The US Endangered Species Act (ESA) is our nation’s most effective law to protect at-risk species from extinction, with a stellar success rate: 99% of species listed on it have avoided extinction.
Louisa Wilcox of the Natural Resources Defense Council is grateful to the ESA for the continued existence of grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park. “After listing, the government cleaned up the massive garbage problems in Yellowstone Park, which reduced the habituation of bears to human foods—a pattern that often leads to grizzly deaths,” she reports. Commercial sheep herds were moved out of core grizzly habitat while hundreds of miles of roads on public lands in the region were closed to improve the iconic bears’ chances for survival. The result: The Yellowstone grizzly population more than doubled while human/bear interactions and incursions by hungry grizzlies onto local ranches have declined. “So, by any reckoning, the Yellowstone grizzly bear story is an ESA success,” concludes Wilcox.
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Populations are monitored over time to determine whether a given species is recovering. When species are considered recovered, they are removed from the list. Viewed as the gold standard for conservation legislation, the ESA is one of the world’s most effective laws for preventing and reversing the decline of endangered and threatened wildlife. In 2016, more listed species were found to be partially or completely recovered than in any previous year since the ESA became law.
The recent study’s findings echo the results of an earlier (2006) analysis in the Northeastern U.S. that found some 93 percent of federally listed species there were stabilized or improving since getting ESA protection and 82 percent were on track to meet recovery goals. “When judged in the light of meeting recovery plan timelines for recovery, the Endangered Species Act is remarkably successful,” says CBD. “Few laws of any kind can boast a 90 percent success rate.”
In 2006 we have 1,115-1,657 tigers owing to the project the number of tigers increased to 2,603-3,346 in 2018.
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The endangered listing of Asian Elephant under the ESA banned the trade of their ivory in the US. Despite these ongoing threats extinction has thus far been prevented.
