South Carolina Species Success Marked By Recovery, Removals From List

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 South Carolina, bald eagles are increasing in number, where 114 pairs occupied territories in 1997, up from 59 pairs in 1990. On July 12, 1995, the bald eagle was reclassified from endangered to threatened in the lower 48 states. A statewide Safe Harbor plan promises to improve habitat in South Carolina for endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers. By the end of 1998, a diverse group of landowners, including Mepkin Abbey and the Westvaco Corporation, had offered to enroll 84,000 acres, ensuring that they would maintain their land as red-cockaded woodpecker habitat without incurring additional regulatory burdens. The innovative Safe Harbor program was developed by EDF and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

In May 1992, the first known East Coast nesting of the endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle took place on Litchfield Beach, Georgetown County, South Carolina. Fewer sea turtles have drowned in South Carolina waters, since Endangered Species Act protection led to the use of turtle excluder devices on shrimp fishing nets. Numbers of “stranded” sea turtles found ashore, after having drowned while trapped in fishing nets, dropped from an average of 224 a year during the 1980s, to an average of 127 in the years 1990-1998. After vanishing entirely from the eastern US, the peregrine falcon is returning. A pair of endangered peregrines occupied territory in 1997 in South Carolina. On August 26, 1998, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed removing the peregrine from the endangered species list. The once endangered American alligator has fully recovered and was removed from the endangered species list June 4, 1987.

“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. “Because most endangered species have most of their habitat on private land, it is essential that new approaches be found to enlist more landowners as active partners in conservation efforts,” said EDF economist Robert Bonnie. 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 has been entered into safe harbor agreements since the novel idea was embraced by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt three years ago.