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Pacific salmon, the signature species of the Pacific Northwest, have declined across their range for well over a century, due to a myriad of human-caused effects on their habitat and the fish themselves. Restoration efforts--some successful, some halting--began in earnest in the late 20th century, with considerable attention focused on the Columbia Basin, where historically salmon runs were crippled by a large interconnected hydroelectric system of federal and non-federal dams. In the 1980 Northwest Power Act, Congress created an interstate agency, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, with access to a substantial amount of ratepayer dollars; the agency has chosen to expend those dollars principally for habitat rehabilitation and hatchery production. Generic federal laws like the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act have provided some levers to modify dam operations to benefit fish and driven better protections for salmon throughout the Northwest. The relicensing requirements of the Federal Power Act, coupled with that law's fish protection provisions, have led to several notable dam removals. Significant restoration in Puget Sound watershed is underway due to a judicial decision finding that barrier road culverts violate treaty fishing rights, an interpretation that holds potential to foster salmon habitat improvement measures throughout the Northwest. Surveying events from Alaska's Bristol Bay in the north to the Klamath River along the Oregon-California border in the south, we explain how the law has--and must--play a key role in efforts to save salmon. Although the importance of particular laws varies from basin to basin--as does their effectiveness--some significant restoration is underway despite major unanswered questions such as the fate of the lower Snake River dams. The institution of tribal co-management programs, especially along the Oregon coast, provide an especially significant restoration tool if this development can be replicated across salmon country. The addition of tribal sovereigns into decision-making is likely to improve salmon protection and restoration wherever comanagement programs exist. Improved management will be a prerequisite if Pacific salmon are to recover in a climate-challenged world that threatens the existence of many runs. But to a large extent, restoring historic fish runs will require federal policies and leadership that have not always been present. As the first quarter of the 21st century draws to a close, salmon saving efforts are proceeding on a variety of fronts with some promising results, but the future of many salmon runs is clouded by the threat of climate change and a national ambivalence to confronting its challenges with a muscular response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Murray Rothbard's "For a New Liberty," highlighting its early and influential contribution to libertarian philosophy. Rothbard systematically applies anarcho-capitalist principles to contemporary societal issues, notably addressing concerns regarding conservation, ecology, and population growth in contrast to mainstream political ideologies.

This document is an introduction to a special issue of the journal Plants on "Advances in Plant Reproductive Ecology and Conservation Biology." The special issue focuses on three main areas of research: population genetics, breeding systems, and ecology of common and rare plants. The papers in the special issue provide new insights into these themes using a variety of methods. The studies highlight the importance of understanding plant reproduction and ecology for successful conservation biology projects. The special issue includes research from various locations around the world, demonstrating the global significance of plant conservation. [Extracted from the article]

"The Corps of Discovery and America's Wild New World" is an article discussing the book "Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America" by Dan Flores. The book explores the history of biodiversity and the impact of human activity on the environment, addressing the concept of human exceptionalism and cultural differences in human-animal interactions. It emphasizes the loss of species and genetic diversity caused by human actions, particularly the ongoing sixth extinction. The article also highlights the encounters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with various animals, providing insights into America's history and ecology. It emphasizes the importance of understanding and appreciating America's diverse wildlife and ecosystems, as well as the need for continued conservation efforts to protect species from extinction. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the need for an additional listing-determination category under the United States' Endangered Species Act (ESA) in response to ongoing climate change. The ESA aims to protect and recover imperiled animal and plant species and their ecosystems. Currently, the ESA does not explicitly consider climate change in listing determinations. The article highlights the decline of the native Yellowstone cutthroat trout population as an example of the challenges faced by species under climate change. The author suggests the inclusion of a new category that acknowledges the inefficacy of adaptation strategies for species in the face of climate change. [Extracted from the article]

Private lands are often critical for successful species conservation, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service has increasingly utilized voluntary Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances (CCAAs) as a strategy for promoting private land conservation. CCAAs, however, present a challenge where the FWS, with its history as a regulatory entity, must now engage landowners as conservation partners. There is a deep culture of distrust among landowners, who are often suspicious of engaging with the agency, making it necessary for the FWS to build trusting relationships. Furthermore, FWS decisions often face litigation in the courts, where they may be overturned. This creates a challenge for CCAAs, as the agency is pulled between landowner demands for greater flexibility and a court system that emphasizes rigid compliance to established rules and procedures. This study seeks to understand what factors influenced the flexibility of agency staff and officials as they navigate the process of negotiating CCAAs amidst these competing demands for accountability. Three cases of CCAA development are presented, each aiming to protect the habitat for the greater sage-grouse and ease the regulatory burden on ranching communities, should the grouse become a federally protected species. In addition to the well-documented need for trust-building and maintenance, the findings of the study highlight the importance of shared goals, the participation of trusted intermediary organizations, and as well as the meaningful support and investment of senior FWS leadership in exploring creative, innovative solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various populations of wolves have been listed as threatened or endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act since the 1970s. But no listed species has aroused, and continues to arouse, so much controversy as the Northern Gray wolf. "Wolf law" is unique, odd, and often counterproductive-at least if the goal is to ensure the species' survival and revitalize damaged ecosystems upon which healthy human communities depend. This Article identifies some of the unique characteristics of wolf law, analyzes how and why it has developed in this strange way, and proposes some more sensible ways for healthy human communities to coexist with healthy wolf communities. We analyze how politics and human needs-rather than the needs of the wolves-have driven the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's approach to wolf management, often to the detriment of the species it is legally obliged to protect. After reviewing the fundaments of the Endangered Species Act, we trace the history of Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves and highlight the unique, controversial, and often unhelpful (at least if we wish to ensure the species' survival) ways the USFWS has managed the species. We illustrate the tensions between the clear statutory mandates of the ESA and the political pressures shaping wolf conservation around human wants. We outline some of the themes that set "wolf law" apart from the pack. Finally, we suggest a path forward to manage wolves in a sensible manner that better fulfills the needs of the species--and thus, inevitably, the needs of our own species-as the ESA requires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proactive Conservation is a paradigm of natural resource management in the United States that encourages voluntary, collaborative efforts to restore species before they need to be protected through government regulations. This paradigm is widely used to conserve at-risk species today, and when used in conjunction with the Policy for Evaluation of Conservation Efforts (PECE), it allows for successful conservation actions to preclude listing of species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Despite the popularity of this paradigm, and recent flagship examples of its use (e.g., greater sage grouse, Centrocercus urophasianus), critical assessments of the outcomes of Proactive Conservation are lacking from the standpoint of species status and recovery metrics. Here, we provide such an evaluation, using the New England cottontail (Sylvilagus transitionalis), heralded as a success of Proactive Conservation efforts in the northeastern United States, as a case study. We review the history and current status of the species, based on the state of the science, in the context of the Conservation Initiative, and the 2015 PECE decision not to the list the species under the ESA. In addition to the impacts of the PECE decision on the New England cottontail conservation specifically, our review also evaluates the benefits and limits of the Proactive Conservation paradigm more broadly, and we make recommendations for its role in relation to ESA implementation for the future of at-risk species management. We find that the status and assurances for recovery under the PECE policy, presented at the time of the New England cottontail listing decision, were overly optimistic, and the status of the species has worsened in subsequent years. We suggest that use of PECE to avoid listing may occur because of the perception of the ESA as a punitive law and a misconception that it is a failure, although very few listed species have gone extinct. Redefining recovery to decouple it from delisting and instead link it to probability of persistence under recommended conservation measures would remove some of the stigma of listing, and it would strengthen the role of Species Status Assessments in endangered species conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the strongest federal environmental statutes, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is a powerful tool for environmental litigators to uphold the important conservation objectives articulated by Congress in 1973. In recent years, the role of “critical habitat” within the ESA has come into question. The Supreme Court decided in Weyerhaeuser that “critical habitat” must also qualify as “habitat,” but it failed to articulate any guidelines for determining what “habitat” actually is. This decision incited a regulatory tug-of-war over the proper definition of “habitat” within the ESA. This Comment explores the approaches to defining “habitat” employed by the Trump and Biden administrations. This Comment further argues that while Biden’s approach better effectuates the goals of the ESA, it is still a flawed interpretation of the Act because it allows the Secretary of the Interior to administer the ESA in such a way that is inconsistent with the Act’s separate goals of species survival and species recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the decline of the Texas shrimping industry and the impact of policy and regulation on the livelihoods of shrimpers. The researchers conducted interviews with shrimping communities and used mixed methods research to gain a deeper understanding of the issue. The interviews revealed that trust and communication are crucial in building relationships with natural resource users. The article emphasizes the importance of collaboration between shrimpers, Sea Grant agents, and researchers in adapting to regulations and finding solutions to challenges. The findings highlight the need for clear communication and participatory science and management programs to address the concerns of shrimpers and foster a sense of ownership and understanding. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on how the gray wolf was prematurely delisted, using a definition of "significant portion of the range" that violates the Endangered Species Act. It mentions de-listing was the culmination of nearly twenty years of advocacy on the part of conservative voters. It also mentions U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) did not use the best available science, and so exposed the wolf to hunters, trappers, and livestock owners.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the strongest source of federal protection for species that are at risk of extinction, and the ESA is becoming increasingly important as climate change threatens species and their habitats more than ever. In 2019, the Trump Administration amended the ESA to provide clarity and predictability when making decisions to list a species as threatened or endangered under the ESA. The Administration defined "foreseeable future" in a way that starkly limits how far into the future the listing agencies may look when assessing risks to species. Prior to the 2019 definition of "foreseeable future," the federal agencies in charge of deciding to list species under the ESA faced risk uncertainty when assessing the likelihood and magnitude of threats to species and their habitats from climate change predominantly because of scientific uncertainty and difficulty predicting mitigation efforts. This Note argues that instead of the 2019 amendments providing the intended clarity and consistency, the "foreseeable future" definition instead weakens the substantive standards used in the ESA listing process, limits federal agencies' ability to consider climate change when making decisions on whether to provide species with ESA protections, and ultimately will push climate-imperiled species further toward the risk of extinction. To provide more effective guidance to the agencies making listing decisions under the ESA, revised rulemaking should require the agencies to explain how they deal with uncertainties and species' risk of endangerment and to apply standards consistently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the need to repeal the critical habitat designation section of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and limit the application of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the ESA section to help avoid the extinction of the Florida Key deer amidst threats due to climate change. Also cited are how the sea level rise due to climate change is destroying the deer's habitats in Florida, and the need to save the Western Snowy Plover from sea level rise.

This Article fills a void in the legal scholarly literature by evaluating and proposing attainable legal strategies to address the current substantial declines in beneficial insect populations. Despite perceptions of insects as odious pests, the reality is that insects, the most abundant and diverse animals on earth, provide ecosystems services that are crucial to human welfare and the existence of life. Insects, including thousands of species of bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, beetles, and flies, are indispensable pollinators of agricultural crops. Beyond pollination, insects carry out natural pest control, decomposition, and nutrient cycling vital to both agricultural and natural ecosystems. In recent years, a number of scientific studies have raised the alarm over serious declines in populations of insects that provide these essential services. Drivers of insect population declines include loss of habitat, pesticide use, and climate change. Complex synergies among these drivers exacerbate the problem. In this Article, we analyze three federal statutes to determine what, if any, utility they may have in addressing the problem of declines of beneficial insect populations: the federal Endangered Species Act, the Farm Bill, and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. An in-depth evaluation of these statutes reveals that the Endangered Species Act and Farm Bill have a limited role to play in protecting beneficial insect populations. The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, on the other hand, has the potential to dramatically reduce insect population declines resulting from habitat loss and pesticide use. After taking a deep dive into this federal law, we propose solutions that can be implemented by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency without the need for additional congressional action. Specifically, we offer five distinct recommendations that the Environmental Protection Agency could implement with its existing regulatory authority that would substantially reduce the decline in beneficial insect populations and the ecosystem services they provide, which are essential to protect life on earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on importance of land conservation overall, outlining the reasons for focusing conservation efforts on rural lands and what environmental (and other) benefits can be gained in these areas. It mentions federal government mandates conservation through laws like the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. It also mentions ideas of how federal conservation programs could work in conjunction with subnational and private programs to further land conservation goals.

The article focuses on the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Sixth Circuit in the case National Wildlife Federation v. Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation which held that agencies are not bound by either the Endangered Species Act (ESA) or the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when evaluating and approving these response plans. It also mentions need to prepare an environmental impact statement as per NEPA.

The article focuses on administration of U.S. President Joe Biden should prioritize renewable energy development on public lands contend with the regulatory burdens of longstanding environmental laws such as National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). It also mentions framework amply supports renewable energy development on federal public lands. It also mentions successful adaptation to climate change will require public land.

Over the coming decades, experts estimate that twenty-five percent of all plant and animal species may go extinct. Climate change directly contributes to species extinction through ecosystem shift, and accelerates other drivers of extinction such as destruction of habitat and pollution. The Endangered Species Act is the only legal tool in the United States to directly protect against the threat of species extinction, and critical habitat designations under the Endangered Species Act provide a way for the government to protect a species' habitat and preserve biodiversity. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration's recently promulgated regulations hinder, rather than bolster, federal agencies' efforts to save endangered species. By severely restricting the designation of critical habitat, the government has suppressed its own ability to respond to the effects of climate change on endangered and threatened species. This Note proposes a definition of the term "habitat" in the Endangered Species Act that comports with current scientific understandings of the term and would allow federal agencies to account for climate change when designating critical habitat. The definition reflects the dynamic and temporally variable nature of species' habitats, allowing for the designation of currently unoccupied areas that will support species' existence in the future. This definition would clarify the government's role in protecting species' habitats while also complying with the text and purpose of the Endangered Species Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Endangered Species Act (ESA) passed by Congress in 1973 to preserve ecosystems and protect endangered species from extinction. Topics covered include the U.S. Supreme Court's holding in Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the application of ESA in this case, and the Court's failure to define what constitutes habitat.

The article discusses the court ruling in Friends of Animals v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, upholding the Service's proposed action to remove Barred Owls, an invasive species protected under the Migratory Birds Treaty Act (MBTA), for the benefit of Spotted Owl, a threatened species protected under MBTA and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Topics covered include the history of Northern Spotted Owl and Barred Owl studies, and the implications of this ruling for scientists and policy makers.

In 2019, the Supreme Court decided Kisor v. Wilkie, a case that asked the Court to revisit Auer deference, the doctrine which instructs courts to defer to an agency's reasonable interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation. Auer deference, along with other judicial deference doctrines, has received vehement criticism jfom legal scholars and political scientists. Among these criticisms is the assertion that Auer deference allows too much opportunityforjudges' own '" views of reasonableness" to infiltrate their legal analysis. increasing the likelihood that judicial deference to agency interpretations will be significantly influenced by ideology. The majority decision in ¥Asor purported to articulate clearer standards tor the application of Auer deference and require judges to more clearly articulate their analysis in cases where Auer deference may be appropriate. This Note considers whether the Kisor framework could mitigate the impact of.judicial ideology on deference decisions. Jtfocuses in particular on the use of Auer deference in cases involving the Endangered Species Act, a statute which has been highly polarizing along party lines. The Note examines several cases, decided before and alter Kisor, in which Jideral courts were asked to rule on the meaning of Endangered Species Act regulations. This analysis suggests that while Kisor is unlikely to completely remove the influence of.judicial ideology on deference decisions, its requirement that judges "show their work" has the potential to significantly reduce the role that judicial ideology plays in determining what constitutes a "reasonable" interpretation of an ambiguous regulation. While it is too soon to defulitively evaluate Kisor's impact on deference decisions, this Note suggests that the Kisorframework encourages a more principled and ideologically neutral approach to difficult agency deference decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning in the 19803, conservation groups began campaigning for the federal government to list the fluvial Arctic grayling-a relative Of the salmon that lives only in the cold waters of North America-as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. In 2014, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to list the grayling under the Act, citing, among other things, the uncertainty associated with how the grayling would respond to climate change. The Endangered Species Act has long been heralded as one of the United States' most protective environmental statutes. dice in part to its precautionary mandate that the government take action to help species before they face extinction. But agency implementation and judicial interpretation of the Endangered Species Act has only recently begun to grapple with the crisis of climate change, which threatens global biodiversity and promises to test the strength of the Endangered Species Act. One factor complicating traditional enforcement of the Endangered Species Act in the face of climate change is the uncertainty that can cloud species-specific climate science. This uncertainty makes it difficult jbr agencies to know how climate change will impact a particular species. In the face of this uncertainty, this Note argues that agencies should embrace the precautionary principle to help guide listing decisions and critical habitat designations under the Endangered Species Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the effects that some of these rule changes will have on the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in the face of uncertain climate change and the science behind it. It mentions climate change's impact on the environment, and judicial deference to agency interpretations. It also mentions alternatives for how the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Endangered Species Act can accommodate climate change and such as a broader ecosystem-based approach.

The article analyzes whether the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) helps or harms critical habitats designations protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and assesses critical habitat federal rules. Topics discussed are requirements of ESA to designate critical habitat for threatened and endangered species, critical habitat rulemaking completion times by species classes and for Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian species, and rules designating habitat for multiple species.

Natural resource and wildlife managers must balance the disparate priorities of a diversity of stakeholders. To manage these priorities, a firm understanding of topics salient to the public is needed. The media often report on issues of importance to the public; therefore, these reports may be a useful measure of public interest. However, efficient methods for distinguishing diverse topics related to a wildlife management issue reported in the media and changes in the salience of those topics have been lacking. We used latent Dirichlet allocation, a Bayesian mixture model, to quantitatively assess the salience of topics surrounding the gray wolf (Canis lupus), which was reintroduced to Idaho (U.S.A.) in 1995. We analyzed articles published from 1960 to 2015 in an Idaho newspaper. We identified 6 distinct topics associated with gray wolves: policy, hunting, biological status, implementation of management, recovery, and human‐wolf conflict. The salience of topics pre‐ and postreintroduction of wolves (1995) and pre‐ and postdelisting of wolves from the U.S. Endangered Species Act (2009) differed significantly, underscoring that these events were turning points in how issues were being publicly discussed and framed. Articles written by the local reporters were more likely to report on topics regarding conflict between humans and wolves, whereas articles sourced from a national outlet reported more on topics pertaining to wolf policy and biological status. In the context of managing a contentious, far‐ranging, and long‐lived wildlife species, our methods can help guide the location and timing of a suite of management strategies (e.g., media relation plans and stakeholder engagement) that promote human‐wildlife coexistence across different landscapes. Article impact statement: News media coverage of gray wolves shifts following key management events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the possible effects of the proposal by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the Department of Commerce's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to amend the implementing Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulations to the listing of species as endangered. Also cited are the number of plants and animals listed as threatened or endangered, as well as the role of economics in ESA implementation.

Abstract The Endangered Species Act creates perverse incentives for private landowners to destroy potential habitat in order to prevent endangered species from moving onto their properties. Federal agencies recognize these incentives and have tried to counter them with safe-harbor programs that allow landowners to voluntarily provide conservation in exchange for more regulatory certainty. Congress and agencies are both interested in shifting enforcement of the ESA toward this type of voluntary conservation, but there is little evidence of the effectiveness of these programs. This paper uses parcel-level data from federal agencies to provide the first empirical estimates of the effectiveness of a federal safe-harbor program. I find evidence that the program successfully decreases timber harvest behavior that appears to be targeting potential habitat. Based on estimates from both triple-difference and matching models, participation in the safe-harbor program is associated with a 7 to 13 percentage point decrease in harvest activity. The safe-harbor program holds promise to conserve imperiled wildlife while allowing landowners' greater flexibility to maintain traditional land uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) is a powerful environmental law protecting imperiled plants and animals, and a growing number of marine species have been protected under this law as extinction risk in the oceans has increased. Marine mammals and sea turtles comprise 38% of the 163 ESA-listed marine “species”, which includes subspecies and distinct population segments, yet analyses of recovery trends after listing are lacking. Here we gathered the best available annual abundance estimates for geographically delimited populations of all 62 marine mammal and sea turtle species listed under the ESA. Of these, we chose representative populations of species that were listed before 2012, occur and reproduce in U.S. waters, and have data of sufficient quality and timespan for trend analyses. Thus, we quantitatively analyzed population trends, magnitude of population change, and recovery status for 23 and 8 representative populations of 14 marine mammal and 5 sea turtle species, respectively. Using generalized linear and non-linear models, we found that 18 marine mammal (78%) and 6 sea turtle (75%) populations significantly increased after listing; 3 marine mammal (13%) and 2 sea turtle (25%) populations showed non-significant changes; while 2 marine mammal (9%), but no sea turtle populations declined after ESA protection. Overall, the 24 populations that increased in abundance were from species listed for 20 years or more (e.g., large whales, manatees, and sea turtles). Conservation measures triggered by ESA listing such as ending exploitation, tailored species management, and fishery regulations, and other national and international measures, appear to have been largely successful in promoting species recovery, leading to the delisting of some species and to increases in most populations. These findings underscore the capacity of marine mammal and sea turtle species to recover from substantial geographical population declines when conservation actions are implemented in a timely and effective manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal classification of species requires scientific and values‐based components, and how those components interact depends on how people frame the decision. Is classification a negotiation of trade‐offs, a decision on how to allocate conservation efforts, or simply a comparison of the biological status of a species to a legal standard? The answers to problem‐framing questions such as these influence decision making in species classifications. In our experience, however, decision makers, staff biologists, and stakeholders often have differing perspectives of the decision problem and assume different framings. In addition to differences between individuals, in some cases it appears individuals themselves are unclear about the decision process, which contributes to regulatory paralysis, litigation, and a loss of trust by agency staff and the public. We present 5 framings: putting species in the right bin, doing right by the species over time, saving the most species on a limited budget, weighing extinction risk against other objectives, and strategic classification to advance conservation. These framings are inspired by elements observed in current classification practices. Putting species in the right bin entails comparing a scientific status assessment with policy thresholds and accounting for potential misclassification costs. Doing right by the species adds a time dimension to the classification decision, and saving the most species on a limited budget classifies a suite of species simultaneously. Weighing extinction risk against other objectives would weigh ecological or socioeconomic concerns in classification decisions, and strategic classification to advance conservation would make negotiation a component of classification. We view these framings as a means to generate thought, discussion, and movement toward selection and application of explicit classification framings. Being explicit about the decision framing could lead decision makers toward more efficient and defensible decisions, reduce internal confusion and external conflict, and support better collaboration between scientists and policy makers. Article impact statement: Explicit decision framing in legal classification of species can reduce conflict and yield more efficient and defensible conservation decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on issue of overfishing arose in the mid-1900s after the industrialization of the fishing industry including the highly migratory Pacific Bluefin Tuna ("PBT"). It mentions several environmental groups, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, petitioned the Secretary of Commerce through National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), to list the PBT as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). It also mentions purpose of the ESA is to conserve species.

In 2016, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service promulgated several new rules clarifying and expanding several facets of the Endangered Species Act. Two rules in particular could potentially help the polar bear by expanding its designated Critical Habitat and escalating the Endangered Species Act's Consultation Requirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Snakes represent a sizable fraction of vertebrate biodiversity, but until recently, data on their demography have been sparse. Consequently, generalizations regarding patterns of variation are weak and the potential for population projections is limited. We address this information gap through an analysis of spatial and temporal variation in demography (population size, annual survival, and realized population growth) of the Lake Erie Watersnake, Nerodia sipedon insularum, and a review of snake survival more generally. Our study spans a period during which the Lake Erie Watersnake was listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, recovered, and was delisted. We collected capture–mark–recapture data at 14 study sites over 20 years, accruing 20,000 captures of 13,800 individually marked adults. Lake Erie Watersnakes achieve extraordinary abundance, averaging 520 adults per km of shoreline (ca. 260 adult per ha) at our study sites (range = 160–1,600 adults per km; ca. 80–800 adults per ha) and surpassing population recovery and postdelisting monitoring criteria. Annual survival averages 0.68 among adult females and 0.76 among adult males, varies among sites, and is positively correlated with body size among study sites. Temporal process variance in annual survival is low, averaging 0.0011 or less than 4% of total variance; thus, stochasticity in annual survival may be of minor significance to snake extinction risk. Estimates of realized population growth indicate that population size has been stable or increasing over the course of our study. More generally, snake annual survival overlaps broadly across continents, climate zones, families, subfamilies, reproductive modes, body size categories, maturation categories, and parity categories. Differences in survival in relation to size, parity, and maturation are in the directions predicted by life history theory but are of small magnitude with much variation around median values. Overall, annual survival appears to be quite plastic, varying with food availability, habitat quality, and other ecological variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directional well drilling and hydraulic fracturing has enabled energy production from previously inaccessible resources, but caused vegetation conversion and landscape fragmentation, often in relatively undisturbed habitats. We improve forecasts of future ecological impacts from unconventional oil and gas play developments using a new, more spatially-explicit approach. We applied an energy production outlook model, which used geologic and economic data from thousands of wells and three oil price scenarios, to map future drilling patterns and evaluate the spatial distribution of vegetation conversion and habitat impacts. We forecast where future well pad construction may be most intense, illustrating with an example from the Eagle Ford Shale Play of Texas. We also illustrate the ecological utility of this approach using the Spot-tailed Earless Lizard (Holbrookia lacerata) as the focal species, which historically occupied much of the Eagle Ford and awaits a federal decision for possible Endangered Species Act protection. We found that ~17,000-45,500 wells would be drilled 2017‒2045 resulting in vegetation conversion of ~26,485-70,623 ha (0.73-1.96% of pre-development vegetation), depending on price scenario ($40-$80/barrel). Grasslands and row crop habitats were most affected (2.30 and 2.82% areal vegetation reduction). Our approach improves forecasts of where and to what extent future energy development in unconventional plays may change land-use and ecosystem services, enabling natural resource managers to anticipate and direct on-the-ground conservation actions to places where they will most effectively mitigate ecological impacts of well pads and associated infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decisions under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) require scientific input on the risk that the species will become extinct. A series of critiques on the role of science in ESA decisions have called for improved consistency and transparency in species risk assessments and clear distinctions between science input and policy application. To address the critiques and document the emerging practice of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), we outline an assessment process based on principles and practices of risk and decision analyses that results in a scientific report on species status. The species status assessment (SSA) process has three successive stages: 1) document the life history and ecological relationships of the species in question to provide the foundation for the assessment, 2) describe and hypothesize causes for the current condition of the species, and 3) forecast the species' future condition. The future condition refers to the ability of a species to sustain populations in the wild under plausible future scenarios. The scenarios help explore the species' response to future environmental stressors and to assess the potential for conservation to intervene to improve its status. The SSA process incorporates modeling and scenario planning for prediction of extinction risk and applies the conservation biology principles of representation, resiliency, and redundancy to evaluate the current and future condition. The SSA results in a scientific report distinct from policy application, which contributes to streamlined, transparent, and consistent decision-making and allows for greater technical participation by experts outside of the USFWS, for example, by state natural resource agencies. We present two case studies based on assessments of the eastern massasauga rattlesnake Sistrurus catenatus and the Sonoran Desert tortoise Gopherus morafkai to illustrate the process. The SSA builds upon the past threat-focused assessment by including systematic and explicit analyses of a species' future response to stressors and conservation, and as a result, we believe it provides an improved scientific analysis for ESA decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how the law seeks to preserve biodiversity in the U.S. It mentions about impact of climate change, habitat destruction, and alien invasive species on biodiversity destruction; enactment of Endangered Species Act, and United States. Marine Mammal Protection Act for addressing the same; and addressing habitat destruction on private land and to mitigate climate change.

Managing livestock disturbance in riparian zones in a manner that provides economic returns to ranchers while protecting streams is an important aspect of rangeland management on public lands in the western United States. Attempts to balance economic and ecologic outcomes have been made more difficult due to the presence of several salmonid species that are protected under the Endangered Species Act. One approach to proper management of livestock use near streams has been to define the allowable limits of disturbance using 2 metrics, streambank alteration and stubble height. We evaluated 153 stream reaches within the Interior Columbia Basin to determine if these 2 surrogates of livestock disturbance measured after the vegetative growing season were associated with stream conditions important to salmonids evaluated the following summer. We found that each stream habitat attribute that was evaluated (width-todepth ratio, streambank angle, percent undercut banks, streambank stability, residual pool depth, percent pools, percent pool-tail fine sediments <2 mm, and wood frequency) trended toward lower-quality salmonid habitat as streambank alteration increased or as stubble height decreased. While the strength of these associations were variable, the slopes of the relationships suggest that managing the amount of streambank alteration or stubble height could influence stream conditions within the Interior Columbia Basin. Because improved stream conditions for salmonids corresponded to decreased livestock disturbance, the amount of disturbance allowed in a stream reach will need to reflect management expectations and the environmental setting within the allotment. As a starting point, we suggest the continued application of existing livestock disturbance standards in stream reaches with good habitat conditions, and the specification of more conservative disturbance standards in stream reaches that have degraded habitat conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pacific martens (Martes caurina humboldtensis) in coastal forests of Oregon and northern California in the United States are rare and geographically isolated, prompting a petition for listing under the Endangered Species Act. If listed, regulations have the potential to influence land-use decisions on public and private lands, but no estimates of population size, density, or viability of remnant marten populations are available for evaluating their conservation status. We used GPS and VHF telemetry and spatial mark-resight to estimate home ranges, density, and population size of Pacific martens in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, central coast Oregon, USA. We then estimated population viability at differing levels of human-caused mortality (e.g., vehicle mortality). Marten home ranges were small on average (females = 0.8 km², males 1.5 km²) and density (1.13 martens/1 km²) was the highest reported for North American populations (M. caurina, M. americana). We estimated 71 adult martens (95% CRI [41-87]) across two subpopulations separated by a large barrier (Umpqua River). Using population viability analysis, extinction risk for a subpopulation of 30 martens, approximately the size of the subpopulation south of the Umpqua River, ranged from 32% to 99% with two or three annual human-caused mortalities within 30 years. Absent population expansion, limiting human-caused mortalities will likely have the greatest conservation impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Americans are experiencing a communication crisis in public policy--a crisis that has become especially acute since the November 2016 elections. Research shows that Americans increasingly treat their policy views as constitutive of their identities and separate themselves from other groups based on these identities. New solutions are needed in the lawmaking process to soften participants' hardening of their own identities and negative characterizations of other groups. This Article studies one controversy that has proven to be entrenched, if not yet intractable, in many jurisdictions: hydraulic fracturing. The Article examines advances made by scholars of conflict resolution and peace and conflict studies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries that focus on dialogue and softening of frames to move entrenched conflicts towards resolution. Based on this case study of the legislative and regulatory snarl over hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania, the Article proposes a new process, marshaled by a Special Committee for Public Policy Dialogue, that would implement the insights of peace and conflict studies researchers allowing the legal system to address and move past identity-based conflicts that threaten to bring lawmaking to a standstill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Species conservation requires a thorough understanding of habitat requirements. The northern Mexican gartersnake (Thamnophis eques megalops) was listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 2014. Natural resource managers are interested in understanding the ecology of this subspecies to guide management decisions and to determine what features are necessary for habitat creation and restoration. Our objective was to identify habitat selection of northern Mexican gartersnakes in a highly managed, constructed wetland hatchery. We deployed transmitters on 42 individual gartersnakes and documented use of habitat types and selection of specific habitat features. Habitat selection was similar between males and females and varied seasonally. During the active season (March–October), gartersnakes primarily selected wetland edge habitat with abundant cover. Gestating females selected similar locations but with less dense cover. During the inactive season (November–February), gartersnakes selected upland habitats, including rocky slopes with abundant vegetation. These results of this study can help inform management of the subspecies, particularly in human-influenced habitats. Conservation of this subspecies should incorporate a landscape-level approach that includes abundant wetland edge habitat with a mosaic of dense cover for protection and sparsely vegetated areas for basking connected to terrestrial uplands for overwintering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]