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Defenders Safeguards Protections for Threatened and Endangered Species

Alaska Penninsula (Photo: USFWS / Mark Emery) In 2008, the outgoing Bush administration announced plans for disastrous changes that the outgoing Bush/Cheney administration had made around the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) -- changes that threatened the nearly 1,300 wildlife species protected by this bedrock conservation law.

These changes would have limited the ability of experts at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to review actions of federal agencies that could harm endangered and threatened species under Section 7 of the ESA.

The Section 7 consultation requirements are the heart of the protections of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). By requiring federal agencies to work with the FWS and NMFS to insure that an agency’s actions do not jeopardize the existence of a species or adversely change or destroy its habitat, the ESA’s consultation requirement provides a critical safety net for wildlife that other environmental reviews simply cannot match.

For months, Defenders of Wildlife worked with Congress and the Obama administration and in the media to reverse the Bush administration’s disastrous changes. And, in April 2009, our work paid off when the Department of the Interior and the Department of Commerce announced that they would formally withdraw the Bush/Cheney changes.

In the two days before the decision, more than 37,000 dedicated Defenders activists called on the Obama administration to reverse changes that would have gutted enforcement of the Endangered Species Act.