Taxa, petitioning agency, and lawsuits affect time spent awaiting listing under the US Endangered Species Act

The United States' Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the world's foremost law for protecting species at risk of extinction; however, species must first be listed as threatened or endangered before receiving protection under the Act. We used an information theoretic approach to assess whether listing budget, policy phase (which was correlated with presidential administration), or both factors were associated with the number of species listed annually between 1983 and 2014. Annual listing rates were positively affected by larger listing budgets; policy phase also had a significant impact on annual listing rates after accounting for the effects of budget. However, the listing process for any one species spans multiple years, thus we also evaluated how taxonomic affiliation, the initiating organization, and lawsuits affected the amount of time 1338 listed species spent in review between 1973 and 2014. Species waited a median of 12.1 years to receive protection, with plants and invertebrates e...

美国《濒危物种法》（Endangered Species Act，ESA）是全球首部专为保护濒临灭绝物种而制定的核心立法；但根据该法案，物种需先被列为受威胁物种或濒危物种，方可获得法案所提供的保护。本研究采用信息论方法（information theoretic approach），评估了1983年至2014年间，年度列入濒危物种名录的物种数量是否与列入预算、政策阶段（与美国总统任期存在相关性），或二者兼具存在关联。研究发现，年度列入名录的速率随列入预算规模扩大呈正向增长；在控制预算影响后，政策阶段同样对年度列入速率存在显著影响。由于单一物种的列入审核流程往往跨越多个年度，因此本研究同时分析了1973年至2014年间，1338个已列入名录物种的审核时长受分类学归属（taxonomic affiliation）、发起机构（initiating organization）及诉讼（lawsuits）的影响情况。结果显示，物种获得保护前的审核中位时长为12.1年，其中植物与无脊椎动物……