Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act is a safety net for protecting plants and animals in danger of extinction. A strong ESA also protects us all by helping keep intact the ecosystems on which our lives depend.
Protecting endangered wildlife
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is our nation's safety net for protecting plants and animals on the brink of extinction. The act not only protects wildlife at risk, it protects people, too, by helping keep intact the ecosystems on which our lives depend.
Under the Act, science informs decisions made to name, or "list," a dwindling species as threatened or endangered. The identification and designation of "critical habitat," necessary to a species survival, is an important part of the listing process. Read more about specific provisions within the act.
The ESA is the cornerstone of US environmental law and one of the strongest environmental laws in the world. Canada, for example, has no endangered species law with legal teeth or real regulatory power, and protecting endangered wildlife there, from northern spotted owl to mountain caribou, is even more challenging.
Conservation Northwest stands by the laws safeguarding endangered wildlife and champions the use of science in protecting wildlife and habitat critical habitat. We also press for the listing and protection of animals threatened with extinction, from wolverines to western gray squirrels.
