Feds Move Closer to Removing Vireo From Endangered Species List

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has taken another step toward removing the black-capped vireo from the Endangered Species List, which would eliminate the songbird’s federally mandated protections. In December of 2016, FWS proposed delisting the vireo, saying “the threats to this species have been eliminated or reduced,” and last month published a draft plan outlining how it would monitor the vireo if it were to be delisted.

Although FWS hasn’t yet made a final determination on the vireo, which nests in Oklahoma and Central Texas, changing course is rare and doesn’t seem likely considering President Trump’s recent appointment of Susan Combs, former Texas comptroller and longtime opponent of endangered species, as the Interior Department’s acting assistant secretary for fish, wildlife, and parks. In fact, FWS is already planning a celebration of what they see as the vireo’s recovery. When they published their draft post-delisting monitoring plan on March 14 – at which point a one-month public comment period commenced – FWS also began sending invitations to an event to celebrate “the partnerships that have moved the black-capped vireo from near-extinction to healthy, stable populations across their range.” FWS’s de­listing proposal in 2016 said there was an estimated partial population of more than 14,000 adult males, but also recognized that there were “no available rangewide population estimates” of breeding vireos and noted just 5,244 adult male sightings (up about 18% since the bird was listed in 1987).

While various groups involved with the vireo’s conservation agree that its numbers have improved – and most credit federal, local, private, and nonprofit partners – the extent of the population growth, the sustainability of any such progress, and the mood for celebrating remain debatable. The Center for Bio­logical Diversity and the Environmental Defense Fund say they would support a delisting, but other scientists and organizations have urged against such a move, including the National Audubon Soci­ety, Audu­bon Texas, Travis Audubon, and Save Our Springs Alli­ance – as well as Austin Water Utility and Travis County, both of which manage vireo and endangered golden-cheeked warbler habitats on the Balcones Canyon­lands Pre­serve. In fact, a delisting would go further than a petition from farming and ranching interests and FWS’s own 2007 review of the species, both of which recommended downlisting the bird’s status to threatened.

“Sometimes you get the point where it is abundantly clear that [a] species has recovered, but I think in [the vireo’s] case, we’re not that convinced as biologists,” said Jon White, Travis County’s director of natural resources and environmental quality. White explained that FWS hasn’t met the thresholds of its own vireo recovery plan, employed manageable population thresholds that seem to be “made up out of thin air,” and inferred larger vireo populations based on rough estimates of land use and vegetation cover, which don’t necessarily correspond to actual occupation by the bird. “There are the cities that have been built up over in China, but they have no people in them. Just because there’s a city that could hold half a million people doesn’t mean there’s anybody there.”

This story has been updated to accurately identify one of the organizations that said it would support a delisting as the Environmental Defense Fund. We had previously reported in error that the organization was the Environmental Working Group.