The Endangered Species Listing Program

Through the Listing Program, the Service determines whether to add a species to the Federal lists of endangered and threatened wildlife and plants. Once listed, a species is afforded the full range of protections available under the Endangered Sspecies Act, including prohibitions on killing, harming or otherwise "taking" a species. In some instances, species listing can be avoided by the development of Candidate Conservation Agreements which may remove threats facing the candidate species.

Contents:
Listed Species Counts and Information  About Our Listing Program About Candidate Conservation  About Critical Habitat

For viewing or downloading recent listing notices or actions announcements in the Federal Register, please see our Federal Register Announcements page.

For viewing or downloading other policy announcements such as final and draft policies, Secretarial Orders, or regulations, please see our Policies page.

How Many and Which Species are Listed—Species Information

For information on how many and which species are listed, where they are listed, more about individual species, proposed and candidate species information, or other threatened and endangered species information, please see our  Species Information page.

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About Our Listing Program

• The Listing Program (an article from the November/December 1999 issue of our Endangered Species Bulletin)
• Listing a Species as Threatened or Endangered, Section 4 of The Endangered Species Act (pdf)
• Policy for Evaluation of Conservation Efforts When Making Listing Decisions — now final, March 28, 2003, (PDF)
  • News Release
• When a citizen or group formally requests that we (or NOAA Fisheries) lists, delists, or othewise changes the status of a species, we follow these guidelines.
• A flowchart of the petition process (PDF)
• Learn the results of the 2002 review of species petitioned for listing under the ESA or see the Federal Register Notice 67 FR 40657 (in PDF).
• For information on the number of species listed, which ones, and more about each species, please read the What's Listed - Species Information section above and go to the appropriate page.

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About Candidate Species Conservation

• All About the Candidate Conservation Program
• The Endangered Species Act and Candidate Species ( PDF)
• What are Candidate Conservation Agreements With Assurances for Private Property Owners? (PDF)

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About Critical Habitat

• Critical Habitat, What is it? [in PDF]
• For how many species has the Fish and Wildlife Service or the NOAA Fisheries Service (also known as NMFS) designated critical habitat?
• For how many species has the Fish and Wildlife Service designated critical habitat?
• Search by date on status of critical habitat actions (ie. a historical log of the actions that propose, finalize, withdraw or change critical habitat designations for a species)

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