Texas Successes Include Whooping Cranes, Peregrine Falcons

Today, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) marked the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by releasing a state-by-state summary of progress being made to recover once-imperiled wild animals and plants. The well-known legislation, which President Richard M. Nixon signed into law on December 28, 1973, was approved nearly unanimously by both Houses of Congress.

“Citizens of every state in this nation can see firsthand in their own state examples of the progress being made in bringing wildlife back from the brink of extinction,” said EDF senior ecologist Dr. David S. Wilcove. Examples of recovering wildlife in the illustrative, but not exhaustive, report range from little-known Hawaiian plants to gray wolves howling in Yellowstone and majestic bald eagles, which again soar over nearly every state.

In Texas, according to EDF’s report, whooping cranes are arriving in record numbers this month at their winter home. Nearly 200 of America’s tallest birds are expected at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas Gulf Coast, though once their numbers reached a low of 15 individuals. Texas was also home to 15 pairs of peregrine falcons in 1997, exceeding the state’s recovery goal, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed removing it from the endangered list. Bald eagle numbers in Texas are up from 29 pairs in 1990 to 52 pairs in 1997.

Safe harbor plans developed by EDF are providing habitat for the critically endangered Attwater prairie-chicken, as well as the endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers and the Aplomado falcon. Nesting is up 50 percent over last year for the endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, and 13 sea turtle nests were counted on Padre Island in 1998. Both counts are the highest since the late 1960s. And the once-endangered American alligator has fully recovered and was removed from the endangered species list June 4, 1987. In 1998 the federal government made a key acquisition for the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge in southern Texas. A 12,000-acre tract of unspoiled brushland, wetlands, and coastal flats provides habitat for endangered ocelots, peregrine falcons and threatened piping plovers.

“The accomplishments of the Endangered Species Act involve many Americans ? among them the intrepid biologists who scaled trees and cliffs to return bald eagles and peregrine falcons to states from which they had vanished, determined scientists and volunteers who protected sea turtles nesting on the nation’s beaches, the Nez Perce tribe which is overseeing the return of the wolf to Idaho forests, and a young man in California who turned back from a life on the streets to aid a rare butterfly,” said EDF’s Margaret McMillan, who compiled the report.

Though hailing the many successes achieved thus far, the EDF report also noted a critical need to improve conservation efforts on privately owned land. In Texas, 97 percent of the land is privately owned, and all but one of the state’s listed endangered species depend on private land for their survival. EDF itself has been instrumental in designing one successful new approach, “safe harbor” agreements. Under these, landowners restore or improve habitat, but do not incur additional land use restrictions as a result of endangered species taking up residence on their property as a result of the improvements. Over a million acres of private land in Texas has been entered into safe harbor agreements since the novel idea was embraced by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt three years ago.