New GAO Report on Endangered Species Recovery
Some interesting if unsurprising news yesterday: The Government Accountability Office released a new report that reviewed endangered species recovery plans adopted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. The overall finding seemed to be that although the agencies tend to adopt recovery plans for listed species, the recovery plans frequently lack key elements that might help both guide recovery and measure the success of the Act in terms of recovery. In other words – as most credible reviews of the Endangered Species Act have concluded – the agencies aren’t doing a very good job of implementing the Act. Bear in mind that Representative Pombo’s basic argument about the Act is that it’s failed because we haven’t recovered many species. The facts have never much of an impediment to Pombo, however, so it’s no surprise that he overlooks the impressive extent to which species protected by the Act are far less likely to become extinct and far more likely to be stable or recovering. In fact, the longer a species has been protected by the Act the more likely it is to be recovering.
“Therefore,” notes the GAO study, “simply counting the number of extinct and recovered species periodically or over time, without considering the recovery prospects of listed species, provides limited insight into the overall success of the service’s recovery programs.”
In other words, as E&E News suggested in their story today, “The Government Accountability Office report appears to contradict critics of the act, who point to its low recovery and delisting rates as a sign of its failure.”
If Pombo and his anti-conservation friends were serious about improving endangered species conservation, we would all be supporting legislation that provided adequate funding for listing and habitat protection programs, enhanced programs that provide economic incentives to private landowners for good endangered species conservation, and established clear standards and timelines for recovery plans.
Center for Native Ecosystems
Our mission, simply put, is to save endangered species across Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. We play an "urgent care" role for the imperiled plants and wildlife most at risk of extinction, buying some time to figure out the long term solutions. We also work hard to recover these species, restoring them and their habitats to health. And we blog because doing so gives us a great way of keeping folks a little more plugged in to what's happening in the world of endangered species advocacy, offering some insight into what we do and how we do it, and fostering conversation among our supporters, our staff, and others.
