US conservation scientists are again demanding that the government rescind a legal ruling which they say severely limits the protection afforded by the Endangered Species Act.

Yesterday 129 researchers wrote to Ken Salazar, the US Interior Secretary, and asked him to change the Bush-era rule (letter pdf). The ruling from 2007 relates to the area over which protection is offered to an animal protected under the act. Specifically, it defines the phrase ‘significant portion of its range’ as related to current range, not historic range.

“This policy is limiting protections for some of the nation’s most endangered species, including the gray wolf, Colorado River cutthroat trout, and others,” says John Vucetich, of Michigan Tech University (press release). “The Endangered Species Act’s definition of endangered species clearly indicates that the purpose of the Act is to restore species to large portions of their former range.”

This issue was also addressed in a Nature News story from November, which noted that this letter was in the offing. The first analysis of the impact of the 2007 ruling – published earlier this year in Conservation Biology – suggested that five Endangered Species Act rulings “substantively relied” on the 2007 legal opinion. In one case it prevented the listing of a species and in four others it was used to “sharply limit protection”.

More

US habitat rule threatens species – Nature News, 3 November 2009

Image: US FWS