A House panel this week will dissect the Endangered Species Act’s treatment of populations designated as “experimental.”
With a stated intention of “understanding the consequences of experimental populations under the ESA,” the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will address one of the landmark environmental law’s more intriguing — and at times controversial — facets.
Section 10(j) of the ESA authorizes release of “experimental populations” of endangered or threatened species into parts of the currently uninhabited historic range when doing so “will further the conservation of such species.”
An experimental population is considered essential if its loss would be likely to “appreciably reduce the likelihood of survival of the species in the wild.”
