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Botany Staffing and
Funding
On
this page:
This page contains information on the underfunding and understaffing
of plant science and conservation programs and implications for the nation's flora.
| Adequate
staffing and funding is essential to effective conservation. We cannot preserve species or
ecosystems without well trained specialists to manage them and without adequate funding
for research, restoration and conservation. Unfortunately, the resources allocated to
biodiversity research and conservation have not kept pace with the increases in threats to
habitats and species, or with the numbers of species listed under Federal sensitive
species programs and the Federal Endangered Species Act. Worse,
despite the fact that plants are the foundations of ecosystems, staffing and funding
allocations for plant science and conservation are consistently far smaller than for other
imperiled organisms. |
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Inyo
National Forest, CA |
For this reason, the Native Plant Conservation Campaign has
published a Special Report quantifying the underfunding and understaffing of botany
programs throughout federal agencies, primarily the Forest Service and Bureau of Land
Management. The report also highlights the under representation of imperiled plants on the
federal endangered species list and makes recommendations
for policy changes to address these problems.
Barriers to Plant Conservation in
the United States: Funding, Staffing, Law, (NPCC Special Report
#1, 2002 )
Funding
& Staffing Links
2006 Federal Budget for Native Plants and The
Environment
Fiscal year 2006
NPCC Testimony to
Congress regarding Funding for the Department of the Interior and Related
Agencies: includes Forest Service and BLM staffing, Native Plant
Materials Program, Invasive Species Control, and Endangered Species Recovery
NEW
Read President's Budget Summary for Federal Endangered Species Act &
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Analysis
of President's budget impacts to native plants and conservation
- Wilderness Society
Fiscal
year 2005 Testimony to House Resources
Committee regarding increased
staffing and funding for federal botany & endangered species recovery
programs (pdf)
Fiscal
year 2004 Testimony to House Resources Committee regarding increased
staffing and funding for federal botany & endangered species recovery
programs (pdf)
Fiscal year 2003 NPCC
Testimony regarding Botany Staffing of the USDA Forest Service and
USDI Bureau of Land Management (pdf, 3/26/02)
Conservation
organizations' FY 2003 Funding Recommendations for United States Public Lands
(pdf)
Biological Ecological
Sciences Coalition - a group of scientific societies working to maintain
funding for basic science in the United States
President's
Budget for U.S.D.A. Forest Service for Fiscal Year 2004
Resources
for Federal Agency Staff
Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility (PEER): information on federal agency actions, their
impacts on the environment, funding, staffing, censorship of science and
other issues.
Also
provides information on whistleblower
protection for federal employees, and links to representatives in
each state who can explain whistleblower protection laws.
Forest Service Employees for Environmental
Ethics (FSEEE): information on Forest Service actions, their impacts
on the National Forest lands, the Forest Service budget, and treatment of
staff.
Also
provides information on whistleblower
protection for Forest Service employees.
California Native Plant Society
Resources for Botanists - includes botanic survey guidelines,
information on mitigation methods, and more.
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BARRIERS TO NATIVE PLANT
CONSERVATION IN THE UNITED STATES: Funding, Staffing, Law
Executive
Summary
Plants are primary foundations of life on earth. Plants
produce foods, fibers and medicines that fuel our economies and sustain our societies.
Plants anchor the ecosystems that we depend on for invaluable services including water
purification, crop pollination, and erosion control.
Few people realize, however, the importance of plants to ecosystems,
societies or economies. When they think of nature, they tend to focus on charismatic
animals such as bears, eagles and hummingbirds. Few make the basic connection between
bears and the native grasses and berries they eat, or between hummingbirds and
nectar-bearing flowers. Even fewer link ecosystem services such as oxygen production with
photosynthesis or water quality maintenance with the wetland plants that maintain it.
Unfortunately, an imbalance has developed in laws, budgets and
policies which treat native plants as second class conservation citizens. As a result,
native plants lose ground daily to sprawl, pollution, invasive exotic organisms, and, most
tragically, to neglect.
This report documents the neglect of native plant conservation in
the United States in three key areas:
(i) unequal implementation of species conservation laws
(ii) understaffing in federal resource and land management agencies
(iii) unequal protection under state and federal endangered species law
Unless these obstacles are removed so that plant conservation
programs can be effective and successful, efforts to conserve native species and
ecosystems that depend on native plants are doomed to failure.
FINDINGS
Imperilment* is Extreme
°According to state heritage programs, there are more than three times as many
imperiled plants in the U.S. as imperiled animals. Fully one third of our flora is
considered to be at risk of extinction.
°Almost 60% of species listed under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) are plants -
roughly 700 taxa.
Endangered Species Laws are not Implemented
° Imperiled plants are half as likely to receive listing protection under
the ESA as imperiled animals.
° Of the roughly 700 plants that are listed under the ESA, only 4% have habitat
protection through federal designation of critical habitat.
° The federal government spends 25 times more towards recovery of animals listed under
the ESA than towards plant recovery programs.
Botany Understaffing
° Botany staffing in federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management
(BLM)
and the Forest Service is wholly inadequate to meet legal, scientific, or management
requirements for native plant species and communities. The BLM employs only 68 botanists
nationwide to manage 264 million acres (1 botanist per 4 million acres). The Forest
Service employed only 128 botanists nationwide in 2001. At the same time, nearly 3,000
foresters (who primarily manage commercial timber) were on staff.
Botany understaffing means that some of the many imperiled plants in
the U.S. are disappearing from public lands simply due to lack of personnel to perform
routine, and legally required, surveys and monitoring.
Unequal Protection under Law
° The ESA provides much weaker protection for listed plants than for listed animals.
Although it is illegal to kill any listed animal without a permit, under current law many
federally listed plants can be deliberately killed without a permit and with no
requirements for mitigation. This destruction is happening day after day throughout the
U.S.
° At the state level, only 29 state endangered species acts provide any protection for
plants.
RECOMMENDATIONS
We propose the following action plan to address these deficiencies
in state and federal plant conservation law, budgets, staffing and policy:
- Federal agencies must employ adequate numbers of botanists to comply
with legal requirements for scientific analysis of the environmental impacts of agency
actions and to fully participate in project planning, rare plant conservation, monitoring,
weed control, restoration and other key conservation activities.
- Funding for recovery of federally listed species must be increased so
that recovery plans are developed and implemented for all listed species
- Funding for listing of imperiled species must be increased so that
imperiled plants and animals which legally merit listing protection receive it.
- The Federal Endangered Species Act must be amended to provide equal
protection for plants and animals.
- State Endangered Species Acts must provide adequate protection to
plants and animals.
- Federal budgets for invasive species control must be increased so
that new invasions are prevented and the expansion of existing invasions is halted.
- The United States must ratify the Global Convention on Biological
Diversity and promote attainment of the conservation targets in the Convention's Global
Plant Conservation Strategy.
This report may be cited as Roberson, E.B. 2002.
Barriers to Native Plant Conservation in the United States: funding, staffing, law. Native
Plant Conservation Campaign, California Native Plant Society, Sacramento, CA and Center
for Biological Diversity, Tucson, AZ
Presentation
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