After 33 years in U.S. regulatory limbo, two South American bird species on Wednesday gained their long-sought designation as endangered.
In a belated answer to a 1991 petition, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced the final decision granting ESA protections to the southern helmeted curassow and the Sira curassow.
The former lives in Bolivia and the latter lives in Peru. Both are large ground-dwelling species, and both are at risk of extinction due in large part to hunting, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Advertisement
“We recognize the length of time between first making the southern helmeted curassow a candidate species and this final listing rule,” the federal agency acknowledged in the final rule.
