Written by Matthew Brown and John Flesher
Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. — Since the Endangered Species Act was passed 50 years ago, more than 1,700 plants, mammals, fish, insects and other species are endangered or threatened with extinction in the United States. It is listed as having. But federal data reveals striking disparities in how much funding is allocated to save different biological kingdoms.
Of the approximately $1.2 billion annually spent on endangered and endangered species, about half goes toward restoring just two fish species: West Coast salmon and steelhead trout. Tens of millions of dollars have also been spent on other well-known animals, including manatees, right whales, grizzly bears, and spotted owls.
But huge amounts of money spent on a handful of species mean other species are being ignored, sometimes for decades, as they face extinction.
At the bottom of the spending list was a small white snail in Virginia, on which people spent $100 in 2020, according to the most recent data available. According to government records, the subterranean snail has only been sighted once in the past 35 years, but that still leaves more than 200 endangered plants, animals, fish and other creatures without any cost. It’s one step ahead of the curve.
As climate change poses increasing threats to life on Earth, increasing the number of species eligible for protection under the Endangered Species Act, government officials are often required to do so under the Act. have difficulty implementing recovery measures.
Some scientists even argue that we should reduce spending on expensive efforts that may not work, and redirect that money to declining species with lower-cost recovery plans.
“A fraction of the budget spent on spotted owls could save an entire species of cacti, which are less charismatic but cost orders of magnitude less,” said Leah Gerber, a conservation science professor at Arizona State University. Stated.
An Associated Press analysis of 2020 data found that fish accounted for 67% of spending, and a large portion of it in dozens of salmon and steelhead populations in California, Oregon and Washington. There was found. Mammals were a close second with 7% of spending, followed by birds at about 5%. Insects received only 0.5% and plants about 2%. These percentages do not include money distributed among multiple species.
Species that aren’t spending at all include stoneflies threatened by climate change in Montana’s Glacier National Park, stocky California tiger salamanders that have lost space for development, and native habitat themes. It included flowering plants such as shrub lupines around Orlando, Florida, which have been converted to . park.
These spending inequalities have persisted for many years and reflect a combination of biological realities and political pressures. Salmon and steelhead are widespread and surrounded by large hydroelectric dams, making it expensive to restore their populations. They also have a wide political base with Native American tribes and commercial fishing rights holders who want to restore their fisheries.
For decades, Congress has sent billions of dollars to agencies such as the Bonneville Power Administration, which operates dams along rivers where fish once migrated upstream to spawn. The money will go towards fish passages around the dam, habitat restoration projects, scientific monitoring and other needs.
More than half of the species protected under the Endangered Species Act are plants, but when the landmark protection law was passed in 1973, plants It is said that almost the entire world was excluded from the law. A passage from his 1988 study published in Pace Environmental Law Review.
When the bill passed the Senate, plants were initially excluded by opponents led by influential Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska. Campbell said it was added back at the 11th hour after lobbying by Lee Talbot, a botanist at the Smithsonian Institution and senior scientist at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Botanists at the time proposed that more than 2,500 plants were at risk of extinction in the future. But most were left without protection because federal authorities failed to act by Congress’s deadline.
Currently, more than 900 trees, ferns, flowers, and other plants are protected. In total, we received approximately $26 million in 2020.
“They’re catching up in numbers, but in terms of funding and attention, they still don’t have their fair share,” said Campbell, a longtime environmental advocate who now works at the Center for Invasive Species Prevention. Told. ”
Gerber and others said most factories received less money than recommended in the turnaround plan. Researchers say this has a direct impact. Species tend to decline if they receive less funding than they need, but are more likely to recover if they receive enough funding.
Gerber proposed redirecting some of the funding from species such as bull trout, gophers and northern spotted owls, which receive more benefits than the recovery plan calls for, to species that receive little or nothing. Her ideas have sparked a backlash from some conservationists.
Former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Commissioner Jamie Rappaport Clark said it’s distracting to debate how to allocate scarce resources to rescuing endangered species.
“The question is not where the money goes,” said Clark, who is now president of Defenders of Wildlife. “The problem is, there’s not nearly enough of it.”
Gerber said she doesn’t want anything to go extinct, but that a strategic approach is needed because resources are scarce.
“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking,” she added. “We need to take action.”
Wildlife officials say they are trying to do just that with funding for endangered species included in the Climate Change Act that President Joe Biden signed last year.
That includes $62.5 million to allow the agency to hire biologists to develop recovery plans to guide future conservation efforts for 32 species initially and up to 300 over the next few years. There is.
Among them are a colorful fish known as the candy darter that lives in the rivers of the southeastern United States, a flowering shrub in the Virgin Islands called marron bacola, the Panama City crayfish in Florida, and the pocket-sized Stevens kangaroo rat in Southern California. It is included.
Officials said the additional funding is intended to provide some relief after the agency’s environmental review staff has declined by 20% over the past two decades, even as new species have been listed. The increased funding is especially important because more than half of the agency’s existing recovery plans are more than 20 years old, said Lindsey Rosa, vice president of conservation research at Defenders of Wildlife.
The law also includes benefits for hundreds of species in four groups that officials say have historically been underfunded: Hawaiian and Pacific Island plants, butterflies and moths, freshwater shellfish, and desert fish in the southwestern United States. It also included $5.1 million for potential restoration projects.
“Each of these species is part of this larger web of life,” Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams said in an interview. “They’re all important.”
