Fish and Wildlife maps out the next 5 years of endangered species activity

On Friday, the Fish and Wildlife Service published a workplan which is required reading for any entity seeking to undertake project development in the US in the next five years. Spurred by litigation into acting on its tremendous backlog of Endangered Species listings and Critical Habitat designations, FWS has planned out the actions it will take every year for the next five years for 455 different species. The workplan is a guidepost to the regulated community of where and when FWS will be taking action to protect species and their habitat. It is mandatory reading for any entity hoping to undertake project development in areas which may contain potentially covered species or their habitat. Industries hoping to avoid the listing of a particular species will not only need to be creative - as the oil and gas industry was last year in keeping the Sand Dunes Lizard off the list – but now have a timeline for when they need to complete their innovative solutions. For example, FWS will act on the Lesser Prairie Chicken, which also threatens oil and gas activities, next year. The workplan can be found at: http://www.fws.gov/endangered/improving_ESA/FY13-18_ESA_Listing_workplan.pdf  Even more useful than this pdf version is FWS’ sortable Excel format of the workplan, which allows you to identify species in a particular area or on a specific time horizon. That version is available at http://www.fws.gov/endangered/improving_ESA/FY13-18_ESA_Listing_workplan.xlsx...more