Missing, delayed, and old: The status of ESA recovery plans
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Conservation Biology, Science Policy, Natural Resource Management
- Keywords
- Endangered Species Act, recovery plan, US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, threatened species, endangered species
- Copyright
- © 2018 Malcom et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Missing, delayed, and old: The status of ESA recovery plans. PeerJ Preprints 6:e2882v5 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2882v5
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.
Author Comment
Very minor wording changes for final submission.
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.