What's the status of endangered species on your land?
What’s the status of endangered species on your land? Are they actually still an endangered species? Maybe they need more protection. How can we tell?
The Pacific Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit today, seeking to compel the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to meet its statutory obligation to review the status of every listed species at least every five years.
As the press release states:
Under Section 4©(2) of the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. Section 1533©(2), the government must determine whether, based on current best available science, each listed species should have its status changed (i.e., either lowered from endangered to threatened or raised from threatened to endangered), or have its status as a listed species removed because protection is no longer justified.
According to PLF’s complaint, the Fish and Wildlife Service has failed to perform the reviews for at least 193 species, or about two-thirds of the 298 species listed in California. As a result, PLF says the agency has no way of knowing if hundreds of species need more or less protection, or if they have been successfully recovered. (Emphasis added.)
Read the entire press release at the Pacific Legal Foundation website