The one-two punch of a shrinking staff and the federal government’s shutdown could stagger the Fish and Wildlife Service’s efforts to meet Endangered Species Act deadlines, aggravating a problem that has long dogged the agency.
The service, for instance, was bound under a year-old court agreement to decide by Aug. 25 whether to list the Bornean earless monitor as threatened or endangered. The deadline came and went without FWS action on the lizard that inhabits a slice of Southeast Asia.
Some FWS watchers expect to see more of the same as the shutdown drags on.
“The agency is starved of the money and staff needed to meet those deadlines,” Jake Li, a former career FWS official who is now vice president of conservation policy at Defenders of Wildlife. “Long before the shutdown, FWS struggled with this problem daily, and now it’s amplified multifold.”
