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Endangered Species

Independent oil and natural gas producers have demonstrated to be willing and committed partners in species and habitat conservation. These local businesses have proven it’s possible to balance a thoughtful, targeted conservation approach with energy and economic development – the very foundation for many small towns and local communities across the nation. However, in recent years there have been numerous efforts in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, and elsewhere to list hundreds of species as endangered and place hundreds of thousands of acres of land off-limits to economic development. And a new, stronger wave of threats is expected in the coming years, putting America’s independent producers at risk.

Find more information on IPAA’s work surrounding issues relevant to endangered species below.

Get the Facts

Endangered Species Act

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was signed into law in 1973 to protect animal and plant species at risk of extinction due to habitat changes or loss. It was last renewed by Congress in 1988, meaning it has been more than 35 years since Congress last made any substantial updates to the 1973 ESA law.

Today, with only a two percent recovery rate, the Endangered Species Act is failing to achieve its fundamental purpose of species recovery. Instead, the ESA law has evolved into legal tool used by some environmental organizations to advance an agenda that impedes American oil and natural gas production — destroying economic growth and job creation, while diverting hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars away from species recovery. Perhaps even more troubling, the data and science used to justify endangered species regulatory actions, such as critical habitat designations, are not publicly available for analysis.

The ESA Needs Both Oversight and Reform

IPAA supports more transparency in the listing decisions made from sound science, limiting the amount of taxpayer money spent on litigation, expanding the role for States, and, most importantly, ensuring that imperiled species and their ecosystems are protected for future generations.

Timeline For ESA Listings:

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) – under the U.S. Department of Commerce – and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) – under the U.S. Department of the Interior – are the federal agencies that administer ESA protection and grant “endangered” or “threatened” listings to species. The ESA is often subjected to litigious abuse, centered on the process of listing a species, which under the ESA is a complicated and often confusing process. The following steps are involved in the listing process:

      1. NMFS or FWS officials can nominate a species for listing or, as most commonly is the case, a citizen petition is generated by an environmental group or an individual
      2. Following the receipt of a listing petition, NMFS or FWS has 90 days to assess whether or not federal protection is warranted.
      3. Once the 90-day assessment concludes and if a positive finding is found, the agency has one year to determine whether or not the species will be listed as threatened or endangered.
      4. If a species is awarded protection status, the protection and recovery plans take effect 30 days after a decision is published in the Federal Register.
      5. If a species is not granted protection status, the listing process concludes. However, in most instances that a species is not listed, environmental groups will file a lawsuit against the agency. If a species listing goes into litigation, the ESA decision could take decades for a decision to be reached.
      6. Under the ESA law, the listing of a species should take two years from the date of submission to the agency’s final decision.

What’s At Stake?

Listing a species under the ESA poses a major challenge to America’s energy producers and all businesses throughout a region. Here are some of the areas that have been affected by the ESA:

      • Water
      • Infrastructure and transportation
      • Farmland protection
      • Logging and timber industry
      • Energy development – oil, natural gas, coal, wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal, etc.

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IPAA is the industry’s strongest presence in the nation’s capital and these are important times. The entire oil and gas industry remains under fire from anti-development groups; but with these challenges arise unique opportunities that IPAA is seizing for our members.