Last Friday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a District Court decision ruling that the Fish & Wildlife Service decision that listing of the whitebark pine as endangered or threatened was "warranted, but precluded" was not arbitrary and capricious. The decision seems correct, but as the frustration of the Court reflects, it's only because the ESA is designed to fail.

The procedural history is lengthy and not really necessary to repeat here. Suffice it to say that the whitebark pine is both an important species and in significant distress, if not dire straits. In response to a listing petition, the FWS issued a finding that listing the whitebark pine is "warranted, but precluded." Thus, the FWS instead added the whitebark pine to the list of "candidate species."

A candidate species is one for which [FWS has] on file sufficient information on biological vulnerability and threats to support a proposal for listing as endangered or threatened, but for which preparation and publication of a proposal is precluded by higher priority listing actions.

The particular issue here was whether the FWS has any authority to base listing decisions on anything other than the Listing Priority Number assigned to the species. As the Court noted, however, the ESA provides only that the ranking system is intended to "assist" in the identification of species for listing. There is nothing that makes the LPN determinative.

That's all well and good, but it does nothing for the whitebark pine. As the Court stated:

When pending actions outstrip available resources, the Secretary must make its choices and live with its priorities, even though that means leaving factually (if not listed) threatened or endangered species without the protections of the ESA.

In other words, to paraphrase Eddie Cochran, "I'd like to help you tree, but you're too inanimate to vote.

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