[Coral-List] Follow-up: NOAA lists 20 new corals

[Jennifer Moore - NOAA Federal]

In response to the posting on the coral list last week of NOAA's coral
final listing rule under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA), questions
have been raised on the list about the selection of listed species. As
explained in the summary at the beginning of the final rule (link below),
these ESA listings were in response to a 2009 petition by the US-based
environmental group Center for Biological Diversity to list 83
reef-building corals that occur in US waters and were on the IUCN red-list
at that time. The ESA requires NOAA to respond to petitions by evaluating
the extinction risk of the petitioned species, thus NOAA only considered
the 83 species in the petition, not all 800-some reef-building corals in
the world. The petition was based on occurrence in US waters, and those
areas are generally not within the ranges of species with the smallest
ranges (i.e., the species with the greatest extinction risk). Therefore,
the final rule does not represent NOAA's view of the most at-risk
reef-building coral species in the world, but rather the most at-risk
species of the 83 species in the petition.

We welcome any questions on the listing.  Please contact me or Lance Smith
in out Pacific Islands Region (lance.smith at noaa.gov).

Cheers,
Jennifer

-- 

*Jennifer Moore
ESA Coral Coordinator | Protected Resources Division
NOAA Fisheries Service
263 13th Ave South
Saint Petersburg, FL 33701
727-551-5797 phone | 727-824-5309 fax
jennifer.moore at noaa.gov <jennifer.moore at noaa.gov>

http://coral.sero.nmfs.noaa.gov <http://coral.sero.nmfs.noaa.gov>*

*
To those who sacrificed careers of adventure in the wide-open spaces
to wrestle for conservation in the policy arena.*