Overcoming the politics of endangered species listings

Abstract Listing of species as threatened or endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act provides strong protections to plants and animals on the brink. Too often, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been slow to list species or resisted listing altogether when faced with political opposition from states, members of Congress and special interests. The public’s ability to enforce the Act’s statutory deadlines to list species and to overturn politically driven decision to not list species through the courts has proven critical to gaining protections for species. In this chapter, I examine the Service’s listing program and provide case studies of the conservation community’s efforts to list imperiled species, including the Greater Sage Grouse, Montana arctic grayling, and Streaked Horned Lark, which illustrate the important role of conservation groups and scientists advocating for the conservation of highly imperiled species. Reform of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is badly needed to ensure scientific integrity, effective implementation of the Act, and most importantly to avert the extinction crisis.