May 14, 2013.  Today, the Society for Conservation Biology submitted a formal petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (collectively the “Services”) requesting that these agencies develop new regulations to guide the recovery planning process for species protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The stated purpose of the ESA, the “conservation of the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend,” is best achieved when recovery efforts are guided by the best-available science.  Despite the paramount importance of recovery in the ESA, for nearly forty years, the Services have operated without any regulatory structure for recovery planning and recovery implementation.  Instead, the Services developed non-binding guidance for recovery planning in 2004.  While this guidance document has helped to clarify the procedural and logistic requirements of recovery planning, it has failed to establish substantive, science-based, sideboards to ensure that the recovery planning process always meets certain minimal requirements.  Most critically, the concept of “recovery” remains poorly defined.

The result of failing to provide a rigorous definition of recovery has led to predictable results.  Recovery criteria setting forth levels of population abundance, geographic range of recovery, and acceptable threat risk-levels post-delisting vary widely across species and taxonomic groups.  Political interference in recovery planning efforts has also occurred, most notably during the FWS recovery planning process for the Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina).  As explained by the Department of Interior Inspector General after investigating the recovery planning process for the spotted owl, the FWS “owes the public a fair and consistent application of rules in making its ESA decisions.”  Science-based regulations to guide the recovery planning process would lead to fairer and more consistent recovery plans, which would in turn benefit listed species.  SCB’s petition offers a rigorous definition of the term “recovery” that will help to ensure that each species is recovered throughout all significant portions of its historic range and provides clear regulatory sideboards on the most critical parts of the recovery planning process.

Read the full petition to the Department of Interior and Department of Commerce HERE.

This is the third petition filed by SCB to reform, strengthen, and modernize the regulations that implement the ESA.  Learn more about SCB’s previous petitions HERE.

May 6, 2013.  Today the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) submitted comments on behalf of its North America Section and its Humboldt State University Chapter in support of protecting the gray wolf under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA).  Gray wolves were extirpated from California by the 1940s, but in December 2011 a male gray wolf known as OR-7 dispersed from a wolf pack in Oregon, becoming California’s first documented wolf in over 70 years (click HERE for a map of OR-7's travels in California between 2011-2013).  In 2012, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) began the process of determining whether to protect the gray wolf as an endangered species under the CESA.

The removal of wolves has been shown to result in significant changes to species’ composition in diverse ecosystems across their former range, and the return of wolves has been shown to result in cascading effects that often result in increased biological diversity.  Because large areas of suitable wolf habitat exist in California, it is likely that wolves will continue to disperse into the state from source populations in Oregon and Washington.  Therefore, SCB believes that it is important for the CDFW develop a management plan under the auspices of the CESA with the goal of recovery of gray wolves within California. 

SCB believes that listing under the CESA will provide the CDFW with the necessary policy and material support to protect and restore this once-widespread species that has been extirpated from most of its historic range within California.  The protection, conservation, and restoration of the gray wolf under CESA is more important than ever given the likely release of a proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove federal protections under the Endangered Species Act for gray wolves across most of their historic range including California and other areas of suitable habitat where gray wolves could still be recovered.

Read the comments HERE.

April 22, 2013.  Today, SCB released a set of recommendations to the Obama Administration, which outlined a series of steps that agencies throughout the Federal government can take in the next four years that would strengthen the scientific foundation for conserving biological diversity.  The recommendations in this report focus primarily on steps that the President and the various Federal agencies can take now, under existing law, to protect, conserve, and restore biological diversity. 

In the report, SCB urges the administration to elevate climate change to a top priority by acting aggressively to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and to enact new policies and regulations regarding the management of public lands that would increase the amount of carbon those lands can sequester.  The report outlines additional steps that can be taken to improve the implementation of our core environmental laws such as the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Quality Act.  The report suggests improvements in the policies adopted in the first Obama term in order to fulfill the vision set out in the President’s Memorandum on Scientific Integrity—to protect scientists from political interference and to more effectively ensure that the scientific process will guide the development of policies that affect biological diversity.  Finally, SCB outlines additional actions that can be taken in the international arena to address not only climate change, but other substantial threats to biodiversity such as illegal trade in endangered species.

Four years ago, SCB prepared a similar set of recommendations and briefed the Obama transition team as it prepared to assume control of the Federal government.  Some of these recommendations were influential in guiding policy changes during the first term of the President.   SCB is in the process of presenting this report to officials at the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Interior, the Department of State, and the Council on Environmental Quality.  SCB will continue to bring these recommendations to officials throughout the Executive Branch, as well as members of Congress in the coming weeks. 

Read the 2013-2017 Recommendations HERE.

Read the 2009-2013 Recommendations HERE.

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April 22, 2013. Today the Society for Conservation Biology submitted comments on the second Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) and its accompanying biological assessment (BA) regarding the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline.  SCB’s comments explain why the Keystone XL Pipeline is not in the national interest because of the significant harm that tar sands development in Canada will cause to Earth’s climate, and the significant local impacts on threatened and endangered species.  Because the SEIS continues to understate both the risks to Earth’s climate and the risks of oil spills that will harm endangered species, SCB recommends that Secretary of State John Kerry reject TransCanada’s permit application and that the no-action alternative should be adopted as the evidence before him is not sufficient to make the case that granting the permit to construct the Keystone XL Pipeline would be in the national interest.

In particular, SCB notes that the EIS fails to consider alternative approaches to meeting the energy and transportation needs of the United States, for example, by pursuing new sources of renewable energy, and failing to account for the significant economic benefits that can be derived from an environment that is not put at risk from increased greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, SCB’s comments raise concerns regarding the SEIS’s discounting of the risks of oil spills from the Keystone XL Pipeline, which will be used to transport highly-corrosive tar sands oil.  Oil spills could severely harm several endangered species including the Whooping Crane, Piping Plover, Interior Least Tern, pallid sturgeon, and American burying beetle potentially jeopardizing the continued existence or recovery of the rarest of these species, the Whooping Crane.  Given the severe negative impacts from greenhouse gas emissions associated with tar-sands development, the benefits of building this pipeline are insignificant for the United States in the context of the larger global market for fossil fuels and do not outweigh these harms.

In 2011, SCB wrote a letter to the Secretary of State raising a series of questions about the Keystone XL Pipeline and the 2011 SEIS.  In 2010, SCB prepared extensive comments on the initial Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL pipeline.

Read SCB’s comments on the 2013 SEIS here.

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March 11, 2013.  Today the Society for Conservation Biology submitted comments on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) proposed rule to list the Lesser Prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) as a “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act, a lower degree of protection than being listed as “endangered.”  Since 1999, the best available science has clearly indicated that the Lesser Prairie-chicken should be protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  The only reason that the Prairie-chicken has not yet been listed sooner was due to a lack of funding within the listing division of the FWS. 

SCB explains that a listing as endangered is appropriate because the Prairie-chicken has declined between 84-92% from its historic population levels, and has had a similar decrease in its geographic range.  In particular, the Prairie-chicken has declined over 81% in Texas (from 236,000 sq km to 12,000 sq km) and 94% in New Mexico (mostly in the mixed-grass prairie BCR), which clearly qualifies the species for protection as endangered based on threats within a “significant portion of its range.”

SCB also raised substantive concerns regarding the failure of the FWS to propose critical habitat for the Prairie-chicken at the time of the listing proposal.   The FWS has monitored for 15 years, has been the subject of hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, and the biology of the species is very-well understood.  Because Prairie-chickens depend on communal leks, where males display to attract breeding females, SCB recommended that all known, active leks be designated as critical habitat along with a buffer area around each lek.

Finally, SCB provided comments on the FWS’s unprecedented proposal that the existence of four “strongholds” for the Prairie-chicken might obviate the need for listing.  Under the FWS proposal, a “stronghold” is defined as a contiguous area that supports 6-10 active leks with 6 male birds displaying at each lek, or 60 adult males.  In other words, a species which may have numbered 2 million individuals can be “secured” by the presence of 240 adult male Prairie-chickens. SCB believes that a conservation strategy, which permits a 99% decline in current abundance, is not adequate to defer listing under the ESA.

Read the full comments HERE.

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February 8, 2013.  Today the Society for Conservation Biology, Society for Ecological Restoration, American Fisheries Society, The Wildlife Society, American Meteorological Society, and the Ecological Society of America sent a letter to President Obama requesting that he convene a national summit to address climate change.  The letter explains how a potential summit could be designed to identify policies and actions that can be taken by each Federal agency as well as by state and local governments to address the causes and effects of climate change.  A considerable number of organizations have now called for a climate change summit and the recent draft report of the National Climate Assessment underscores the need for high-level attention to this issue.

In the letter, the six scientific societies provided ideas for topics to be discussed and considered at a potential climate summit including:

• Bolstering emergency response to climate disasters
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from land-use activities
• Protecting carbon stores and climate refugia
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and black soot from industrial sources
• Coordinating climate adaptation responses
• Maintaining ecosystem benefits from public lands
• Deploying renewable energy in a balanced manner that protects biodiversity.

Read the letter HERE.

Photo:  On Aug. 26, 2012, arctic sea ice dropped to the smallest extent ever recorded in more than three decades of satellite measurements, breaking the record from September 18, 2007 (the orange line shows the 1979 to 2000 median sea ice extent for that particular day).  Every summer, the Arctic sea ice melts down to its “minimum” before colder weather builds the ice cover back up, usually around mid-September. For three additional weeks beyond August 26, 2012 the sea ice continued to melt.  On September 16, 2012 sea ice extent dropped to 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles). The 2012 arctic minimum was 760,000 square kilometers (293,000 square miles) below the previous record minimum extent in the satellite record.    The 2012 minimum was 18% below 2007 and 49% below the 1979 to 2000 average. More information on the arctic sea ice is available at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

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January 24, 2013.  Today, the Society for Conservation Biology approved a formal policy statement on the use of elephant ivory for religious objects on behalf of SCB’s Religion and Conservation Research Collaborative (RCRC), which is a part of SCB’s larger Religion and Conservation Biology Working Group.  The RCRC statement notes that the massacre of elephants in Africa has escalated to record levels over the last 30 years. The main driver of this illegal poaching activity can be traced to the demand in Asia for commercial products that contain ivory, including for religious artifacts, trinkets, and other purposes.  If consumption patterns are not changed, the African elephant populations may decline or altogether disappear over the next 2 or 3 decades. In addition to the ethical concerns raised by the possible extinction of elephant populations or species, the ivory trade is associated with considerable bloodshed for humans as well as elephants.

The policy statement notes that religious leaders have the responsibility and influence to reorient their followers on the procurement and use of religious artifacts made from the ivory of African elephants, and the precarious lives of the humans who protect them.   And, religion and conservation biology can be complementary in reaching the best possible outcome when religious faith is respected, religious communities are open to understanding the problems pertaining to the use of ivory, and religious leaders are willing to prompt a change in attitudes and practices that could help ensure the survival of the African and Asian elephant and the integrity of our planetary future.

In particular, the statement recommends that conservation biologists should

1. Provide awareness and educational tools for use by religious leaders to reorient their adherents about religious ivory and to elicit an empathic response on the plight of the African elephant.
2. Encourage religious leaders to issue public statements on the severity of the ivory trade and the direct and negative impact that the religious use of ivory has on elephant populations and local communities and, where appropriate, on the relevant teachings of their religions, such as teachings concerning practicing stewardship of creation.
3. Urge religious leaders to issue statements to their followers discouraging the use of ivory for religious artifacts (e.g., statues or amulets) and instead use other material (e.g., fiberglass, wood) as substitutes and seek to engage religious leaders in consultations concerning which materials are most suitable from a conservation and religious standpoint.

Read the full statement HERE.

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January 19, 2013.  Today, the Society for Conservation Biology submitted scoping comments for the upcoming Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed Gateway Pacific Coal Export Terminal in Cherry Point, Washington.  If constructed, the terminal would become the largest coal export facility in North America, sending approximately 48 million tons of coal annually to Asia, where it would be used primarily to generate electrical power at power plants with limited pollution controls that are generally not as stringent as pollution controls within the United States.

Because the coal export terminal is proposed to be built on an existing wetland protected by the Clean Water Act, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must issue a permit to Gateway Pacific in order to build the terminal.  Since the export terminal cannot be built without this permit, SCB explained in its comment letter that the Army Corps has a duty to examine the larger impacts to biodiversity from increased burning of coal in China.  Because little is known about the impacts of coal dust both on terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity, SCB requested that the Army Corps of Engineers to undertake a careful examination of the threats to biodiversity from this type of pollution.  In particular, SCB explained why the EIS must review include the cumulative impacts on biological diversity caused by:

1. coal-dust pollution resulting from the transport of coal from the Powder River Basin
2. the development and operation of the export terminal itself
3. coal-dust pollution and possible hydrocarbon spills during river and nearshore transport in the Salish Sea by marine coal-transport vessels
4. pollution in the Pacific Ocean from localized and long distance deposition of pollutants from the transport and burning of coal in power plants in Asia, and

SCB also offered recommendations for mitigation measures that should be considered in the upcoming EIS, and alternatives to consider in this process focusing instead on the development of a Green Economy.

Read the full comment letter HERE.

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December 18, 2012.  Since its discovery fifty years ago, the vaquita (Phocoena sinus), or Gulf of California harbor porpoise, has been recognized as one of the rarest and most endangered marine mammals in the world.  The vaquita, which is Spanish for “little cow”, is especially vulnerable to drowning in gillnet fishing nets, and today there are less than 200 individuals remaining in the world.  Scientists estimate that the vaquita population is declining at nearly 8% per year.  Unless more is done to restrict gill-net fishing in the northern Gulf of California, the vaquita will likely follow the baiji (Lipotes vexillifer), or China’s Yangtze River Dolphin, into extinction. 

Because of the urgency of addressing this conservation challenge, the Society of Marine Mammalogists, the European Cetacean Society, and the Society for Conservation Biology have sent a letter to Enrique Pena Nieto, the newly-elected President of Mexico,  and to his administration, to take additional steps to phase out gill-net fishing in the northern Gulf of California.

Fortunately, there is cause for optimism regarding the conservation of the vaquita.  Mexico’s National Institute of Fisheries (INAPESCA) has successfully tested alternative fishing gear that allows for the harvest of blue shrimp in the Gulf of California, while substantially reducing the risks of vaquitas accidentally drowning in fishing nets.  Phasing out gill-nets and transitioning to these alternative fishing techniques will allow local fishermen to continue pursuing their livelihoods while saving the lives of many vaquitas. 

The International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita has met four times to discuss the species’ situation, concluding that a gillnet ban continues to be the single-most, highest priority conservation action that can be undertaken to save the vaquita.  The Mexican Government has begun to phase out gillnets through a series of ###-outs and gear swapping initiatives.

Read the joint letter to the President of Mexico HERE and its English translation HERE.

Read the report of the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita HERE.

Read a factsheet about the Vaquita-safe fishing gear HERE.

To learn more about the vaquita, visit the IUCN’s Cetacean Specialist Group website.  To learn about more how you can help the vaquita, go to ¡Viva Vaquita!

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