I saw this yesterday, how wonderful!!! I wonder if they are trying this with any other endangered animals?
Yes, the list is reviewed periodically, and endangered animals are moved off if they make a comeback sufficiently; other animals that become threatened or endangered are added. There are a few levels on the list, and the bald eagle had been moved up some time ago. Good to know it has done well enough to be completely off the list, but not too surprised given how many I have seen myself in the last few years.
Thats good to know, I am sure that I have been around when some other animal has been taken off this list, but since the news harps on bad things you never seem to remember all the good news!
One of the first animals to be delisted due to recovery was the American Alligator. It was listed in 1967 and recovered & removed from the list in 1987. The national Fish & Wildlife Service has a wealth of information on how a species gets on the list, what plants and animals are on it, and all kinds of stuff here. Unfortunately, some of the earliest species to be removed was due to extinction. I remember when the dusky seaside sparrow went extinct in 1987, that was very sad. (Not that I remembered the date, I had to look up the note I made in my bird book at the time, but I remember how sad I felt when I heard the last one had died.)
USFWS does not take things off the list easily. The bald eagle came off the list because the supreme court mandated it.
How many other acts protect the bald eagle? Was the only change such that you cannot have a "take" on the eagle?
There is a separate act that protects bald eagles and golden eagles, so you still can't shoot them, but delisting apparently means their habitat is no longer protected. Here's an article from National Geographic that goes into more detail. I can't find anything that says the Supreme Court mandated their delisting, but the Supreme Court did make a decision earlier this week that removes some of the protections for wildlife under the clean water act. That is also addressed in this article. This is what the article says about the Supreme Court, it seems to be unrelated to the delisting of the bald eagle: There's a little more you can read, if you follow the link above.
I have a link to the article about the court ruling at work. I tried to do a search also but couldn't fine it.
I think you are mistaken as the ruling on the ESA was not driected at any species in particular. http://www.nrcm.org/news_detail.asp?news=1658 Supreme Court Limits the Endangered Species Act Monday June 25th, 2007 WASHINGTON, DC, June 25, 2007 (ENS) - In a 5-4 decision today, the U.S. Supreme Court today limited the obligation of federal agencies under the Endangered Species Act to ensure that their actions do not jeopardize federally listed threatened or endangered species. In two combined cases - EPA v. Defenders of Wildlife and National Association of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife - the court reversed an appeals court decision that required the U.S. EPA to consider the protection of listed species before handing Clean Water Act permitting authority over to the states. The Clean Water Act requires that the EPA transfer permitting powers to the states if nine criteria are met. The Endangered Species Act, ESA, requires that a federal agency must consult with other relevant agencies to ensure its actions do not jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered species or threatened species. The question resolved by the court ruling is whether the ESA consultation requirement is effectively a tenth criterion on which the transfer of Clean Water Act permitting power must be based. The majority concluded that it is not.
You are looking in the wrong place. The court ruling I am referring to came about at the beginning of the month or late last month. Read this one: CNN. From article: Although this does not give the actual court case it does show that one did exist. I am sure that is not enough for you, but that's just too bad.
Having a deadline by which to decide is not the same as mandating that it has to be removed as you stated earlier.
http://www.martenlaw.com/news/?20060913-delist-bald-eagles September 13, 2006 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Must Decide Whether to Delist Bald Eagles by February 2007 By Jessica Ferrell Update: In February 2007, the district court extended the deadline by which the USFWS must decide to delist bald eagles to June 29, 2007. Contoski v. Kempthorne, No. 05-02528, Docket No. 54 (Feb. 2, 2007) Ruling in favor of a private land developer, a federal district court last month ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“USFWS”) to make a final determination by February of next year on a six-year old proposed rule to delist the bald eagle as a “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). Contoski v. Scarlett, No. 05-2528, 2006 WL 2331180 (D. Minn. Aug. 10, 2006). Background The USFWS reported fewer than 500 mating pairs of bald eagles in the lower 48 states in the 1960s. By 1999, there were 5,748 nesting pairs,[1] and experts estimate there are more than 7,000 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the United States today.[2] A 1999 census reported that approximately 658 breeding pairs were located in Washington state, with approximately 405 in Oregon, 681 pairs in Minnesota, 216 in Montana, 160 pairs in California, and 128 pairs in Idaho.[3] In 2001, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (“WDFW”) reported that bald eagles have increased in Washington from approximately 105 nesting pairs in 1980, to about 650 in 2001.[4] The WDFW attributed the bald eagle’s recovery to factors including, but not necessarily limited to, the ban on the pesticide DDT, protection of nesting and roosting habitat through state law, the use of non-toxic shot for waterfowl hunting, and a decrease in shooting and harassment (presumably, due to state and federal laws prohibiting such conduct).[5] Since the bald eagle population has increased since its original listing in 1978, the USFWS published a proposed rule to delist the bald eagle in 1999, for which it has yet to issue a final determination.[6] The USFWS again proposed to remove bald eagles in the lower forty-eight states from the federal list of endangered species in 2006 .[7] Following the failed proposed rule in 1999,[8] the USFWS issued a new notice of the proposed rule to delist and reopened the comment period. The USFWS has yet to issue a final determination on that rule, either.[10] Challenge Brought Plaintiff Edmund Contoski in Contoski v. Scarlett owns property abutting the shore of Sullivan Lake in Morrison County, Minnesota. Mr. Contoski proposed a residential subdivision on his property, and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources notified him of an active bald eagle’s nest on his property by sending him a letter “recommending that there be no development within a 330 feet radius of the nest to ensure compliance with the ESA and the Eagle Protection Act.”[11] Mr. Contoski filed suit against P. Lynn Scarlett, Acting Secretary of the Department of the Interior, USFWS, and H. Dale Hall, in his official capacity as director of the USFWS, on October 31, 2005. He alleged that defendants violated the ESA and the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to perform a non-discretionary duty -- issuing a final determination on the delisting of the bald eagle.[12] Analysis Standing and Habitat Protection Under the ESA and Federal Eagle Protection Act In Contoski v. Scarlett, district judge John R. Tunheimexplained that “[t]he ESA requires that a final determination be made within one year of publication of a rule proposing to determine whether a species is an endangered or threatened species, or to designate or revise critical habitat[,]”[13] and that, “under the Administrative Procedures Act, a plaintiff may seek a court order compelling agency action “unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed.”[14] Defendants conceded during oral argument that their failure to act with respect to the 1999 proposed rule violated 16 U.S.C. § 1533(b)(6)(A), but argued that plaintiff lacked standing to bring the action, and that the action was “prudentially moot” because the USFWS re-opened the comment period.[15] The Court disagreed. Applying the Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife test for standing,[16] the court found that plaintiff demonstrated that: 1) he personally suffered an injury in fact; 2) the injury was fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant; and 3) it was likely that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision in the litigation.[17] In reaching this conclusion, the court engaged in a detailed comparison of the relative protections provided by the ESA and the the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940[18] (“federal Eagle Protection Act”).[19] Defendants argued that plaintiff’s injury could not be redressed by the litigation, because even if the bald eagle were delisted under the ESA, the federal Eagle Protection Act would still protect the species.[20] In turn, Plaintiff argued that the federal Eagle Protection Act “does not prohibit adverse habitat modification, and therefore development of his property could go forward if protection of the bald eagle under the ESA were removed.”[21] The court concluded that Plaintiff’s argument regarding the federal Eagle Protection Act’s failure to prohibit adverse modification of habitat had “no merit,” explaining that both the ESA and the federal Eagle Protection Act “prohibit the take of bald eagles, and the respective definitions of ‘take’ do not suggest that the ESA provides more protection for bald eagles than the Eagle Protection Act.”[22] Despite the court’s rejection of Plaintiff’s argument based on the relative protections afforded by the ESA and the federal Eagle Protection Act, the court still found that Plaintiff’s injury was redressible within the meaning of the Lujan test for standing, “because a favorable decision from this Court would likely remove one regulatory barrier to plaintiff’s development of his property.”[23] With respect to causation, the court rejected Defendants’ argument that Plaintiff’s injury was “not fairly traceable” to them, reasoning instead that “[t]he regulatory burden imposed on plaintiff’s property by the listing of the bald eagle under the ESA is a discrete injury.” The court found that “this injury is fairly traceable to the protection defendants give the eagle by maintaining its status as a listed species under the ESA.”[24] Accordingly, the court found that Mr. Contoski had standing to bring his suit.[25] Prudential Mootness Doctrine Under the “prudential mootness doctrine,” courts “may withhold relief based on considerations of prudence and comity for coordinate branches of government.”[26] The court distinguished the relevant cases by noting that, unlike plaintiffs in those cases, Mr. Contoski had not yet received the remedy he sought, so held that the prudential mootness doctrine did not apply.[27] The Court’s Order Ultimately, the court found that defendants “failed to comply with the mandatory deadlines set forth in the ESA,” so decided that it had to “compel defendants to act.”[28] Considering the equities, the court noted that the information in the 1999 proposed rule is about six years old, and, in light of the ESA mandate that agencies use the “best scientific and commercial data available,” allowed defendants until February 16, 2007 to issue a final determination on the delisting of the bald eagle.[29] Reactions from Parties to the Suit Plaintiffs in the case stating that “the ruling would serve the lawsuit’s intent” because Mr. Contoski “sued the federal government to get a ‘date certain’ on a decision on delisting.”[30] USFWS spokeswoman Valerie Fellows reported that “the agency is working to remove the bald eagle from the list of endangered species, but it wants to ensure the bird will be adequately protected by states and federal laws before doing so.”[31] She is reported as saying, “We are evaluating the court decision and preparing our response to it. However, we are working diligently to delist the bald eagle, because it has met the goals for recovery.”[32] Potential Local and Regional Impacts of Delisting the Bald Eagle The ESA has protected the bald eagle as a threatened species for nearly twenty years.[33] If delisted, the federal Eagle Protection Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918,[34] and the Lacey Act, along with state wildlife laws,[36] would continue to protect the species. In Washington, state law also protects the bald eagle via the Bald Eagle Protection Act (“State Eagle Protection Act”),[37] passed by Washington State Legislature in 1984. Bald eagles have been federally listed as threatened in Washington State since 1978. In 1995, the populations in other states that had been listed as endangered were downlisted to threatened status, but the status in Washington did not change.[38] The State Eagle Protection Act emphasizes protection of nesting and roosting habitat.[39] It requires the establishment of rules defining buffer zones around bald eagle nest and roost sites, and requires those rules to reflect the need for variation with respect to the extent of buffer zones on a case-by-case basis.[40] In 1986, the Washington State Wildlife Commission promulgated Bald Eagle Protection Rules.[41] These rules aim to protect habitat through implementation of Bald Eagle Management Plans.[42] If the bald eagle is delisted federally, the state will respond immediately by downlisting the species under state law to “sensitive” status.[43] Delisting of the bald eagle could affect development projects in Washington and other states with significant eagle populations, possibly by enabling previously enjoined projects to move forward – subject to restrictions imposed by state and federal laws other than the ESA that protect the bald eagle.[44] The WDFW speculates that a change in the eagle’s federal endangered species status would “affect primarily federal permits, such as Army Corps of Engineers permits for activities within bodies of water.”[45]
Reader's digest version: The proposed delisting occured in 1996 and 2006 with no final detemination on the status in 1999 Since the bald eagle population has increased since its original listing in 1978, the USFWS published a proposed rule to delist the bald eagle in 1999, for which it has yet to issue a final determination.[6] The USFWS again proposed to remove bald eagles in the lower forty-eight states from the federal list of endangered species in 2006 .[7] Following the failed proposed rule in 1999,[8] the USFWS issued a new notice of the proposed rule to delist and reopened the comment period. The USFWS has yet to issue a final determination on that rule, either.[10] Contoski filed suit to force a determination of the status under the requirements of the ESA. In Contoski v. Scarlett, district judge John R. Tunheimexplained that “[t]he ESA requires that a final determination be made within one year of publication of a rule proposing to determine whether a species is an endangered or threatened species, or to designate or revise critical habitat[,]”[13] and that, “under the Administrative Procedures Act, a plaintiff may seek a court order compelling agency action “unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed.”[14] The court (not the USSC) ruled the ESA required a determination of status within one year of a proposal and so ruled the detemination must be finalized not that any single decision for or against was to be made. Ultimately, the court found that defendants “failed to comply with the mandatory deadlines set forth in the ESA,” so decided that it had to “compel defendants to act.”[28] Considering the equities, the court noted that the information in the 1999 proposed rule is about six years old, and, in light of the ESA mandate that agencies use the “best scientific and commercial data available,” allowed defendants until February 16, 2007 to issue a final determination on the delisting of the bald eagle.[29]
