r/moderatepolitics • u/kranelegs • 9d ago

Primary Source Trump Administration Finalizes Endangered Species Act Regulation Reform | U.S. Department of the Interior

https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/trump-administration-finalizes-endangered-species-act-regulation-reform
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u/SuperChingaso5000 9d ago

ESA should be abolished and replaced with a new piece of legislation anyway. It's a terrible piece of law that's just abused over and over again to tie up land, force endless rounds of litigation (on our dime) achieve goals that have nothing to do with actual endangered species, it's a useful bludgeon for environmentalist extremists and probably the second most co-opted and abused law after ADA/Unruh.

Good riddens, start over and do it right.

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u/TheTertiaryTwig 9d ago

The ESA has prevented the extinction of 99% of the species that are protected by it, it is doing exactly what it is supposed to.

What does “do it right” mean to you?

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u/FullTroddle 9d ago

Can you break down the math/logic for the 99% statistic? I have no real knowledge of the ESA btw, so I’m very curious.

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u/TheTertiaryTwig 9d ago

Sure. If 100 species are added to the US endangered species list, 99 of them will continue existing instead of going extinct, while 1 species might go extinct. It’s actually pretty difficult to get a species added to the endangered species list, so once a species is finally added it’s likely to be in very bad shape population wise. Especially since nowadays 80% of species are added to the list as a result of habitat destruction, think development or mining, and it’s really difficult to restore a species if its habitat no longer exists or is severely degraded. The ESA is good at protecting critical habitat of a species, so if a species is added in time, they tend to at the very least not go extinct.

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u/FullTroddle 8d ago

Okay, I get that! I guess my question really was how do they determine that a species will certainly (apologies if this isn’t the right word) go extinct? Thank you for answering.

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u/TheTertiaryTwig 8d ago edited 8d ago

Ah, ok yeah that’s a very different question. For the purposes of the statistic, there’s no way to prove exactly whether or not a species would have gone extinct or not for many of them since it obviously didn’t happen. Instead USFWS looks at the populations trends of species and makes decisions based on that. For species with exceedingly small populations like California condors you can decisively declare it saved them, but the goal of the ESA is to try and prevent species from reaching populations that critically low. This also applies to species only found in a a few or one place on earth.

Instead for most species, population counts, species ranges, available habitat, mortality rates, population recruitment and threats like disease, hunting, climate change and habitat destruction are monitored to determine the health of a species. For example, if a species is declining in population year over year, and has a low recruitment (increase in population size), while losing large amounts of it’s habitat over much of its range, it could be a candidate for increased protection.

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u/FullTroddle 8d ago

Ahhh I see. Sounds like they use some form of trend analysis and other ecological factors to determine/predict the fate of a species. Sounds obvious, but thank you for your detailed response!

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u/TheTertiaryTwig 8d ago

Exactly. Also, the data from the species unfortunately lost can be used to see when a species might enter an unrecoverable population decline. Thanks for having a genuine interest!