Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology Graduate Program, College Park, MD, United States of America.
Center for Conservation Innovation, Defenders of Wildlife, Washington, DC, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2020 Mar 20;15(3):e0230477. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230477. eCollection 2020.
Evaluating how wildlife conservation laws are implemented is critical for safeguarding biodiversity. Two agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service (FWS and NMFS; Services collectively), are responsible for implementing the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), which requires federal protection for threatened and endangered species. FWS and NMFS' comparable role for terrestrial and marine taxa, respectively, provides the opportunity to examine how implementation of the same law varies between agencies. We analyzed how the Services implement a core component of the ESA, section 7 consultations, by objectively assessing the contents of >120 consultations on sea turtle species against the requirements in the Services' consultation handbook, supplemented with in-person observations from Service biologists. Our results showed that NMFS consultations were 1.40 times as likely to have higher completeness scores than FWS consultations given the standard in the handbook. Consultations tiered from an FWS programmatic consultation inherited higher quality scores of generally more thorough programmatic consultations, indicating that programmatic consultations could increase the quality of consultations while improving efficiency. Both agencies commonly neglected to account for the effects of previous consultations and the potential for compounded effects on species. From these results, we recommend actions that can improve quality of consultation, including the use of a single database to track and integrate previously authorized harm in new analyses and the careful but more widespread use of programmatic consultations. Our study reveals several critical shortfalls in the current process of conducting ESA section 7 consultations that the Services could address to better safeguard North America's most imperiled species.
评估野生动植物保护法的实施情况对于保护生物多样性至关重要。美国鱼类和野生动物管理局（FWS）和国家海洋渔业局（NMFS）这两个机构负责实施《濒危物种法》（ESA），该法案要求为受威胁和濒危物种提供联邦保护。FWS 和 NMFS 分别负责陆地和海洋生物分类群的保护，这为研究同一法律在不同机构之间的实施情况提供了机会。我们通过客观地评估超过 120 份海龟物种的咨询报告与服务手册中咨询要求的一致性，结合服务生物学家的实地观察，分析了服务机构如何实施《濒危物种法》的一个核心部分，即第 7 条咨询。我们的结果表明，在服务手册的标准下，NMFS 的咨询更有可能获得更高的完整性评分，其可能性是 FWS 咨询的 1.40 倍。从 FWS 项目咨询中继承而来的咨询层次，具有更高质量的通常更全面的项目咨询，这表明项目咨询可以在提高效率的同时提高咨询质量。两个机构都普遍忽略了考虑先前咨询的影响以及对物种的潜在累积影响。根据这些结果，我们建议采取一些可以提高咨询质量的措施，包括使用单一数据库来跟踪和整合先前授权的损害，并在新的分析中进行考虑，以及更谨慎但更广泛地使用项目咨询。我们的研究揭示了当前进行《濒危物种法》第 7 条咨询的过程中的几个关键缺陷，服务机构可以解决这些缺陷，以更好地保护北美最濒危的物种。
