose six broad strategies to raise the effectiveness of the ESA for endangered species recovery, based on a thorough review of the scientific literature on the status and performance of the law.
“The ESA is one of our country’s strongest environmental laws, but it has only partly fulfilled its conservation promise,” said Daniel Evans, who led the report while serving as a policy fellow at the United States Forest Service. “Innovation will be key to implementing the ESA in the coming decades because the threats to at-risk species are pervasive and persistent. Many listed species are conservation-reliant, requiring ongoing management for the foreseeable future, and climate change will continue to shuffle the mix of species in ecosystems, increasing both extinction risk and management uncertainty.”
