Inadequate enforcement of the Endangered Species Act

Several military bases in the southern US manage large areas of naturally regenerated pine forest that support numerous federally listed threatened and endangered species. One endangered species of particular concern is the red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW; Picoides borealis). Because the pine forests in which these birds reside are federally owned lands (Figure 1), RCW management falls under those provisions of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that require federal agencies to protect listed species and also to restore their numbers and their habitat. In this case, the agency responsible for assuring compliance with the ESA is the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Below we offer three examples of RCW management efforts on military lands – two (at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Eglin Air Force Base, Florida) in which the Department of Defense (DoD) should be commended for its environmental stewardship, and one (at Fort Ben-ning, Georgia) in which we think that both the FWS and the DoD have made serious mistakes. We are concerned that this last example could be used as a precedent for future policy decisions. According to the official 2003 recovery plan for the RCW (www.fws. gov/rcwrecovery/recovery_plan.html), one criterion for recovery is that 11 of 13 primary core populations on federal lands have reached a stable population estimated to contain at least 350 potentially breeding pairs. Of these 11 core populations, one – located within Florida's Apalachicola National Forest – has had 350 breeding pairs for several decades. Two of the remaining core populations, one at Fort Bragg and another at Eglin Air Force Base, have reached their recovery goals. However, the Fort Benning RCW population – the sixth largest range-wide – occurs where an immense new program of construction and training, called the Maneuver Center of Excellence (MCOE), is underway. According to the Army's Biological Assessment, the MCOE program is expected to " take " (a legal term for destroy), directly and indirectly, more than 3200 hectares of current woodpecker habitat. In May 2009, the FWS published a Biological Opinion stating that the scope and intensity of the MCOE program would " jeopardize " (a legal term for put at risk) the base's RCW population, in violation of the ESA. The Opinion concluded that, by jeopardizing the RCW population at Fort Benning, the MCOE would also jeopardize the recovery of the species as a whole. The Biological Opinion was a strong statement by the FWS about …