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

After the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposed to list the Black Creek crayfish as an endangered species and proposed the designation of critical habitat, Center for Biological Diversity voluntarily dismissed with prejudice the lawsuit it filed to challenge a 2021 determination that listing was not warranted. Center for Biological Diversity alleged that the crayfish, which lives only in the Lower St. Johns River Basin in northeastern Florida, was “highly imperiled” due to threats that included sea level rise and severe weather events and that FWS had discounted the threat of climate change-induced weather events in its 2021 decision.

Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the District of Columbia challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS’s) decision not to list the Black Creek crayfish as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The complaint alleged that the Black Creek crayfish, which lives only in the Lower St. Johns River Basin in northeastern Florida, is “among the most threatened aquatic invertebrates in the southeastern United States” and is “highly imperiled” due to threats including impacts of climate change such as sea level rise and severe weather events. The complaint said the FWS “discounted the threat of climate change-induced weather events” despite finding that climate change had already increased water temperatures in streams to temperatures surpassing the crayfish’s temperature tolerances.