WASHINGTON (CN) - For the first time in the history of the Endangered Species Act, the USFWS intends to list an entire ecosystem, consisting of 48 threatened species of plants and animals in Kauai, as endangered.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to simultaneously designate critical habitat for 47 of the 48 species endemic to the Hawaiian island, to simplify what otherwise may be a complicated system of species management based on overlapping maps and plans. Instead, the Service would manage as a unit, a range of habitats with a contiguous boundary.
The plan is based on the Service's determination that the interdependence of the species suggests that the loss of any one may lead to a loss of all.
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