BOARD02180

• Board Meeting Date: 1/22/2003
• Description: WSP Section - Colorado River Issues
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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ESA for governmental agencies and the public to engage in long-range planning for the
survival oflisted species. While other sections ofthe ESA address when species are
injured by specific development proposals, only in the formulation of recovery plans does
the Act provide for comprehensive analysis of the threats to the persistence and survival
of species and the development of a plan of affirmative conservation measures designed
to achieve recovery bY,addressing those threats. By setting out affirmative conservation
measures and clear recovery goals and measures, recovery plans are meant to provide a
blueprint for the recovery of threatened or endangered species. As observed by at least
one Federal Court "recovery plans are the ftmdamental tool the USFWS uses to protect
endangered species." Sierra Club v. Luian, 1993 WL 151353, *17 (W.D. Tex.).

Section 4(t) of the ESA also sets forth the legal standard by which recovery plans
are judged. 16 U.S.C. 9 I 533(f). This section decrees that the Secretary "shall develop
and implement [recovery] plans... for the conservation and survival of endangered and
threatened species" listed under the Act. 16 U.S.C. 9 1533(1). Elsewhere in the Act,
Congress defined "conservation" to mean:

to use and the use of all methods and procedures which are necessary to bring any
endangered or threatened species to the point at which the measures provided
pursuant to this chapter are no longer necessary.

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16 U.S.C. 9 1532(3).

Pursuant to Section 4(t),

The Secretary, in developing and implementing recovery plans, shall, to the
maximum extent practicable --

(B) incorporate in each plan --

(i) a description of such site-specific management actions as may be necessary to
achieve the plan's goaHor the conservation' and survival of the species;

(ii) objective, measurable criteria which, when met, would result in a
determination, in accordance with the provisions of this section, that the species
be removed from the list; and

(iii) estimates of the time required and the cost to carry out those measures needed
to achieve the plan's goal and to achieve intermediate steps toward that goal.

16 U.S.C. 9 1533(t)(1). The phrase "in accordance with the provisions of this section" in
subsection (B)(ii), above, refers to the duty to evaluate whether to delist a species based
on the listing factors set out earlier in Section 4 of the ESA. In determining whether a
species should be listed as threatened or endangered under the ESA, Congress set forth
. five statutory criteria. Those criteria are:

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