Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

The federal district court for the District of Columbia so-ordered a joint stipulated settlement agreement and order that resolved the Center for Biological Diversity’s lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS’s) 12-month finding that listing of the bridled darter under the Endangered Species Act was not warranted. The complaint’s allegations included that the bridled darter faces “intensifying threats” from climate change and that the FWS’s use of a 20-year “foreseeable future” timeframe was not supported. In the settlement agreement, FWS said it believed it was “prudent” to re-evaluate the bridled darter’s status and agreed to submit a new 12-month finding as to whether listing is warranted by November 18, 2026. FWS said that if it determined, based on newly available data, that the bridled darter should be split into two separate species, FWS intended to make a finding for each listable entity.

Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in federal district court in the District of Columbia challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to deny Endangered Species Act protection to the bridled darter, a freshwater fish “found only in the headwaters of the Etowah and Conasauga Rivers within the Coosa River basin in northern Georgia and southern Tennessee.” The complaint alleged that the fish “faces growing and intensifying threats from urbanization, agriculture, and climate change.” The complaint contends that the decision not to list the bridled darter as endangered or threatened relied on a 20-year “foreseeable future” timeframe” based on “unsupported assertions” that it would be speculative to forecast beyond that time period due to “uncertainty when predicting the species’ response to threats in the future.” The complaint alleged that FWS failed to explain how the darter’s response to future threats, including climate change, “could be expected to change for the better” beyond 20 years.