50th Anniversary of the Endangered Species Act

Summary: 2023 is the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act! Join Cheryl and Kiersten as they explain what this act is and how it has helped our feathered friends over the last fifty years.

 

For our hearing impaired listeners, a transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

 

Show Notes:

https://www.fws.gov

https://epa.gov

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org

Background bird song:  Naturescapes Backyard Birds www.naturescapes.com

 

Our email address, please reach out with comments, questions, or suggestions:  thefeathereddesert@gmail.com

 

Transcript

Host Voice: Welcome to the Feathered Desert a podcast all about desert bird feeding in the Southwest region of the United States.  (bird calls and songs play)

Kiersten: Intro - 2023 is the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act and Cheryl and I thought it was the perfect time to talk about what this act is and what it has done for our feathered friends.

 

Cheryl: What exactly is the Endangered Species Act?

Quoting directly from the Environmental Protection Agency’s website: the ESA is a federal law passed in 1973 that “provides a program for the conservation of threatened and endangered plants and animals and the habitats in which they are found.” The lead federal agencies for implementing the ESA are the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U. S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service. “The law requires federal agencies, in consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and/or the NOAA Fisheries Service, to ensure that actions they authorize, fund, or carry out are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any listed species or result in the destruction or adverse modification of designated critical habitat of such species. The law also prohibits any action that causes a taking of any listed species of endangered fish or wildlife. Also import, export, interstate, and foreign commerce of listed species are all generally prohibited.”

That’s quite a mouthful! In layman’s terms this act protects and recovers species at risk of extinction and promotes the conservation of the habitats they need to survive.

 

Kiersten: Next question is how does a plant or animal get listed as threatened or endangered so they can receive protection under the Endangered Species Act?

            According to the NOAA Fisheries Service website it is a many stepped process that can take several years to accomplish. First, there are five factors that must be determined before a plant or animal can be listed as threatened or endangered.

1. Is there present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range?
2. Has there been overutilization of the species for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes?
3. Is it being threatened by disease or predation?
4. Is there an inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms?
5. Are natural or manmade factors affecting its continued existence?

If the answers to these five questions are all yes, which must be supported by current scientific evidence, then action must be taken to determine if the organism needs to be listed under the Endangered Species Act. To determine this NOAA and US Fish and Wildlife starts a listing process. This can begin in one of two ways:

1. They receive a petition from a private organization or person requesting a species be listed as threatened or endangered.
2. NOAA or US Fish and Wildlife chooses to examine the status of a species themselves.

After receiving a petition, the next step is a 90-day period in which they decide to accept the petition or deny the petition. The decision must be publicly announced.  If it is denied, that’s the end of the road for the time being. If it’s a yes, then we move onto the next step that can take up to 12 months.

            In this step scientific data is gathered from all sources private and public and this is peer-reviewed for accuracy. Once the evidence is read the petition is either classified as not warranted, which means these agencies publish a negative 12-month finding and that’s all she wrote for this attempt. If it’s deemed warranted, they publish this finding and request public comment on the proposal to list the species as threatened or endangered. The final ruling is generally determined and published within one year of the date of the proposed rule. That results in being listed as endangered or threatened in all or part of the species range.

            Whoosh! That’s quite a few steps.

 

Cheryl: What’s the difference between threatened and endangered?

            Endangered means an animal or plant is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range. Threatened means a species is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future.  State and Federal statuses can be different from each other. The federal status takes precedence but states can have their own classifications. For example, a species can be considered threatened federally but can be endangered in the state of Arizona. That species would receive protection under the Endangered Species Act as well as state protection laws.

 

Kiersten: Let’s look at how the Endangered Species Act has helped some of our feathered friends throughout the years.

            The most famous and well-known example is the Bald Eagle. In the mid-1900s the bald eagle was at risk for extinction. Habitat loss and degradation, illegal shooting, and poisoning from the pesticide DDT was at fault. All of these causes were man-made issues. The bald eagle was listed as endangered in 1978 throughout the lower 48 states with the exception of Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin where they were listed as threatened. The Bald Eagle was adopted as the national symbol in 1782 and it is estimated at that time there were approximately 100,000 nesting pairs. In the mid to late 1800s their numbers began to decline at the same time that overhunting was causing a decline in waterfowl numbers, which is a major prey items for these eagles.

            Due to the incorrect belief that eagles killed chickens, lamb and other domesticated livestock, shootings took many of their lives, as well as the discovery of DDT as a great way to get rid of mosquitos. DDT coated everything and was ingested by wildlife which made its way into the food eagles ate killing them and weakening their egg shells causing incubating mothers to crush their own eggs. By 1963 there were only 417 nesting pairs of bald eagles known to exist in the US. Listing the Bald Eagle as endangered under the Endangered Species Act allowed federal agencies to band together to begin the conservation efforts that included establishing captive breeding programs, enforcing protections legally, protecting nest sites during breeding season, and reintroduction programs.

            Because of these efforts, in 1995 Bald Eagles were reclassified as threatened. In 2007 they were removed from the Endangered Species Act all together because their population was now estimated at least 9,789 nesting pairs in the contiguous United States. In 2019 an estimated 316,700 individuals existed with 71,467 of those being breeding pairs. The Bald eagle is an ESA success story and without these protections they would most likely have gone extinct. 

 

Cheryl: Our next example is one you may not have heard of, and that is the Kirtland’s Warbler.

This is a small yellow-breasted warbler that migrates between their breeding grounds in Northern Michigan and winter grounds in the Bahamas. They only nest in large areas of dense, young jack pines. These habitats are typically produced through natural wildfires. Years of preventing cyclical wildfires through human efforts led to a decline in their preferred habitat. And the invasion of the parasitic brown-headed cowbird, due to the change in habitat, greatly diminished their population. In 1973, the Kirtland’s Warbler was one of the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Efforts to recover this bird had been going on since the 1950s but without success. The listing allowed several forces to ban together to create a program that would be more successful.  To address the issues of habitat loss, the USDA Forest Service and Michigan Department of Natural Resources developed a program to harvest old jack pine forests and then plant new jack pines to provide those young trees the warblers needed. In 1980, Nature also helped out with a natural wildfire that burned 10,000 acres of jack pine habitat making way for new growth.

In 1981 there existed only 232 pairs of Kirtland’s warblers, five years later the numbers had dropped to 170. By the 1990’s with the increase in available habitat the numbers began to rise. In 2001, their breeding pairs exceeding 1,000. In 2019 they hit 2300 breeding pairs and were removed from the Endangered Species Act.  Another success story for the ESA that Phil Huber, a national forest biologist, contributes to the teamwork of biologists, foresters, researchers, and volunteers made possible by the listing under the Endangered Species Act.

 

Kiersten: Our third example is the fastest creature on Earth, the Peregrine Falcon.

            Prior to 1940 it was estimated that there were 3,875 nesting pairs of Peregrine Falcons in North America. By the 1960s peregrines had disappeared from the eastern United States and by the 1970s their population in the western United States had declined by 90%. By 1975 only 324 pairs existed in the United States. Loss of habitat, shooting, and egg collection plagued these falcons for years, but the truly devastating blow was the use of the pesticide DDT. Use of this chemical had the same impact on the peregrine as it did on the Bald Eagle. Brooding mothers were crushing their eggs due to a lack of calcium in the shell. American peregrines were quickly on their way to extinction.

            This bird was classified as endangered in 1970 under the Endangered Species Conservation Act of 1969 and this listing was rolled over to the Endangered Species Act in 1973. When DDT was banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1972, recovering the peregrine falcon population became a real possibility. In 1974, The Peregrine Fund, national and state agencies in the United States and Canada, and private volunteers banned together to embark on a reintroduction program. Researchers at Cornell University successfully devised a plan to breed adults in captivity and with the help of state and federal wildlife services reintroduced these birds into the wild.

            Because of these efforts, more than 6000 American peregrine falcons have been released in North America. In 1999, their numbers were so well recovered they were removed from the Endangered Species Act. The American Peregrine Falcon is the most dramatic success story of the Endangered Species Act.

 

Cheryl: These are just three dramatic examples of the success stories of the Endangered Species Act. As of 2016, there were 120 bird species protected under this act. According to a review published by the Center for Biological Diversity, 85% of continental U.S. birds protected by the Endangered Species Act have increased or stabilized since being protected. The average increase was 624%. Current recovering species include California Condor in California and Arizona that are up 391% since 1968, whooping cranes in the central U.S. that are up 923% since 1967, wood storks in the Southeast that are up 61% since 1984, California least terns that are up 1,835% since 1970, and Puerto Rican parrots that are up 354% since 1967.

            These are amazing results! Currently there are 1,300 species of plants and animals listed as endangered or threatened in the United States under the Endangered Species Act. If the last 50 years show us anything, these species have a good shot at beating extinction as long as we all continue to work together.

            As a side note, the birds in the success stories we talk about that have been removed from the ESA are still protected by federal law under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. For more on this act, please check out or episode titled Bird Laws.

 

Kiersten: Closing - The Audubon Society calls the Endangered Species Act the strongest federal safeguard against the extinction of species in the United States. The examples we’ve just talked about prove how this legislation does work. Reluctantly, in recent years there have been grumblings in Congress about limiting the effectiveness of this act. To protect our feathered friends we must make our feelings known by supporting the continued use of the Endangered Species Act so we can have another 50 years of success stories.