Celebrate Endangered Species Day with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and NOAA Fisheries

Happy Endangered Species Day! I begin today's celebration with US Department of the Interior Secretary Haaland on Endangered Species Day.

Protecting plants and wildlife for the present, and for the future; on Endangered Species Day, Secretary Haaland encourages everyone to think about the role they can play in saving animal and plant species from endangerment, and extinction.

I think Secretary Haaland did an excellent job in this video, but I have only one quibble with her remarks. While it's true that the the last recorded wild passenger pigeon died in 1900, it died from being shot by a boy in Pike County, Ohio. The bird that died in captivity was Martha, who expired at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914, marking the total extinction of the passenger pigeon. Let's see if anyone else notices the conflation of the two events.

Secretary Haaland and the Department of the Interior oversee one of the agencies responsible for enforcement of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), which put out Endangered Species Act Overview last week, explaining the history and content of the 48-year-old legislation it helps enforce.

This brief video explains the various sections of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Greater detail is provided for some of the more relevant sections.

As this video and National Day Calendar both mention, the other agency that enforces the ESA is National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), specifically NOAA Fisheries, which put out its own video on the subject last October, Species in the Spotlight: Saving the Most Endangered Marine Animals.

NOAA Fisheries manages more than 165 marine species listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The goal is to help these species recover to the point where they can be taken off the endangered species list. That’s why, in 2015, we created the Species in the Spotlight initiative. It’s a way for us to focus our time, energy, and resources on these at-risk species and bring greater attention to their plight. Our goal is to focus our recovery actions and motivate partners and community members to work with us on these actions to turn this situation around. For each species, we have developed action plans that outline short-term efforts to stop their decline and prevent their extinction.

Each of these species is an important part of the habitat, the ecosystem, and the world we all share. Bringing them back will make our world richer and more balanced. Through the continued dedication of NOAA and its partners, we can all help these species recover.

While USFWS explained the theory, NOAA Fisheries described the practice. I have to say that I found watching and listening to the practice more interesting. I wonder what my readers think.

As I wrote yesterday, I'm not done with biodiversity on this blog. Tomorrow is the International Day for Biological Diversity, a day I haven't celebrated before but is on topic for my blogging. Stay tuned. In the meantime, happy Endangered Species Day!