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Humboldt Field Research Institute

Posted February 23, 1999

Recovery Plans for Endangered Species Come under Student Review

Students in a University of Maine wildlife ecology class are getting a hands-on view of how the Endangered Species Act (ESA) works, through a cooperative project with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Society for Conservation Biology, an academic and professional association. The class provides the students with a significant role in a national review process being conducted on the adequacy of the species recovery plans written by the federal government over the past three decades.

The class is taught by three professors in the Department of Wildlife Ecology: Raymond O'Connor, Judith Rhymer and Ray “Bucky” Owen, former commissioner of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. A total of 15 students in wildlife ecology, biological sciences and resource economics and policy are participating.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service takes this project quite seriously,” says O'Connor. “The agency is reviewing its procedures under the ESA, and they will take the students' comments into consideration.”

Altogether, about 500 final recovery plans have been written for a total of 926 species of plants and animals.

The UMaine students are reviewing ten plans for plants and animals ranging from the peregrine falcon, which has been restored to locations around the country, including Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert Island, to the greenback cutthroat trout and the Tennessee Purple Coneflower.

The reviews will be guided by exhaustive questionnaires. Students must evaluate the plans on more than 250 points including legal protections, public participation and specific recovery tasks. Student reviews will be posted to a Web site maintained by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). They will be able to review each other's comments and discuss questions through chat rooms.

In addition to specific recovery plans, students will review recent legal and scientific analyses of the ESA.

“Our goals are for the students to develop a thorough knowledge of the technical details of the ESA, to have an opportunity to think critically about a major area of environmental policy and to contribute to the implementation of the Act,” says O'Connor.

Armed with detailed reviews, O'Connor and student representatives will meet with federal officials and representatives of other universities at NCEAS in California in April to discuss the adequacy of the plans. Over the course of the semester, students will share information via the World Wide Web on a weekly basis with officials and students in 18 similar courses being taught at other universities in the United States.

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