The Endangered Species Act should be strengthened, not weakened

Piping Plover hatchling on a Connecticut beach. Piping Plovers are protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Photo by Bob MacDonnell.

Connecticut Audubon’s communications director, Tom Andersen, gave the following statement in support of strengthening the U.S. Endangered Species Act, at a news conference called by U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal on Friday, August 16, in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.

I’m here to speak on behalf of the 17 kinds of plants and animals in Connecticut that are protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act.*

For the Piping Plovers, which you can find today on Griswold Point at the mouth of the Connecticut River. There are only about 60 pairs in the state and they nest only on the narrow strip of beach that separates the Sound from the state’s cities and suburbs.

For the Atlantic Sturgeon and short-nosed sturgeon. Five hundred years ago sturgeon were so common that native Americans would paddle out onto the Sound in dugout canoes at night, carrying lighted torches; the sturgeon would swim to the light and the Indians would spear them and tow them back to shore. That was centuries ago. A few years ago it was news when one Atlantic sturgeon was found in the river.

For the sea turtles – the loggerheads and green turtles and kemp’s ridleys that forage in the Sound each summer and fall.

And for the less conspicuous species: the puritan tiger beetle, the bog turtle, the Indiana bat, the sea-beach amaranth.

Connecticut would be a worse place and America would be a worse place without them. They’re here now in part because of the protections of the Endangered Species Act.

On behalf of our members all across the state, we call on the U.S. Congress to fight back against this administrative weakening of the act and pass a new version of the law that strengthens it. And in the meantime we call on the hardworking professionals at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to keep administering the law to the benefit of America’s wildlife.

There’s a colony of Roseate Terns on Falkner’s Island off Guilford that will benefit if you do.

Read the official testimony of our executive director Patrick Comins, opposing the changes to the ESA, submitted in September 2018.

The 17 species in Connecticut listed as endangered or threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (Source: the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection):

Piping Plover
Roseate Tern
Dwarf wedgemussel
Puritan tiger beetle
Loggerhead turtle
Green turtle
Leatherback turtle
Kemp’s ridley turtle
Bog turtle
Northern long-eared bat
Indiana bat
Shortnose sturgeon
Atlantic sturgeon
Sandplain agalinis
Sea-beach amaranth
Small whorled pogonia
Chaffseed