News Update
May 10, 2011

Fish and Wildlife Service Announces Work Plan

The Department of the Interior (DOI) U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) today unveiled a work plan that will allow the agency to focus its resources on the species most in need of protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The Service is filing the work plan today in a consolidated case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia as part of a proposed agreement with one of the agency’s most frequent plaintiffs. The work plan, if approved by the Court, will enable the agency to systematically, over a period of six years, review and address the needs of more than 250 species now on the list of candidates for protection under the ESA to determine if they should be added to the Federal Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants.

“In the more than 35 years since its passage, the Endangered Species Act has proved to be a critical safety net for America’s imperiled fish, wildlife, and plants,” said Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes. “For the first time in years, this work plan will give the wildlife professionals of the Fish and Wildlife Service the opportunity to put the needs of species first and extend that safety net to those truly in need of protection, rather than having our workload driven by the courts. It will also give states, stakeholders, and the public much-needed certainty.”

Under the work plan announced today, the Service has laid out a schedule for making listing determinations for species that have been identified as candidates for listing, as well as for a number of species that have been petitioned for protection under the ESA. If agreed to by the Court, this plan will enable the Service to again prioritize its workload based on the needs of candidate species, while also providing state wildlife agencies, stakeholders, and other partners clarity and certainty about when listing determinations will be made.

“This work plan will serve as a catalyst to move past the gridlock and acrimony of the past several years, enabling us to be more efficient and effective in both getting species on the list and working with our partners to recover those species and get them off the list as soon as possible,” said Acting Service Director Rowan Gould. “This is just the first step in our efforts to actively engage conservation partners and the public in the search for improved and innovative ways to conserve and recover imperiled species.”

The Service’s highest priority is to make implementation of the ESA less complex, less contentious, and more effective. Gould noted that at the direction of Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, the Service has begun a review of its implementation of the ESA designed to identify ways to eliminate unnecessary procedural requirements; improve the clarity and consistency of regulations; engage the states, tribes, conservation organizations, and private landowners as more effective conservation partners; encourage greater creativity in the implementation of the Act; and reduce the frequency and intensity of conflicts as much as possible.

A candidate species is one for which the agency has determined that a proposal to list is warranted. The Service maintains a Candidate List that is reviewed annually.

The ESA was enacted in 1973 to protect plants and animal species facing extinction and currently protects more than 1,300 species in the U.S. and about 570 species abroad. The law allows citizens, groups, and government agencies to petition for species to be protected under the ESA, and sets specific statutory timelines for responding to those petitions. Unlike many other federal laws, the ESA contains a broad “citizen suit” provision enabling groups and individuals to sue to enforce these deadlines established under the ESA.

The Candidate List was originally envisioned as an administrative tool that would identify species for which the Service would shortly make listing determinations. But as the Listing Program became inundated with petitions and lawsuits, species began to accumulate on the list. The sheer volume and mandatory nature of court orders, settlement-agreement obligations, and statutory deadlines related to petition findings and other listing-related litigation has threatened to consume most of the Service’s available funding and staff.

In the last four years, the Service has been petitioned to list more than 1,230 species, nearly as many species as have been listed during the previous 30 years of administering the ESA. After numerous lawsuits were filed with respect to these petitions, the Service initiated the consolidation and transfer of pending lawsuits from a number of different district courts to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. This consolidation allowed the Service to have a single forum in which to resolve comprehensively and efficiently the conflicting demands on the listing program.

The Service’s ability to address the backlog of more than 250 candidate species and ensure the orderly and timely listing of species under the ESA is in direct proportion to the agency’s ability to balance that workload with other Listing Program duties. The agreement, reached with WildEarth Guardians, would enable the Service to restore that balance if approved by the court.

If the Service determines that listing is warranted for a species, the agency will propose that species for listing and allow the public to review and comment on the proposal before making a final determination. A list of these candidate species is available at www.fws.gov/endangered/improving_ESA/listing_workplan.html.

Ensuring that threatened and endangered species continue to be protected and recovered requires effective implementation of the ESA that is responsive to both the needs of imperiled resources and the concerns of citizens. The Service has developed a variety of tools and programs to help landowners fashion a conservation strategy for listed and candidate species that is consistent with their land-management objectives and needs. These tools include Habitat Conservation Plans and Candidate Conservation Agreements that provide regulatory assurance, technical assistance, and a grants program that funds conservation projects by private landowners, states, and territories.

America’s fish, wildlife and plant resources belong to all of us, and ensuring the health of imperiled species is a shared responsibility. To learn more about the Service’s Endangered Species program and tools available to landowners, go to www.fws.gov/endangered.

— Release by FWS.

Weather Affecting Most Every Aspect of U.S. Cattle Market

Weather in the United States has been making a complicated 2011 cattle market even cloudier, ultimately affecting everyone from producers to consumers.

“Just about everything has been affected, from supply impacts to demand inputs to input market impacts,” said Derrell Peel, Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extension livestock marketing specialist.

Beef demand by the American public has been negatively affected by the cold, wet weather across much of the United States this spring, resulting in a lack of good outdoor grilling conditions in a number of states. Even in many warmer climes, drought conditions and the potential for wildfires have resulted in burn bans restricting outdoor activities and cooking.

“Memorial Day weekend and the weeks that follow will be critical in determining if beef demand will show a more typical seasonal pattern,” Peel said. “Hopefully, conditions will improve and the grilling season can get under way in a more historically normal fashion.”

Then there is the uncertainty over feed grain supplies, which continue to be hampered by cool, wet weather delaying crop plantings across significant areas of the country.

“Each day of planting delay is likely to have noticeable impacts on corn yields,” Peel said. “There seems to be little likelihood of any relief for cattle producers from high feed prices.”

Forage conditions range from ample moisture for pasture growth to areas that are too wet to harvest hay, to the increasingly severe drought conditions in parts of the Southern Great Plains.

But perhaps the most difficult assessment is the effects weather continues to have on the supply side of the market, in both the short- and long-term.

“Certainly, limited feeder supplies will maintain upward pressure on feeder cattle prices, but the question of just how much pressure depends on the bigger question of herd rebuilding,” Peel said. “That question, in turn, depends on what the industry is trying to do as well as what Mother Nature will permit us to do.”

Complicating matters further is that the answers to these questions will vary regionally. For example, in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) January cattle inventory report, both beef cow and beef replacement numbers increased in the Northern Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. With good moisture conditions, these areas are expected to continue herd expansion in 2011.

However, beef cow numbers at the beginning of the year decreased sharply in Missouri, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. Some analysts suspect that in the first three states the decline may reflect increasing competition with crop production and long-term shifts in beef production away from the region, though it will be some time before such impacts can be confirmed.

In the other states, Peel contends the decrease likely reflects continuing drought conditions that have spread from Louisiana and eastern Texas across much of Texas and parts of Oklahoma, New Mexico and eastern Colorado this year.

“Persistent drought conditions in the Southern Great Plains can easily overwhelm any herd expansion that takes place in other areas, particularly if beef cows continue to move out of the Midwest,” Peel said.

Even without widespread drought conditions, the prospects for beef cow herd expansion in 2011 were limited at best; with the drought, net liquidation of animals is increasingly likely.

“This may limit demand for replacement heifers and thus reduce feeder supply pressure a bit in 2011 and slightly temper feeder prices this year,” Peel said. “However, another year of herd liquidation means that the general tight supply environment that supports cattle prices today will persist even longer into the future.”

In other words, herd expansion may well be delayed until 2012 and is likely to proceed slowly when it does start. In turn, cyclically high cattle prices are likely to persist into the mid-decade period at a minimum and very likely beyond.

— Release by Oklahoma State University Ag Communication Services.

USDA Designates 21 Counties in Kansas as Primary Natural Disaster Areas

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated 21 counties in Kansas as natural disaster areas due to losses caused by drought and related disasters, including wildfires and high winds that began Jan.1, 2011, and continue.

“President Obama and I understand these conditions caused severe damage to the wheat crop and we want to help,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “This action will provide help to hundreds of farmers who suffered significant production losses.”

The counties are:

Finney                                     Lane                                        Sheridan
Gove                                       Logan                                      Sherman
Grant                                       Meade                                     Stanton
Greeley                                  Morton                                    Stevens
Hamilton                                 Ness                                        Thomas
Haskell                                   Scott                                        Wallace
Kearny                                   Seward                                    Wichita

Farmers and ranchers in the following counties in Kansas also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous:

Cheyenne                             Graham                                  Rawlins
Clark                                       Gray                                        Rush
Decatur                                  Hodgeman                            Trego
Ellis                                         Norton                                    
Ford                                       Pawnee

Farmers and ranchers in the following counties in Colorado and Oklahoma also qualify for natural disaster assistance because their counties are contiguous:

Colorado                                                      
Baca                   Cheyenne           Kiowa             Kit Carson             Prowers
                                                                                                           
Oklahoma                                        
Beaver                                     Cimarron                                 Texas

All counties listed above were designated natural disaster areas May 10, 2011, making all qualified farm operators in the designated areas eligible for low interest emergency (EM) loans from USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), provided eligibility requirements are met. Farmers in eligible counties have eight months from the date of the declaration to apply for loans to help cover part of their actual losses. FSA will consider each loan application on its own merits, taking into account the extent of losses, security available and repayment ability. FSA has a variety of programs, in addition to the EM loan program, to help eligible farmers recover from adversity.

USDA also has made other programs available to assist farmers and ranchers, including the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE), which was approved as part of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008; the Emergency Conservation Program; Federal Crop Insurance; and the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program. Interested farmers may contact their local USDA Service Centers for further information on eligibility requirements and application procedures for these and other programs. Additional information is also available online at http://disaster.fsa.usda.gov.

FSA news releases are available on FSA’s website at www.fsa.usda.gov via the “News and Events” link.

— Release by USDA.

— Compiled by Shauna Rose Hermel, editor, Angus Productions Inc.