Sixty days after filing an intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) over its “blanket rule” that disregards science and hinders restoration efforts under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) followed through.
The ESA directs agencies to list species and take steps to recover them. To do so, the agency is supposed to design science-based regulations tailored to the needs of each species. Citing administrative convenience, the FWS established a “blanket 4(d) rule” to bypass this process, ignoring science and species-specific considerations. As a result, the agency’s one-size-fits-all approach has yielded poor species recovery rates. By comparison, the National Marine Fisheries Service’s tailored strategy has recovered species at twice the rate of FWS’ blanket approach.
“As conservationists who want to see more habitat restoration and greater species recovery, there is no doubt a targeted, science-based approach produces better outcomes for wildlife,” said Blake Henning, RMEF chief conservation officer. “We’ve worked with states and landowners to conserve or enhance more than 9.1 million acres of habitat for elk and other wildlife, and we’ve seen how flexible regulations that address specific challenges are more effective than a blanket approach.”
“While the blanket rule is certainly easier for bureaucrats to administer, it doesn’t work for species like the gray wolf, greater sage grouse and arctic grayling,” said Jonathan Wood, PERC vice president of law and policy. “Given the challenges of recovering America’s imperiled wildlife, the Endangered Species Act needs to be as effective as possible by applying science, harnessing incentives, and adapting to real world outcomes.”
Two-thirds of endangered species depend on private lands for habitat, making it critical to engage landowners in effective habitat protection and restoration efforts. Yet the blanket rule does the opposite. It maintains the tightest restrictions on landowners and states even after a species’ conservation status improves from endangered to threatened.
Rather than motivating stakeholders to invest in a species’ recovery by lifting the most stringent restrictions when its status improves, the blanket rule makes states and landowners indifferent to whether a species is endangered or threatened, improving, or declining. This penalizes and discourages states and landowners from keeping or restoring wildlife habitat, including in partnership with conservation groups like RMEF and PERC.
(Photo credit: Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation & PERC)