The public is invited to comment on the policy, proposed by the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries), the two federal agencies responsible for administering the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Comments will be accepted for the next 60 days.

The proposed policy will define the key phrase “significant portion of its range” in the ESA and provide consistency for how it should be applied, aiding the agencies in making decisions on whether to add or remove species from the federal list of threatened and endangered wildlife and plants. The phrase is not defined in the ESA, but appears in the statutory definitions of “endangered species” and “threatened species” in the ESA.

The policy would clarify that the FWS and NOAA Fisheries could list a species if it is endangered or threatened in a “significant portion of its range,” even if that species is not endangered or threatened throughout all its range. Under the proposed policy, a portion of the range of any given species would be defined as “significant” if its contribution to the viability of the species is so important that, without that portion, the species would be in danger of extinction. While the services expect this circumstance to arise infrequently, this policy interpretation will allow ESA protections to help species in trouble before large-scale decline occurs throughout the species’ entire range.

Read the complete press release from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service