Backlog of Endangered Species Awaiting Protection Reaches Lowest Level Since 1970s

For the first time since the 1970s, the number of plants and animals on the waiting list for Endangered Species Act protection has dropped below 150. The progress the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made last year addressing the backlog highlights the success of a landmark agreement reached with the Center for Biological Diversity in 2011 requiring the Service to speed protection decisions for 757 species. The 2013 “candidate notice of review” released by the agency today includes 146 species now awaiting protection: 94 animals and 52 plants. In fiscal year 2013, 81 species were awarded final protection under the Endangered Species Act. During the past year the Service issued proposals to protect dozens of new species under the Act including the wolverine, lesser prairie chicken, Yosemite toad, red knot, a shorebird along the Atlantic Coast, and the northern long-eared bat, which was once found in 39 states before its population was decimated by a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome. Also among the proposed were the western yellow-billed cuckoo, which only lives along desert streams, four kinds of pocket gophers from Washington state, and butterflies from Florida and the Dakotas.  The vast majority of the 146 species still on the waiting list will receive listing proposals in the next three years. Species still waiting include the Pacific walrus, eastern gopher tortoise, west coast fisher, Lower Colorado River roundtail chub, Sonoran desert tortoise, several types of Hawaiian yellow-faced bees, and the Black Warrior waterdog, a large salamander from Alabama...more