Endangered Florida butterflies to get federal protection
by Barbara Liston

Reuters    Translate This Article
12 August 2014

ORLANDO (Reuters) - Two species of butterflies that live in South Florida will be listed as endangered under federal law, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday.

The official listing of the Bartram's scrub-hairstreak and Florida leafwing butterflies under the Endangered Species Act, expected on Tuesday, will make it illegal to capture or harm the butterflies, and their larvae.

Both species were common around Miami and the Florida Keys until development wiped out much of their natural habitat, according to agency spokesman Ken Warren.

'We do believe their numbers are extremely low,' Warren said.

The agency also designated a total of 11,539 acres in seven separate parcels in Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties as critical habitat for the butterflies. Most of the acreage—85 percent—is in federal or state hands.

Private owners of the remaining 15 percent of the acreage will not be greatly impacted unless they plan development that requires federal funding or authorization, Warren said.

The critical habitat designation will go into effect on Sept. 11, Warren said.

The endangered listing comes as a result of a 2011 settlement of lawsuits by conservation groups, which argued that 757 wildlife species nationally had been flagged by the agency as likely endangered but never acted upon, according to Jaclyn Lopez, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Some potentially endangered species had not been given a full scientific evaluation and final determination for decades, said Lopez, whose group aims to protect species from extinction.

In all, Lopez said 128 species that were part of the lawsuit have been listed as endangered since the settlement.

(Editing by David Adams and Susan Heavey)

© Copyright 2014 Reuters

Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. 'Reuters' and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies. For additional information on other Reuters media services please visit reuters.com/newsagency. 

Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world from good news reported by the press; and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based-Total Knowledge based-programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.



Translation software is not perfect; however if you would like to try it, you can translate this page using:

(Google) Select a language English to Afrikaans English to Albanian English to Arabic English to Belarusian English to Bulgarian English to Catalan English to Chinese (Simplified) English to Chinese (Traditional) English to Croatian English to Czech English to Danish English to Dutch English to Estonian English to Filipino English to Finnish English to French English to Galician English to German English to Greek English to Hebrew English to Hindi English to Hungarian English to Icelandic English to Indonesian English to Irish English to Italian English to Japanese English to Korean English to Latvian English to Lithuanian English to Macedonian English to Malay English to Maltese English to Norwegian English to Persian English to Polish English to Portuguese English to Romanian English to Russian English to Serbian English to Slovak English to Slovenian English to Spanish English to Swahili English to Swedish English to Thai English to Turkish English to Ukrainian English to Vietnamese English to Welsh English to Yiddish

(Altavista babelfish) Select a languageEnglish to Chinese-simpEnglish to Chinese-tradEnglish to DutchEnglish to PortugueseEnglish to FrenchEnglish to GermanEnglish to GreekEnglish to ItalianEnglish to JapaneseEnglish to KoreanEnglish to RussianEnglish to Spanish

Send Good News to Global Good News.

Your comments.