WSP00019

• File Number: 8065
• Description: Section D General Statewide Issues - Endangered Species Act - Fisheries
• State: CO
• Basin: Statewide
• Date: 9/1/1990
• Author: US DOI
• Title: US DOI-Office of the Inspector General - Audit Report - The Endangered Species Program - US FWS
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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and land species. Service responsibilities specifically include the
following conservation measures prescribed in the Act:

o To officially list plants and animals as endangered or threatened;

o To restrict actions authorized. funded. or carried out by Federal
agencies that would adversely affect listed species;

o To develop, update, and coordinate the implementation of species
recovery plans, including the acquisition and protection of
necessary habitats;

o To provide assistance to state governments in implementing their
own programs for conserving listed species;

o To enforce restrictions on the killing, collecting, and sale or
purchase of listed species.

In descending order. the previous measures are referred to wi thin the
Service as the following activities: listing; consultation; recovery;
grants to states, or Section 6; and law enforcement. Before protection
under the Act can be initiated, species must be listed officially as
endangered or threatened.

The Endangered Species Act has subsequently been amended (in 1978, 1982.
and 1988) and has been one of the Nation's most rigorously debated and
controversial natural resource laws. The Act, as amended, imposes strict
administrative requirements upon the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, such
as the process to be followed in officially listing a species as
endangered or threatened, the basic methodology to be employed in the
recovery process, and general requirements co be followed in cooperative
relationships with state governments and other Federal agencies. The
most recent amendments (1988) depict continued Congressional interest in
the program's administration by mandating requirements such as a system
to monitor the status of candidate species for listing, a priority system
for developing recovery plans and including specific items to be
addressed within individual plans. a system for monitoring recovered
species for a prescribed time, and the submission of an annual report to
the Congress containing reasonably identifiable Federal and state (under
Section 6 of the Act) expenditures for endangered and threatened species
on a species-by-species basis.

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The Act also provided a means whereby the ecosystems upon which domestic
endangered and threatened species depend may be conserved and provided a
program for the conservation of such endangered and threatened species.
The Act defines conservation as "the use of all methods and procedures
which are necessary to bring any endangered species or threatened species
to the point at which the measures provided pursuant to this Act are no
longer necessary." Under the Act, endangered species are identified as
those species and subspecies determined to be currently in danger of
extinction, while threatened species are those species and subspecies not
currently in such danger but likely to become so within the foreseeable
future. The Act at present is a law which attempts to provide official

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