Missing, delayed, and old: The status of ESA recovery plans
Author and article information
Abstract
Recovery planning is an essential part of implementing the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), but conservationists and government agencies recognize challenges with the current planning process. Using data from all U.S. domestic and transboundary ESA-listed species, we quantify the completeness, timeliness, age, and other variation among ESA recovery plans over the past 40 years. Among eligible listed taxa (n = 1,548), nearly 1/4 lack final recovery plans; half of plans have taken >5 years to finalize after listing; half of recovery plans are more than 20 years old; and there is significant variation in planning between agencies, and among regions and taxonomic groups. These results are not unexpected given dwindling budgets and an increasing number of species requiring protection, but underscore the need for systematic improvements to recovery planning. We discuss solutions—some already underway—that may address some of the shortcomings and help improve recovery action implementation for threatened and endangered species.
Cite this as
2018. Missing, delayed, and old: The status of ESA recovery plans. PeerJ Preprints 6:e2882v5 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2882v5Author comment
Very minor wording changes for final submission.
Sections
Supplemental Information
Supplemental Information Article S1
A brief note on the opportunities for the US Fish and Wildlife Service and/or National Marine Fisheries Service to seek outside funding for recovery planning.
A PowerPoint presentation of the US Fish and WIldlife Service's Recovery Enhancement Vision
A PowerPoint presentation of the US Fish and WIldlife Service's Recovery Enhancement Vision.
An information sheet on of the US Fish and WIldlife Service's Recovery Planning and Implementation updates (formerly Recovery Enhancement Vision)
An information sheet on of the US Fish and WIldlife Service's Recovery Planning and Implementation updates (formerly Recovery Enhancement Vision).
SI Figure S1. Multispecies recovery plans through time
The proportion of Endangered Species Act recovery plans that covered multiple species, 1980-2017. Calculated as the number of multispecies plans over the total number of plans approved each year.
SI Figure S2. Distribution of time to final recovery plan, by taxonomic group
Box plots showing the median (heavy bar) and interquartile range (box) for time-to-plan (i.e., listing date to final plan), grouped by taxonomic group. This includes only species with final plans, and excludes plan revisions.
SI Figure S3. Distribution of recovery plan ages among taxonomic groups
Boxplots of the ages (in days) of recovery plans, showing the median age (heavy black bar) and the interquartile range (box), by taxonomic group.
Additional Information
Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Jacob Malcom conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Ya-Wei Li performed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
Open Science Framework, osf.io
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZWHV3 (project overall)
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/V73C8 (code component)
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/H4TYH (data component)
Funding
The authors received no funding for this work.
