PORTLAND, Ore.— For the sixth fiscal year in a row, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has failed to follow its own workplan for addressing a backlog of plants and animals waiting for protection decisions under the Endangered Species Act. Among those left in the lurch are the Suwannee alligator snapping turtle, Mt. Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan and whitebark pine.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service’s program for protecting wildlife under the Endangered Species Act is badly broken and putting hundreds of species at risk of extinction,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Bloated bureaucracy, political interference and a self-imposed cap on spending are all contributing to desperately imperiled animals and plants waiting decades for protection.”

A recent study found that since 1992, species have waited for protection an average of nine years from the time citizens submitted a petition seeking federal listing. Under the Endangered Species Act, the process is supposed to take two years.

Nearly 400 species are currently awaiting protection decisions from the Service, with most having already waited more than a decade. In 2016 the agency developed a workplan to address the backlog. But in every fiscal year since, it has failed to make dozens of decisions for species and has had to continually update the plan. That has pushed missed dates further into the future.

While insufficient funding is part of the problem, the agency has hamstrung itself financially. The listing program’s budget has sat at roughly $20 million for more than a decade. But since 1998 the Service has requested a cap on spending for listing, which Congress has granted. This means that money cannot be moved from other programs to address the critical need to protect species. The Service also routinely requests far less funding than is required to protect all the species in need.

Adding to the problem, the Service has a cumbersome process for making listing decisions. It involves more than 20 officials, many of whom have little knowledge of the species in question. This slows down the process and invites political decision-making, which is illegal under the statute. The law requires protection decisions to be based solely on the best available science, and consequently dozens of decisions denying species protection have been overturned in recent decades.

While many improvements are needed, the Service did finalize or propose protections for 45 species in fiscal year 2022, which ended Sept. 30. These include decisions for tricolored and northern long-eared bats, foothill yellow-legged frogs, alligator snapping turtles and cactus ferruginous pygmy owls.

However, all but one of these decisions followed legal action by the Center and even that one, the Sacramento Mountains checkerspot butterfly, was the subject of significant legal action spanning two decades, during which time the species dwindled to only eight butterflies in the last count.

At least 48 species have gone extinct waiting for protection since the Endangered Species Act was passed.

Legend — PL: Proposed listing; FL: Final listing; PCH: Proposed critical habitat; FCH: Final critical habitat.