The US’s Endangered Species Act is even more effective than we thought. We already knew it has helped save many terrestrial plants and animals. Now it’s also been shown to have helped many marine mammals and turtles.
The act provides considerable protection for the 2000 species assessed to be endangered or likely to become endangered, such as the iconic bald eagle. It has been estimated that 227 species would have gone extinct by 2006 were it not for the 1973 act.
But no one had done an overall assessment of how well it has worked for the 60-odd marine mammals and turtles listed, including the Antillean manatee, the sei whale and Kemp’s ridley turtle. Now Abel Valdivia of the Center for Biological Diversity in California and colleagues have crunched the numbers for 31 populations of 19 different species.
The team concludes that 24 of these populations are recovering, five are stable and just two continue to decline. The recovering ones include the Guadalupe fur seal, the green sea turtle and the Pacific population of fin whales, which has increased from under 2000 to nearly 10,000. The recovering populations have all been listed as under threat for 20 years or more.
However, the act – long attacked by critics who say it holds back development – is itself endangered. Last July, the Trump administration made proposals that would greatly weaken it.
If the proposed changes were in place in the 1970s, the bald eagle would be extinct today, Brett Hartl at the Center for Biological Diversity said at the time the proposals were made. “These proposals would slam a wrecking ball into the most crucial protections for our most endangered wildlife.”