Steller sea lion population to be removed from threatened species list

For only the second time in the history of the Endangered Species Act, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration has removed a species from the list of threatened and endangered species.

The agency announced Wednesday that the eastern population of Steller sea lions, which roams the Pacific Ocean close to shores from northern California to southeast Alaska, will lose ESA protection.

"We're delighted to see the recovery of the eastern population of Steller sea lions," Jim Balsiger, administrator of NOAA Fisheries' Alaska Region, said. "We'll be working with the states and other partners to monitor this population to ensure its continued health."

According to a March 2008 recovery plan, de-listing of the eastern population would occur if it grew at an average annual rate of three percent for 30 years. That recovery plan asserted a pace of growth equal or greater to that rate since the 1970s.

NOAA said in a statement that, as of 2010, there were more than 70,000 individuals in the eastern population of Steller sea lions.The endangered western population has not only failed to experience anything approaching consistent growth in size, but lost about three-quarters of its size between the late 1970s and the late 1990s.

The estimated census of the combined populations exceeded 250,000 during the 1950s.

De-listing of the population of Eumetopias jubatus nearest to the historic spawning grounds of imperiled Pacific salmonid species will give federal and state agencies more flexibility to kill the animals, which are especially prone to eat salmon migrating up the Columbia River.

The population will remain protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. However, a federal appeals court ruled Sept. 27 that the MMPA would not be violated if slightly fewer than 100 sea lions per year are killed below Bonneville Dam as a way of protecting migrating anadromous fish.

Steller sea lions were first listed under the ESA in Nov. 1990. The eastern population and its western counterpart, which is found roughly from central and southwestern Alaska west to Russia, was recognized in May 1997.

Graphic courtesy NOAA Fisheries.

De-listing of the eastern population of Steller sea lions takes effect Nov. 22.

NOAA removed a population of gray whales from the list of threatened and endangered species in 1994.

Photo courtesy NOAA Fisheries.

DC Circuit upholds polar bear listing under ESA

A federal appeals court ruled last week that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service properly listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

The court rejected a challenge by the state of Alaska and extractive industry interests to a 2008 decision by the George W. Bush administration.

Environmental conservation advocates welcomed the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

"Climate change, habitat degradation and pollution already have polar bears on thin ice. Trophy hunting only exacerbates an already dire situation," Jeff Flocken, a spokesperson for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said in a statement. "Today’s decision to keep the status of the polar bear as threatened is an important step in the fight to safeguard the species against trophy hunting." 

Federal administrative law gives judges little room to second-guess scientific determinations by agencies.

The scientific basis for listing the polar bear as a threatened species is that the species requires Arctic Ocean sea ice for habitat, that the quantity of that ice during the summer months is being reduced as the planet's atmosphere and oceans warm, and that the loss of seasonal sea ice could result a risk that the polar bear will go extinct.

The litigants did not argue that these scientific predicates for the listing decision are incorrect. Instead, the legal arguments essentially amounted to claims that FWS did not correctly conclude that the undisputed scientific facts should lead to a listing decision, or a listing of all polar bear populations; that FWS did not give enough weight to other programs to conserve the species; and that, in any case, the agency did not provide a sufficient explanation for its actions.

The polar bear was added to the federal list of threatened and endangered species after more than three years of evaluation prompted by a Feb. 2005 listing petition.

The District of Columbia Circuit's resolution of the legal fight over whether the polar bear was properly listed as a threatened species does not end all ESA litigation relating to the species. A federal district court recently held that FWS erred in its designation of critical habitat for the polar bear.

Montana governor signs bill banning hunting buffer zones for wolves around national parks

There will be no buffer zone around Yellowstone National Park in which wolves cannot be hunted, at least not if Montana has anything to say about it.

A bill that forbids Montana's wildlife management agency from establishing such zones for the Rocky Mountain gray wolf was signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Steve Bullock.

The legislation takes away a tool that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks considered using to limit the killing of wolves that were collared as part of a federal study. At least nine individual collared wolves that either lived in Yellowstone or recently migrated out of the park were killed in 2012.

The director of Yellowstone National Park had sought the buffer zone to assure the stability of packs that reside primarily in the federal preserve.

A state court judge had refused to allow the Montana Wildlife Commission to impose a wolf hunting buffer zone, enjoining such a step in an order issued last month.

Wolf populations inside Yellowstone have declined by about 25 percent since hunting of the iconic animal resumed in the northern Rockies several years ago.

HB 73 will continue to allow MFWP to close areas to wolf hunting if a quota has been met.

The bill also lowers the cost of a wolf hunting permit from $350 to $50 and allows hunters to obtain more than one wolf permit. It also opens the door to the use of simulated wolf calls as a way to lure the animals closer to a shooter.

HB 73 goes into effect immediately, which means it will likely have a quick impact on the number of Rocky Mountain gray wolves killed in Montana. The wolf hunting season in the Treasure State is underway now.

Hunting of the wolf in Montana became legal in 2011 after President Barack Obama signed legislation that included a provision removing the individuals of the species in Montana, Idaho, and portions of Oregon, Utah, and Washington from the Endangered Species List.

According to the environmental protection advocacy group Predator Defense, at least 1,000 individual wolves in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming have been killed since that decision.

Of that number, 582 wolves have been killed in Idaho, 346 have been killed in Montana, and at least 74 have died at hunters' hands in Wyoming.

The Obama administration acted on its own to remove ESA protection from Wyoming gray wolves last year.

That total does not include several hundred more wolves killed in the northern Rockies, along with Wisconsin and Minnesota, by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services branch and other government predator killing programs.

Wolverine to get Endangered Species Act protection

The Obama administration announced Friday that it wants to add the wolverine, a rare and solitary denizen of the Rocky Mountain region's highest and most remote mountains, to the list of threatened and endangered species.

The species is considered vulnerable to climate change-caused loss of its snowy habitat. Gulo gulo luscus depends on late spring snow cover for dens in which to raise young.

"Scientific evidence suggests that a warming climate will greatly reduce the wolverine’s snow-pack habitat," Noreen Walsh, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Mountain-Prairie Region director, said in a statement.

FWS proposed a listing as a threatened species. It did not suggest designation of any critical habitat for the wolverine. The agency will also prepare an Endangered Species Act regulation that would permit most extractive activities now occurring in wolverine range to continue.

"[FWS] does not consider most activities occurring within the high elevation habitat of the
wolverine, including snowmobiling and backcountry skiing, and land management activities like
timber harvesting and infrastructure development, to constitute significant threats to the wolverine," an agency press release said. "As a result, the Service is proposing a special rule under Section 4(d) of the ESA that, should the species be listed, would allow these types of activities to continue."

The 4(d) rule would allow the killing of protected wolverines as a result of activities other than hunting and trapping.

FWS also wants to re-establish a population of wolverines in Colorado. The agency's proposal to do that under the authority of section 10(j) of the Endangered Species Act would be implemented by Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

In the mainland United States wolverines are known to occur in Washington's North Cascades, portions of the Rocky Mountains in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, and in Oregon's Wallowa Range. During recent years single wolverines have been detected in the Colorado Rockies and in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

FWS indicated in 2010 that the wolverine was eligible for ESA protection but said then that other priorities precluded listing the species.

The agency will accept comments on the proposed listing for 60 days.

Alaska federal court throws out polar bear critical habitat rule

A federal judge in Alaska has rejected a regulation that designated critical habitat for the polar bear.

According to a Jan. 11 article by Associated Press reporter Becky Bohrer:

U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline, in a written order dated Thursday, said the designation was too extensive and presented "a disconnect between the twin goals of protecting a cherished resource and allowing for growth and much needed economic development." He sent the matter back to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to correct "substantive and procedural deficiencies."

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2013/01/11/2749604/judge-vacates-polar-bear-habitat.html#storylink=omni_popular#wgt=pop#storylink=cpy

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service set aside critical habitat for the polar bear in December 2010. The amount of critical habitat - about 187,000 square miles - is larger than California. However, that is only a small portion of Alaska, which encompasses more than 586,000 square miles.

Critical habitat is designated pursuant to section 4 of the Endangered Species Act. It is limited to areas that are occupied by a species when it is designated as threatened or endangered and that contains "physical or biological features essential to conservation" of the species which require special protection or areas outside the area occupied by the species at the time of listing that are "essential for conservation."

A critical habitat designation has no impact on purely private economic activities. Instead, it is relevant only when an activity that might affect a listed species or its habitat occurs on federal property or involves in some way the expenditure of funds from the U.S. treasury.

Ursus maritimus was added to the list of threatened and endangered species in May 2008. Polar bears are threatened because their seasonal ice floe habitat is disappearing as Earth's climate warms.

Photo of polar bear courtesy U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, photo by Terry Debruhn.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2013/01/11/2749604/judge-vacates-polar-bear-habitat.html#storylink=omni_popular#wgt=pop#storylink=cpy

Montana judge ends wolverine trapping

A judge entered an order Monday that effectively ended any possibility of wolverine trapping occurring in Montana this year.

Broadwater and Lewis & Clark County district judge Jeffrey Sherlock extended a temporary restraining order entered last month after the parties asked that a Jan. 10 hearing to decide whether to grant a preliminary injunction be rescheduled.

He set the expiration of the temporary restraining order after the end of the proposed trapping season on Feb. 15.

"Basically, the injunction is in effect and we're going to report back to the judge on March 1 whether we still need it," Matt Bishop, an attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center, said.

By then, the fate of next year's trapping season may be known. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is scheduled to decide by Jan. 18 whether to add the wolverine to the list of endangered and threatened species.

"We're going to have to wait to see what the feds do," Bishop explained. "If they decide to list the wolverine, trapping won't be allowed in Montana."

According to a Dec. 19, 2012 report in Greenwire, the Obama administration is expected to propose Endangered Species Act protection for Gulo gulo luscus before the mid-January deadline.

The animal was designated a candidate for inclusion on the list of threatened and endangered species in  2010.

Montana is the only one of the lower 48 states to allow trapping of wolverines. The state had proposed to allow five of the rare and elusive animals to be killed that way during a season that it planned to start last Dec. 1.

The environmental group plaintiffs in the Montana anti-trapping case include Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Wild Swan, Montana Ecosystem Defense Council, Native Ecosystems Council, Swan View Coalition, WildEarth Guardians, and Footloose Montana.

Photo of wolverine (Gulo gulo luscus) courtesy U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, photo by Steve Kroschel.

Oregonian: Federal inter-agency committee supports grizzly hunting

A federal inter-agency committee tasked with planning the recovery of the grizzly bear said Thursday that it believes hunting of the species should be permitted once it is removed from the list of threatened and endangered species.

The Oregonian (Portland) has the story.

Montana judge halts wolverine trapping

A judge in Montana has blocked the trapping of wolverines in the Treasure State after environmentalists argued that allowing it would further imperil a species already at risk from climate change.

District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock issued an temporary restraining order against the state's wildlife management agency until a hearing on the merits of the lawsuit is held Jan. 10, 2013.

"There's a state law that says the state wildlife agency has to take action to prevent candidate species from being harmed," Matthew Bishop, a lawyer for Western Environmental Law Center who represents the environmentalists, said. "We're arguing that, by allowing trapping, they're making the situation worse, not better."

Bishop was referring to the wolverine's status as a species eligible for inclusion on the federal list of threatened and endangered species, but not included due to administrative concerns.

"The warranted piece of that is the science, the precluded part is more of an administrative decision that 'we're too busy,'" Bishop said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to classify Gulo gulo luscus as a candidate species was announced in Dec. 2010.

A federal judge in Montana has ordered FWS to announce by Friday when it will decide whether to list the wolverine under the ESA. The order sets a Jan. 18, 2013 deadline.

Leith Edgar, a spokesperson for FWS' regional office in Lakewood, Colo., said that he is not currently aware of any reason that the agency would miss the January decision deadline.

There are 300 or fewer wolverines in the entire nation, according to FWS, while about 400 breeding pairs are needed to assure continued genetic viability.

"No one knows how many wolverines there are in Montana," Bishop said. He explained that his clients are concerned that the state of Montana is authorizing trapping without any understanding of how the decision will affect the species.

"The state doesn't have any population data or any surveys to monitor the wolverine," he said.

One 2009 study indicated that there may be as few as 35 breeding wolverine individuals in the region that includes Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.

Dr. Kevin McKelvey, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service at its Rocky Mountain Research Station, explained that counting wolverines in the wild is a difficult logistical and financial challenge.

"It would be probably several million bucks to do it," he said.

 McKelvey said that an alternative approach to counting individuals that involves assessing the extent of habitat available to the species is not likely to be a reliable method of obtaining an accurate census.

"I wouldn’t do that myself because those numbers tend to be really errant," he said. " One problem is the area might be different from what you thought it was. Another one is they’re not everywhere where there’s habitat."

George Pauley, the wildlife management section chief for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, rejected a request for FWP data on wolverine numbers in the state and declined to comment on the method by which the agency counts them.

Aside from the species' population numbers, several studies indicate that the animal will be significantly affected as climate change proceeds. A 2010 paper showed that, as the snow upon which wolverines depend for dens melts earlier in the spring, the extent of the species' range will decline throughout the contiguous United States. The study projected that the animal would lose about a quarter of its range by mid-century.

Another study from 2011 indicates that climate change will cause fragmentation of the wolverine's populations and reduce available habitat by as much as two-thirds by the latter part of the century.

The problem, according to McKelvey, is that,while it's clear that ongoing climate change may harm the species, researchers have a difficult time figuring out the appropriate baseline against which to measure current climate change impacts on the wolverine.

"Thirty or fifty years out, significant declines in snow pack in these areas and, presumably, a decline in wolverines is likely," he explained. "The issue is muddled by the fact that we either wiped out, or came close to wiping out, wolverines in the lower 48 [states] by about 1930. Since that time, their population has generally expanded and, as far as we can tell, it’s still expanding."

Given the uncertainty about the extent of the population of wolverines in Montana, the impact of trapping on the species is not easy to determine.

“I really do think our game management agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and folks like that who have to make those calls, there's still uncertainty out there," McKelvey said. 

The Treasure State had set an annual trapping quota of five wolverines, according to a FWP webpage. The season was to run until Feb. 15.

Montana is the only U.S. state that permits hunters to trap wolverines.

Environmentalists filed the lawsuit in October after a previous petition aimed at convincing FWP to hold off on a trapping season failed.

Photo courtesy National Park Service.

NOTE: This story also appears on the Examiner.com website. Here is a link to it.

Lawsuits challenging Wyoming wolf management pile up

Another lawsuit attacking the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's decision to grant Wyoming essentially unrestricted discretion in the way it manages the state's gray wolf population has been filed.

The complaint was filed Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C. by the Humane Society of the United States and the Fund for Animals. It follows a lawsuit filed Nov. 26 by a coalition of environmental groups in the U.S. district court in Denver and another case, also filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, by four prominent national environmental advocacy organizations.

"The agency's decision to strip Wyoming wolves of federal protection is biologically reckless and contrary to the requirements of the Endangered Species Act," Jonathan Loworn, an in-house lawyer for HSUS, said in a statement. "Wyoming's regressive wolf management plan is reminiscent of a time when bounties paid by state and federal governments triggered mass killings that nearly exterminated wolves from the lower 48 states."

FWS announced on Aug. 31 that gray wolf populations in Wyoming had fully recovered. The agency removed all gray wolves in the state from the list of endangered and threatened species and approved a management plan that commits Wyoming to maintaining 150 individuals and 15 breeding pairs within its borders.

Environmentalists were harshly critical of the agency's decision, predicting that it could lead to the extirpation of the wolf in Wyoming.

"Wyoming's anti-wolf policies take the state backward, to the days when wolf massacres nearly wiped out wolves in the lower 48 states," Jenny Harbine, an attorney at Earthjustice, a public interest law firm that frequently represents environmental and animal welfare advocacy organizations, said in a statement. "Our nation rejected such predator extermination efforts when we adopted the Endangered Species Act."

Harbine was referring to policies that overtly encouraged the mass slaughter of wolves and extirpated them from all of the nation except Alaska and parts of Minnesota.

The northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf was included on the list of threatened and endangered species in 1974.

FWS' decision to remove the gray wolf population in Wyoming from that list, and to delegate management authority to the state, followed the removal of gray wolf populations in Idaho and Montana from the list of endangered and threatened species via a "rider" to a budget bill enacted by Congress in 2011.

That legislation followed a court decision that negated a Bush administration effort to remove ESA protection from gray wolves in the northern Rockies.

A website maintained by the state's Department of Game & Fish says that there were more than 300 wolves in the state at the time its management plan went into effect. At least 50 of those wolves have been killed since then.

They include one female who was the leader of a pack that frequented Yellowstone National Park's Lamar Valley and a common sight to tourists. She was killed by a hunter outside of the national park on Thursday.

U.S. Department of Justice lawyers have asked the federal district courts in Denver and Washington, D.C. to transfer the first two challenges to FWS' decision to approve Wyoming's wolf management plan to a federal court in Cheyenne.

Photo courtesy U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; photo by Tracy Brooks.

Feds to review status of Preble's meadow jumping mouse

A tiny Rocky mountain region rodent's status as a species protected by the Endangered Species Act will be reviewed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, raising hopes among developers that a barrier to land use will be removed.

In a notice published Monday in the Federal Register, the agency said it would examiner whether Zapus 
hudsonius preblei would continue to be considered threatened.

FWS is re-visiting the question whether to strip the species of protection on the basis of two de-listing petitions filed nine years ago.

The petitions to remove the mouse from the list of federally protected species were filed in 2003 by the state of Wyoming and an organization known as Coloradans for Water Conservation and Development.

Environmentalists are likely to object to any attempt to remove any or all of the species' populations from beneath the federal shield.

"There is no new information to support de-listing in Wyoming," Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an email message.

CBD is the organization that initially requested listing of the Preble's meadow jumping mouse in 1994.

Preble's meadow jumping mice are endemic from southeastern Wyoming south through Colorado's Front Range area. According to information posted on a FWS website, the animal depends on riparian corridors and densely-packed and undisturbed nearby grasslands for habitat. A nocturnal animal, the mouse does not range more than a hundred yards from the perimeter of a stream floodplain.

The Preble's meadow jumping mouse was originally added to the list of threatened and endangered species in May 1998.

The agency has previously attempted to eliminate the Preble's meadow jumping mouse from the list of endangered and threatened speices. In July 2008 FWS de-listed the mouse in Wyoming. A federal judge voided that decision in July 2011 and that animal was put back on the roster of safeguarded species the next month.

FWS will combine a periodic review of the species' status mandated by the same court order with its process of deciding again whether the 2003 de-listing petitions are meritorious.

Image courtesy Colorado Natural Heritage Program (a project of Colorado State University).

Revised critical habitat designation for northern spotted owl released

 The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service officially threw in the towel today on earlier efforts to scale back habitat protections for the endangered northern spotted owl.

The federal agency primarily responsible for administering the Endangered Species Act designated 9.6 million acres in northern California, Oregon, and Washington as critical habitat under the law.

"We applied the best available science to identify the remaining habitat essential to the spotted owl’s recovery – and to ensure that our recovery partners have the clarity and flexibility they need to make effective land management decisions,” Robyn Thorson, FWS' Pacific Region Director, said in a statement. 

The designation includes 9.29 million acres administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the U.S. Department of Interior. 

An addition 291,570 acres of state-owned land is also included.

Environmental organizations applauded the new designation, but expressed concern that it did not include any privately-owned land within its reach.

"In restoring extensive protections on federal lands, today’s decision, protecting millions of acres of habitat for the spotted owl, marks the end of a dark chapter in the Endangered Species Act’s implementation when politics were allowed to blot out science,” Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “It is, however, deeply disappointing that the Obama administration has elected to exclude all private and most state lands, which are absolutely essential to the recovery of the spotted owl and dozens of other wildlife species.”

The George W. Bush administration had attempted to scale back critical habitat protections for the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina). It sought to eliminate about 1.5 million acres of the species' original 1992 critical habitat designation of about 7 million acres.

A 2008 report by the Interior department's inspector general concluded that the the agency's then-deputy assistant secretary in charge of wildlife management had unlawfully intervened in the process leading to that decision.

In 2010 a federal court rejected the Bush administration's changes to the northern spotted owl's critical habitat designation.

The northern spotted owl is a noctural avian species. It depends on old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest for habitat and is threatened primarily by timber extraction from those lands. 

The new critical habitat designation continues to permit logging in the species' habitat, a situation that drew criticism from a leading owl expert. 

"Independent scientific peer reviews have been crystal clear on owl recovery being tied to protection of old forest habitat especially as competition with the more aggressive barred owl increases and climate change further stresses spotted owl populations,” Dominick DellaSala, a biologist at Geos Institute in Ashland, Ore., and a member of FWS' 2006-2008 northern spotted owl recovery team, said. 

The species was listed as threatened in 1990 after a long and contentious court battle and one of the few successful efforts to invoke the ESA's "God squad" provision allowing a panel of federal officials to override the law's protections.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

 

 

Fish & Wildlife Service announces annual list of candidate species

The principal federal agency responsible for administering the Endangered Species Act announced Tuesday its annual list of species eligible for listing and included the smallest number of candidates in more than a decade.

According to a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service news release, there are now 192 species of plants and animals that meet the criteria for protection as a threatened or endangered species under federal law.

The 2012 list contains two new additions - the Peñasco least chipmunk (Tamius minimus atristriatus) and the Cumberland arrow darter (Etheostoma sagitta sagitta).

The Peñasco least chipmunk is native to two mountain ranges in New Mexico. It lives in Ponderosa pine forests and is now known only in a small area near Sierra Blanca. The animal's survival is threatened by the near-total elimination of the Ponderosa pine forest upon which it relies.

The Cumberland arrow darter is a fish of about 116 millimeters in length. It's range includes the upper basin of its namesake river in Tennessee and Kentucky. The fish relies on small pools, or adjacent areas, that have cobble-filled bottoms. This habitat is easily damaged by water pollution, a common result of coal mining in the area; loss of stream-side plants; channelization; and deforestation in the watershed.    

Three species that were on last year's list have been removed. They include the elongate mud meadow springsnail, Christ’s paintbrush, and bog asphodel.

FWS is obligated by the terms of an agreement to settle litigation challenging its compliance with the ESA's candidate species provisions to eliminate a backlog of listing decisions by 2017.
 

House GOP shows signs it wants to attack Endangered Species Act again

A House committee hearing in early December may indicate that the Republican-dominated lower chamber of Congress may plan an assault on the Endangered Species Act.

At the hearing, which was held Dec. 6, Natural Resources Committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Washington, argued that the Endangered Species Act is not effectively working as a tool to recover vulnerable species to a sustainable population size because it allows concerned citizens and organizations too much access to the courts.

“The purpose of the ESA is to recover endangered species – yet this is where the current law is failing – and failing badly," Hastings said. "In my opinion, one of the greatest obstacles to the success of the ESA is the way in which it has become a tool for excessive litigation. Instead of focusing on recovering endangered species, there are groups that use the ESA as a way to bring lawsuits against the government and block job-creating projects.”

The Republican caucus in the House last tried to force through major changes to the ESA while the party had the majority in both chambers between 1995-2007. However, one of the party's leading advocates of weakening the law, Richard Pombo of California, was defeated in his 2006 reelection bid.

The committee indicated in a press release that the oversight hearing was the first in a planned series aimed at taking a "fair look at the ways in which the ESA is working well and areas where it could be improved and updated."

Obama administration: No endangered status unless species nearly extinct in wild, and polar bear doesn't qualify

The Obama administration told a federal judge in Washington, D.C. Wednesday that a species may be considered "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act only if it is on the very precipice of disappearing from its native habitat.

Because the polar bear isn't that close to extinction, a government lawyer said, its status as a threatened species should stand.

The argument came in a hearing held on a challenge to the administration's decision to stick with the George W. Bush administration's 2008 designation of the polar bear's status under the ESA.

Listing the polar bear as "threatened" does not require the administration to protect its habitat from adverse impacts, whether from oil drilling or climate change. An "endangered" listing would impose that duty on the government.

Judge Emmet Sullivan seemed to indicate that he was not certain whether the courts have any statutory authority to force the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to do more for the polar bear.

Kassie Siegel, a lawyer representing environmental groups that are challenging the threatened listing, bluntly told the veteran jurist that the only way to save the polar bear is to require "deep and rapid greenhouse gas reductions."

However, the regulation that creates the dichotomy in the treatment of a listed species' habitat appears to stand in the way of such a mandate from a federal judge.

The rule, which former interior secretary Dirk Kempthorne issued on the same day he announced the polar bear's listing as a threatened species, aims to prevent the ESA from being used as a tool to force a lowering of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

President Obama's secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, has not attempted to revise or revoke it.

The environmental group plaintiffs maintain that, because the sea ice upon which polar bears depend for hunting is expected to continue disappearing, the species must be considered endangered.

Sea ice in the Arctic, which is essential habitat for the polar bear during the summer months, is being lost as Earth's atmosphere warms. The National Snow and Ice Data Center has reported that the rate of melt is increasing during every month of the year.

Elements of industry and the state of Alaska argue that the polar bear does not merit even a threatened species designation. They do not dispute that the sea ice habitat upon which polar bears depend is disappearing, but maintain that its loss does not necessarily mean that the species will go extinct.

Washington, on the other hand, seemed to take the position that the listing provisions of the ESA is not the critical mechanism available in an effort to save the polar bear.

Clifford Stevens, the government lawyer representing the Fish and Wildlife Service in the case, told Sullivan that the recent critical habitat designation is the tool upon which the administration will principally rely.

Photo courtesy U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari in case upholding spotted owl critical habitat

The U.S. Supreme Court sidestepped Tuesday an opportunity to review a lower court decision that upheld the designation of millions of acres of land as critical habitat for the threatened Mexican spotted owl.

The denial of a petition for certiorari came in a case filed by cattle ranchers in the southwest.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in June 2010 that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had provided a valid economic analysis in support of the designation and did not violate the Endangered Species Act by including in the designation land that did not contain any owls.

In general, the ESA requires USFWS to designate critical habitat for a listed species at the time of listing.

In the case of the Mexican spotted owl, the administration of former President George W. Bush designated 8.6 million acres in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah as critical habitat in 2004.

The species was added to the list of threatened and endangered species in 1993. A previous critical habitat designation by the Clinton administration was withdrawn in 1998.

The Mexican spotted owl (Strix occidentalis lucida) is the smallest of the spotted owl species, which include the California spotted owl and the northern spotted owl. The species lives in old growth forests in mountains and canyons located in a range extending from southern Utah and Colorado through Arizona and New Mexico and into west Texas and northern and central Mexico.

A predatory animal, Mexican spotted owls are nocturnal. Climate change is the most significant risk to their forest habitat.

The case is Arizona Cattle Growers Association v. Salazar.

Photo courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Feds say there are more Mexican wolves in Ariz., N. Mex.

The population of Mexican wolf in Arizona and New Mexico is rising, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

There were, at the end of 2010, 50 of the animals in the two states. That's up from 42 at the end of 2009.

Fourteen individuals are pups. At the end of 2009 there were seven wild pups in the region.

The total number of individual Mexican wolves reported by the annual survey is considered a minimum estimate of the population.

It is possible that other individuals that are not collared are roaming the region and were not counted during the fixed-wing aircraft- and helicopter-based census, which relies on telemetry data and actual sightings.

"We are moving forward with our recovery planning effort -- and our strategically planned releases this year -- and staying focused on our goal of having a genetically-viable and sustainable population of wild Mexican wolves in the Southwest," Fish and Wildlife Service Southwest Region director Benjamin Tuggle said in a statement.

Despite the increase in the census of Mexican wolves since the end of 2009, the agency remains far short of the original recovery goal established when the 13 members of the species were re-introduced to the wild in 1998.

At that time the Fish and Wildlife Service said it would achieve a population of 100 individuals, including 18 breeding pairs, by now.

The latest count is also a decline from the population at the end of 2006. At that time there were at least 59 individuals in the region.

Federal wildlife managers also announced that a breeding pair of Mexican wolves has been released into the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area that stretches across the Arizona-New Mexico border.

It is the first release of individuals into the wild since 2008.

Canis lupus baileyi, the smallest gray wolf subspecies on the continent, has been listed as an endangered species since 1976.

The animal was extirpated in the wild by the 1950s. Native to the Sonoran and Chihuahan deserts, it was re-introduced into Arizona in March 1998.

Mexican wolves are bred at 47 facilities around the country. About 340 individuals are known to be alive, both in captivity and in the wild.

A bill pending in the U.S. House of Representatives would prevent the Mexican wolf, as well as other Gray wolves, from continuing to receive the protection of the Endangered Species Act.

The Fish and Wildlife Service terminated in 2009 a policy that had led to the removal from the wild of any Mexican wolf involved in the killing of three livestock animals.

Washington sets critical habitat for polar bear

The icy home of the polar bear received additional legal protection Wednesday as the Obama administration designated nearly 200,000 acres as critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act.

The decision could pose an insurmountable obstacle to additional oil and gas drilling off the Alaska coast, as the designation includes large areas of sea ice.

“This critical habitat designation enables us to work with federal partners to ensure their actions within its boundaries do not harm polar bear populations,” the Interior Department's assistant secretary for fish, wildlife, and parks, Tom Strickland, said in a statement. “Nevertheless, the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of its sea ice habitat caused by human-induced climate change. We will continue to work toward comprehensive strategies for the long-term survival of this iconic species.”

Nearly all of the protected acreage is ice on the surface of the Chukshi and Beaufort seas, which are sought-after exploration zones for the oil and gas industry.

The designation means that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will have to decide whether extraction activity would damage the polar bear's habitat or set back its recovery before necessary exploration permits are granted.

About four percent of the lands protected by the decree are used by polar bears for denning and protection from human disturbance.

The administration lowered the amount of protected acreage by about 13,000 square miles from the total proposed in Oct. 2009. FWS also excluded five U.S. Air Force radar stations and two native villages from the area covered by the designation.

Polar bears cannot survive without sea ice. They use it as a platform to hunt seals, to seek mates, and occasionally to build maternity dens in which to raise cubs.

Private lands are not affected by the designation unless the owner seeks a federal permit, plans to use federal funds for a project, or the federal government itself engages in activities on it.

Fish and Wildlife Service releases annual list of candidate species

Five species of plant and animal are new candidates for protection under the Endangered Species Act, according to a notice issued today by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

One species, a mammal native to California called the Palm Springs roundtail ground squirrel, was removed from the list.

The changes mean that there are now 251 species of plants and animals on the candidate species list.

Candidates for listing meet the statutory criteria for protection under the ESA but are not added to the roster of endangered and threatened species because the agency's resources are needed to list higher priority species.

FWS can act to conserve candidate species through extension of grants to states, territorial governments, and private entities. In addition, the agency has entered into 110 Candidate Conservation Agreements under which the parties agree to take specific actions, or avoid specific actions, with the aim of reducing the threat to a candidate species' survival.

More than 100 candidate species are managed under Candidate Conservation Agreements.

Feds to take over Idaho wolf management

A television station in Montana reported Thursday that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will take over management of gray wolf populations in southern Idaho.

The report by KECI said that the federal action is in response to Idaho Gov. Butch Otter's decision to abandon state management of the species.

Otter, a Republican, objects to Interior secretary Ken Salazar's decision to forbid a public hunt of gray wolves in the Gem State.

In aletter to Salazar dated Oct. 18, Otter wrote that Idaho has skillfully managed wildlife within its borders, including "your wolves."

Gray wolves north of I-90 in Idaho are protected by the Endangered Species Act. Those south of that highway are not, and it is that population that will now be managed by FWS.

A spokesperson for FWS said Thursday that the agency will investigate all reports of wolf depredation.

Photo courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, photo by Carter Niemeyer.

LA Times: Northern Rockies pols attack gray wolf protections

The Los Angeles Times has posted an informative article about at least two efforts underway in Congress to prevent protection of northern Rockies gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act.

In 2007 the Bush administration removed gray wolves in Montana and Idaho from the endangered species list. But a federal judge recently held that the decision violated the Endangered Species Act because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service separated populations in Wyoming from those two states for regulatory purposes.

In August Judge Donald Molloy ordered the entire population in the northern Rockies returned to the list.

The original recovery target for gray wolves in the region was 300 individuals. There are now more than 1,700 in the three states.

The bills that either are, or will be, before Congress would, if enacted into law, mark the first time that a federal wildlife agency is ordered by statute to remove a species from the protection of the Endangered Species Act.