Two Western advocacy groups sued the Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday over a Biden-era interpretation of the Endangered Species Act.
In a challenge to the ESA rules for protecting threatened species, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, a hunting and conservation group, and the Property and Environment Research Center, a market-oriented conservation organization, call for the federal agency to tailor specific rules for each plant or animal listed as threatened. FWS currently maintains a “blanket rule” that extends maximum protection to all threatened species unless the agency says otherwise.
“While the blanket rule is certainly easier for bureaucrats to administer, it doesn’t work for species like the gray wolf, greater sage grouse, and arctic grayling,” said Jonathan Wood, PERC’s vice president of law and policy.
The Endangered Species Act makes it illegal to “take” an endangered species. The term covers everything from outright killing or disturbing to, in the case of animals, harassing. For many years, FWS maintained the “blanket rule” that automatically gave threatened species the same absolute level of protection as those listed as endangered while allowing special “4(d)” rules to be written allowing greater flexibility.
