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The Endangered Species Act doesn’t have a good record of doing what it was set up to do. Only 3% of endangered species have been recovered in spite of all the muscle and money it’s been granted. The conservation non-profit Property & Environment Research Center or PERC reported NOAA Fisheries and Fish and Wildlife have only recovered 57 out of 1,732 or 3.3%. There needs to be reform here.
Endangered species will continue
The success rate was worse when PERC took into account all listed species in addition to domestic, 71 out of 2,378 or 2.6%. The Fish and Wildlife Service or FWS was supposed to delist or recover 300 species by now. Only 13 were recovered with 44 not expected to recover.
PERC wasn’t happy about this. “This low recovery rate has raised questions about the act’s ability to motivate the actions needed to recover species to the point that they no longer need the law’s protections.” The success rate has cost taxpayers billions.
Endangered species aren’t getting the help
This year’s appropriations have totaled $167.9 million alone. Searchable budgets back to 1983 were consulted. This doesn’t include the 141 lawsuits trying to get information out of the agencies. The ESA kept missing deadlines.
Attorney fees for these range over $2 million with ten environmental advocacy groups accounting for the majority or 80% of them. The ESA was passed in 1973 after the first Earth Day celebration.
Helping the endangered is a noble goal
The ESA gives the government power to issue protective measures for threatened and endangered fish, wildlife, and plants, limit private property owners from freely using their land and imposing heavy fines. PERC said the current measures taken to recover animals and plants aren’t effective.
“The Endangered Species Act should be guided by what’s best for helping species recover, and the poor recovery rate tells us that it’s falling short of its own goals. As a former Fish and Wildlife Service administrator once lamented, ‘The incentives are wrong here. If I have a rare metal on my property, its value goes up. But if a rare bird occupies the land, its value disappears.’ Addressing that disconnect may help more species recover and thrive. Improving the incentives for private landowners to restore habitat and perform proactive recovery efforts is important for recovery outcomes, and something we will explore further in a future report.”
