A Coalition for Conservation
Nicholas School’s John Terborgh Backs Petition
to Extend Endangered Species Act Protection to
225 “Wait-Listed” Plants and Animals
Wednesday, May 5, 2004/DURHAM, N.C. – John
Terborgh, director of the Center
for Tropical Conservation at the Nicholas
School, has joined a national coalition of scientists,
artists and environmentalists petitioning the
Bush administration to cease delaying Endangered
Species Act protection for 225 of the nation’s
most imperiled plants and animals.
The species are currently on a federal waiting
list, euphemistically called the “candidate list.”
More than one third of them have been on the list
for at least 20 years, and nearly 80 percent have
been wait-listed for at least ten years.
“These magnificent species are at death’s door,”
said coalition member Kieran Suckling, executive
director of the Center for Biological Diversity.
“If they are not protected soon they will be lost
forever.”
A recently released retrospective study determined
that 114 U.S. species have gone extinct since
the Endangered Species Act went into effect in
1973, Terborgh noted. “The federal government
has chronically dragged its feet on new listings
no matter which party was in the White House,”
he said.
Among the 225 species named in the petition are
the Puerto Rican elfin woods warbler, placed on
the waiting list in 1982; the Oregon spotted frog,
wait-listed in the United States since 1991 despite
being granted endangered species protection on
an emergency basis by the Canadian government;
and two wildflowers – the Southeast’s white fringeless
orchid and Utah’s Aquarius paintbrush – which
were first placed on the list in 1975.
Terborgh’s co-signers on the petition include:
Primatologist Jane Goodall of the Goodall Institute;
two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner E.O. Wilson of
Harvard University; Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University,
author of “The Population Bomb”; Michael Soule
of the University of California-Santa Cruz, founder
of the Society for Conservation Ecology; Niles
Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History;
Thomas Eisner, director of Cornell University’s
Institute for Research in Chemical Ecology and
a National Medal of Science winner.
A complete list of species named in the petition
is available online at http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/Programs/bdes/cp/index.html.
Media contact: Tim Lucas, 919/613-8084 or
tdlucas@duke.edu
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