New Report Highlights 10 Wild Places Saved by Endangered Species Protections

From Pacific Ocean kelp forests to Florida’s Key Deer National Wildlife Refuge, millions of acres of the nation’s most precious and irreplaceable landscapes and seascapes have been conserved and restored as part of the cooperative management of our public lands to recover imperiled species.

Saving Species and Wild Spaces

“While the Endangered Species Act is best known for saving 99 percent of protected species from extinction, many people don’t realize that protecting animals and plants under the Act has also resulted in the preservation of some of America’s most beautiful and cherished refuges and public spaces,” said Jamie Pang, an endangered species campaigner at the Center. “Thanks to the Act and its mandate to save endangered species and the places they live, we have more national wildlife refuges, as well as healthier lands, cleaner rivers, oceans and lakes where we can hike, fish and observe wildlife.”

The power of the Act to conserve and heal landscapes, oceans and waterways while protecting and recovering species is in evidence in every region of the country. Among the areas highlighted in today’s report, "Saving Species and Wild Spaces, 10 Extraordinary Places Saved by the Endangered Species Act," are:

Pacific Kelp Forests

The recovery of the once-flagging Pacific kelp beds off the California coast was triggered only after Endangered Species Act protections recovered populations of sea otters, which, in turn, once again started doing the important job of keeping in check a sea urchin population that had overgrazed the underwater kelp forests. Kelp forests play a critical role in absorbing wave energy to prevent shoreline erosion, absorbing greenhouse gases, and providing ecotourism opportunities.

Prized for their thick, dense fur, sea otters were severely exploited by fur traders for more than 100 years. By the time the southern populations along the Pacific coast, from California to Oregon, were protected as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1977, they had fallen to as few as 1,000 individuals. The loss of sea otters had devastating effects on near-shore ecosystems. Without the otters to keep sea urchin populations under control, urchin populations exploded. The urchins overgrazed the underwater kelp forests, which are the key component of a biological community of more than 20 species of fishes, urchins, marine mammals such as sea lions, whales, sea otters and invertebrates like sea snails. The kelp forests also play a critical role in preventing shoreline erosion, absorbing greenhouse gases, and providing ecotourism and recreational opportunities.

Following their listing as a threatened species in 1977, the population increased slowly to around 2,900 otters in 2013, slightly below the recovery goal of 3,090 otters averaged over three years. As the southern sea otter began to rebound, urchin populations returned to normal abundances, and kelp forests began to recover. In fact, sea otters are one of the first “keystone species” that scientists ever identified. With the decline of a keystone species, ecosystems can quickly unravel. Protecting the areas where the sea otter lives has therefore been critical in protecting the ecologically beautiful and important kelp forests. Today people from Santa Barbara north to Monterey can often see sea otters amid kelp forest day beds floating just offshore.

Sauta Cave National Wildlife Refuge

Sauta Cave National Wildlife Refuge, in Alabama, was purchased specifically to protect endangered gray and Indiana bats, providing a summer roosting site for 200,000 to 400,000 gray bats and critical winter hibernacula for both species. Bats provide vitally important ecological service by eating millions of mosquitoes and insects a year. Even after the cave entrances were closed off to protect the species, thousands of visitors come to the refuge every summer to watch the bats fly out at dusk.

Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge

Created in 1992 to protect to endangered songbirds, Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge, overlooking the city of Austin, Texas provides surrounding communities with popular recreational and tourism opportunities and offers protection for the critical landscape responsible for recharging a key regional water source, the Edwards aquifer.

Endangered Species Act protections for Atlantic salmon, shortnose sturgeon and Atlantic sturgeon spurred dam removals that helped restore the health of Maine’s longest river, the Penobscot, which not only provides a home to birds, mammals and 11 fish species but is a popular recreation and fishing spot.

Other places included in the report are Hawaii’s Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, Arizona’s San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, the Southeast’s longleaf pine ecosystem, the Virgin Islands’ Green Cay National Wildlife Refuge and Lake Erie.

“We should step back and truly appreciate all the things the Act has done,” said Pang. “Without the powerful conservation tools it provides, America’s most important landscapes, waterways and coastlines would be very different places today.”


The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2016/saving-species-and-wild-places-05-19-2016.html

Center for Biological Diversity
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/