Assessing State Laws and Resources for Endangered Species Protection

摘要

Although increased coordination between the states and federal agencies regarding the protection and recovery of threatened and endangered species may well have some benefits, close analysis of current state laws and state-level experience reveals that conservation laws in most states are inadequate to achieve the ESA's conservation and recovery goals. Though a large number of states have adopted endangered species laws to complement the federal ESA, these laws fundamentally rely on the federal ESA's more comprehensive statutory regime as a foundation for their comparatively modest protections. As a result, without significant state law reforms in most states, devolution of federal authority and responsibility over threatened and endangered species to states is likely to undermine conservation and recovery efforts, lead to a greater number of species becoming imperiled, and result in fewer species recovered.