Posted on October 27, 2016 by Seth Jaffe
In April, Judge Dana Christensen vacated the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to withdraw its proposed listing of a distinct population segment of the North American wolverine as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). Bowing to the inevitable, the Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) has published in the Federal Register a formal acknowledgement that the Court’s vacatur of the withdrawal of the proposed listing returns the situation to the status quo.
In other words, the proposed rule that would have listed the wolverine distinct population segment (“DPS”) is back in play. Specifically, the FWS announced that
“we will be initiating an entirely new status review of the North American wolverine,to determine whether this DPS meets the definition of an endangered or threatened species under the Act, or whether the species is not warranted for listing.
FWS also reopened the comment period on the proposed listing and invited the public to provide comment, identifying nine specific areas in which it sought comments, including
"Information on the projected and reasonably likely impacts of climate change on the wolverine and its habitat, including the loss of snowpack and impacts to wolverine denning habitat.
This is all well and good and certainly required under Judge Christensen’s order, but neither Judge Christensen nor FWS has the tools necessary to address the core issue here, i.e., the unwieldy nature of the ESA. It simply wasn’t designed to solve all of the ecological problems resulting from climate change.
It would be nice if Congress weren’t completely dysfunctional.
Tags: Defenders of Wildlife v. Jewell, Fish and Wildlife Service, FWS, wolverine
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