The Trump administration is removing the wood stork from the list of protected species under the Endangered Species Act.
The wood stork, which 40 years ago was on the brink of extinction in South Florida, will no longer be listed as a threatened species as of March 9, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday.
As a result of recovery work over the four decades since the stork was first listed as endangered in 1984 — and later downgraded to threatened in 2014 — estimated breeding populations as of today have reached up to 14,000 nesting pairs across roughly 100 colony sites, FWS noted.
The wood stork now inhabits the coastal regions of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, the agency said, and has in recent years “adapted to new nesting areas, moving north into coastal salt marshes, flooded rice fields, floodplain forest wetlands and human-created wetlands.”
