Endangered Species Act

For more than 30 years, the Endangered Species Act has helped prevent the extinction of our nation’s wildlife treasures including beloved symbols of America such as the bald eagle, the Florida manatee and the California condor.

Only nine of the more than 1800 plants and animals currently protected by the act worldwide have been declared extinct, an astonishing success rate.

The Endangered Species Act provides added benefits to people by maintaining healthy natural systems that provide us with clean air and water, food, medicines and other products that we all need to live healthy lives.

We owe it to our children and grandchildren to be good stewards of the environment and leave behind a legacy of protecting endangered species and the special places they call home. Legislation currently under consideration in Congress would help add to the success of the Endangered Species Act.

Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2007

The Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2007, (S. 700) introduced by Senators Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and (H.R. 1422) introduced by Representatives Mike Thompson (D-CA) and Don Young (R-AK), recognizes that partnering with private landowners on wildlife conservation is critical.

This important bill would provide $400 million annually in new tax credits, plus additional deductions and exclusions, for private landowners who take steps to help endangered or threatened species on the properties they own.

Learn more about the Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2007

In contrast to the exciting legislation under consideration in Congress that will add to the success of the Endangered Species Act, the current administration has repeatedly tried to undermine it. Most recently, documents leaked from within the Department of the Interior indicate that it is considering major policy changes that would influence virtually every aspect of Endangered Species Act administration.

Read our Analysis of the Documents Leaked from within the Department of the Interior

If adopted, these changes would be as sweeping as a full re-write of the law by Congress and include those that would: make it significantly harder to add at-risk wildlife to the threatened and endangered species list, weaken oversight of federal agency actions, remove or undermine the goal of recovering listed species, lessen habitat protection, cut the expert wildlife agencies out of enforcing the law; and give individual states veto power over recovery plans or reintroductions of wildlife. Defenders of Wildlife is opposed to these and any similar such damaging changes. Members of Congress have also expressed their opposition and concern.

Congressional Letter to the House Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies

Wayne Gilchrest's and Jim Saxton’s letter to Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne.

Letter to Dick Kempthorne from Senators Lieberman, Boxer, Sanders and Cardin

If these policies had been in place years ago, the historic and successful restoration of wolves to the Northern Rockies and Mexico gray wolf reintroduction might not have occurred.

The administration has already adopted a harmful new policy that would limit endangered species listings. The Solicitor of the Department of the Interior – its top lawyer – released a legal opinion on March 16, 2007 that prescribes how decisions will be made whether to list species as threatened or endangered in the future. Its recently released legal opinion would limit ESA protection to only a species' current range.

Read our analysis of the Solicitor opinion.

Under this standard, grizzly bears, bald eagles, and many other species that were abundant in some areas but no longer found in large portions of their historic range might never have been protected under the Endangered Species Act, even when there was strong scientific evidence for doing so.

The opinion also appears to permit the Secretary to list and delist species by state boundaries. Wildlife and the ecosystems they are a part of do not fit neatly within state boundaries, so regional conservation efforts would become nearly impossible under this interpretation of the Endangered Species Act.

The administration also has undermined the Endangered Species Act by repeatedly failing to request adequate funding in its budget request. Without enough funding, the law cannot be properly implemented. All U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endangered species program areas are currently experiencing staff vacancies of 30 percent with some offices close to a 50 percent staffing shortfall. The FY 2008 President’s budget cuts U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service funding for recovery of endangered and threatened species by 7.5 percent below FY 2006 levels.