{"id":12537,"date":"2024-01-01T15:33:41","date_gmt":"2024-01-01T15:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12537"},"modified":"2024-01-01T15:33:41","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T15:33:41","slug":"the-ridiculously-stupid-reason-the-us-is-letting-animals-spiral-toward-oblivion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12537","title":{"rendered":"The ridiculously stupid reason the US is letting animals spiral toward oblivion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Part of the problem, environmental groups say, is that the FWS is failing to work through a backlog of species that are in desperate need of protection. \u201cUnder the ESA, decisions about protection for species are supposed to take two years, but on average, it has taken the Fish and Wildlife Service 12 years,\u201d wrote<\/a> researchers, including Greenwald, in a 2016 study. \u201cSuch lengthy wait times are certain to result in loss of further species.\u201d (A more recent assessment<\/a> indicates that wait times between 2010 and 2020 were shorter, likely because the FWS received fewer petitions to list species during that time.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Fish and Wildlife Service is aware of these delays. Gary Frazer, the agency\u2019s assistant director for ecological services, which administers the act, blames them on funding and staff shortages.The process to formally declare a species endangered, which requires an extensive review, is expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is something that everyone seems to agree on: The FWS needs a lot more money from Congress to do its job. \u201cCurrently, the Service only receives around 50% of the funding required to properly implement the Act,\u201d as more than 120 environmental groups wrote in a letter<\/a> to Congress in March 2023, urging the government to ramp up spending by hundreds of millions of dollars. (That may sound like a lot, but it\u2019s a tiny, nearly imperceivable fraction of what the US spends on, say, national defense, or fails to recoup in fossil fuel<\/a> subsidies.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The ESA] isn\u2019t broken, it\u2019s starving,\u201d said Jamie Rappaport Clark, CEO and president of Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation group. (She\u2019s stepping down from her role at Defenders next year.) \u201cIt can do its job if it\u2019s supported,\u201d said Clark, who formerly led the FWS. \u201cBut it\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what\u2019s strange: Even though the FWS acknowledges there is a resource shortage, the agency doesn\u2019t ask Congress for more money outside of relatively modest budget increases, according to Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. What\u2019s more, the FWS actually asks Congress to restrict<\/em> the amount it can spend to list species as threatened or endangered. According to Frazer, that\u2019s because the agency receives an enormous number of petitions. If it were to address all of them, he said, it would have to pull resources away from other important activities under the act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(When asked why the FWS wouldn\u2019t just request more money overall for the ESA, a spokesperson for the agency said that \u201cfederal funding decisions are complex\u201d and pointed me to the agency\u2019s recent budget justification<\/a>. Hartl suspects the FWS doesn\u2019t ask for more funding because Frazer is highly risk averse and doesn\u2019t want to come under scrutiny for putting forward a more substantial budget request. There are also pro-industry ESA critics who say the law is already too restrictive, even in its underfunded state.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Limited funding has forced officials and environmental advocates to prioritize efforts to save species in the most critical conditions \u2014 the ones that are about to blink out. And that leads to another criticism of the ESA: The law is reactive, helping species only when they\u2019re on the edge of extinction. It fails to address more fundamental problems that are driving wildlife declines in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In search of a more proactive approach, some policymakers have been trying to pass another environmental law, known as Recovering America\u2019s Wildlife Act<\/a> (RAWA). The act, as it was envisioned a few years ago, would funnel roughly $1.4 billion to states and Indigenous tribes to restore ailing animals, even beforethey\u2019re listed as endangered. But it has run into similar problems as the ESA \u2014 namely, policymakers can\u2019t figure out how to pay for it. Now the RAWA, at least as it was originally drafted, seems all but dead.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/down-to-earth\/2023\/12\/18\/23989030\/endangered-species-act-explained-environment-biodiversity-extinction<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Part of the problem, environmental groups say, is that the FWS is failing to work through a backlog of species that are in desperate need of protection. \u201cUnder the ESA, decisions about protection for species are supposed to take two years, but on average, it has taken the Fish and Wildlife Service 12 years,\u201d wrote researchers, including Greenwald, in a 2016 study. \u201cSuch lengthy wait times are certain to result in loss of further species.\u201d (A more recent assessment indicates that wait times between 2010 and 2020 were shorter, likely because the FWS received fewer petitions to list species during that time.)
\nThe Fish and Wildlife Service is aware of these delays. Gary Frazer, the agency\u2019s assistant director for ecological services, which administers the act, blames them on funding and staff shortages. The process to formally declare a species endangered, which requires an extensive review, is expensive.<\/p>\n

This is something that everyone seems to agree on: The FWS needs a lot more money from Congress to do its job. \u201cCurrently, the Service only receives around 50% of the funding required to properly implement the Act,\u201d as more than 120 environmental groups wrote in a letter to Congress in March 2023, urging the government to ramp up spending by hundreds of millions of dollars. (That may sound like a lot, but it\u2019s a tiny, nearly imperceivable fraction of what the US spends on, say, national defense, or fails to recoup in fossil fuel subsidies.)<\/p>\n

\u201c[The ESA] isn\u2019t broken, it\u2019s starving,\u201d said Jamie Rappaport Clark, CEO and president of Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation group. (She\u2019s stepping down from her role at Defenders next year.) \u201cIt can do its job if it\u2019s supported,\u201d said Clark, who formerly led the FWS. \u201cBut it\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what\u2019s strange: Even though the FWS acknowledges there is a resource shortage, the agency doesn\u2019t ask Congress for more money outside of relatively modest budget increases, according to Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. What\u2019s more, the FWS actually asks Congress to restrict the amount it can spend to list species as threatened or endangered. According to Frazer, that\u2019s because the agency receives an enormous number of petitions. If it were to address all of them, he said, it would have to pull resources away from other important activities under the act.<\/p>\n

(When asked why the FWS wouldn\u2019t just request more money overall for the ESA, a spokesperson for the agency said that \u201cfederal funding decisions are complex\u201d and pointed me to the agency\u2019s recent budget justification. Hartl suspects the FWS doesn\u2019t ask for more funding because Frazer is highly risk averse and doesn\u2019t want to come under scrutiny for putting forward a more substantial budget request. There are also pro-industry ESA critics who say the law is already too restrictive, even in its underfunded state.)<\/p>\n

Limited funding has forced officials and environmental advocates to prioritize efforts to save species in the most critical conditions \u2014 the ones that are about to blink out. And that leads to another criticism of the ESA: The law is reactive, helping species only when they\u2019re on the edge of extinction. It fails to address more fundamental problems that are driving wildlife declines in the first place.<\/p>\n

In search of a more proactive approach, some policymakers have been trying to pass another environmental law, known as Recovering America\u2019s Wildlife Act (RAWA). The act, as it was envisioned a few years ago, would funnel roughly $1.4 billion to states and Indigenous tribes to restore ailing animals, even before they\u2019re listed as endangered. But it has run into similar problems as the ESA \u2014 namely, policymakers can\u2019t figure out how to pay for it. Now the RAWA, at least as it was originally drafted, seems all but dead.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/down-to-earth\/2023\/12\/18\/23989030\/endangered-species-act-explained-environment-biodiversity-extinction<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1016,103,619],"class_list":["post-12537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-animals","tag-environment","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12538,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12537\/revisions\/12538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}