A Colorado cactus once thought vulnerable to oil shale development has now become the first plant to be removed from Endangered Species Act protections during the current Trump administration.
Crediting a mix of “ongoing conservation efforts” and “improved scientific data,” the Fish and Wildlife Service announced its final decision to delist the previously threatened Colorado hookless cactus. The move completes a proposal initiated by the Biden administration in 2023.
“We determined that oil shale deposit development and gold mining, predation, herbicide and pesticide application, or collection and commercial trade are not threats to the existence of the species even though they were identified as such in the 1979 listing rule,” the FWS states in a final rule to be published Thursday in the Federal Register.
When the federal agency added the small, barrel-shaped cactus to the list of threatened and endangered species in 1979, it explained that the general region where the species occurs was “potentially subject to future development of oil shale deposits or gold mining.”
