Endangered Species Law & Policy

The Candidate Notice of Review is an annual appraisal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) of plants and animals that are candidates for Endangered Species Act protection.  A "candidate" species is a species for which there is sufficient information to support a proposal for listing as an endangered or threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, but the formal listing determination is delayed because of higher priority listing actions for other species.  The Candidate Notice of Review, among other things, "summarizes the status and threats that [the Service] evaluated in order to determine whether species qualify as candidates, to assign a listing priority number (LPN) to each candidate species, and to determine whether a species should be removed from candidate status."  In the most recent Candidate Notice of Review, the Service identified 30 candidate species (10 plant and 20 animal species) and changed the listing priority status for one species.  Notably, this represents a substantial reduction in the number of candidate species since the last Candidate Notice of Review was issued in December 2015.  The reductions include 78 species for which the Service published a final listing rule, 18 species for which the Service rescinded the candidate status by publishing a not-warranted finding, and one species for which the Service published a withdrawal of proposed rule.