North Dakota Outdoors: January 8, 2024

The Endangered Species Act turned 50 in 2023

I can easily recall in the late 1980s seeing an endangered bald eagle feeding on a deer carcass off the road west of Napoleon in Logan County. Back in those days, if you saw a bald eagle and you could take a picture, you did. At the least you mentally marked the date, time and place and you made sure to phone it in. It was a big deal.

While I'm still partial to the site of a bald eagle, it's become rather routine thanks to the amazing recovery of the population. It's gotten to the point that Game and Fish for years has adjusted to monitoring active bald eagle nests, which are found in 47 of 53 counties and total around 350. Thanks in large part for this incredible rebound rightly goes to the Endangered Species Act.

The ESA is now 50 years old. A half-century of studying, researching, listing and hopefully delisting a species. The bald eagle's story is remarkable and shared with others like the peregrine falcon and piping plover.

A few years ago I was listening to our current Game and Fish director, Jeb Williams, when he was the chief of the wildlife division explain the lengthy process and resources invested to respond to a request for the determination of listing moose in North Dakota as a possible threatened or endangered species. While I chuckled a bit internally, it stuck with me how much time, money and energy was directed to what most in North Dakota would consider a stable if not expanded moose population.

As you'd expect the moose was not warranted to be listed but it's a good example of what is involved when an outside group or organization petitions the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Game and Fish Department must respond.

Prior to that, I listened to Randy Kreil, long-time department wildlife division chief, explain how a wolf could travel from Michigan or Wisconsin into Minnesota, wander through North Dakota and into Montana or Wyoming, and the protected status from endangered to legal take would change depending on where the same wolf was. It sure didn't make sense, but it's another example of what endangered species status means.

On the other side are the unsuccessful results as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is delisting 21 species from the Endangered Species Act due to extinction. Noted among these are the ivory-billed woodpecker, Bachmans' warbler, eight species of freshwater mussels and a couple of small fish in Texas and Ohio which haven't been documented for 35-plus years.

Based on rigorous reviews of the best available science for each of these species, the USFWS determined these species are extinct and should be removed from the list of species protected under the ESA. Most of these species were listed under the ESA in the 1970s and 80s and were in very low numbers or likely already extinct at the time of listing.

"Federal protection came too late to reverse these species' decline, and it's a wake-up call on the importance of conserving imperiled species before it's too late," said USFWS director Martha Williams. "As we commemorate 50 years of the Endangered Species Act this year, we are reminded of the act's purpose to be a safety net that stops the journey toward extinction. The ultimate goal is to recover these species, so they no longer need the act's protection."