DOI: 10.5061/dryad.43q6b
title: Data from: Taxa, petitioning agency, and lawsuits affect time spent awaiting listing under the US Endangered Species Act

description: The United States' Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the world's
 foremost law for protecting species at risk of extinction; however,
 species must first be listed as threatened or endangered before receiving
 protection under the Act. We used an information theoretic approach to
 assess whether listing budget, policy phase (which was correlated with
 presidential administration), or both factors were associated with the
 number of species listed annually between 1983 and 2014. Annual listing
 rates were positively affected by larger listing budgets; policy phase
 also had a significant impact on annual listing rates after accounting for
 the effects of budget. However, the listing process for any one species
 spans multiple years, thus we also evaluated how taxonomic affiliation,
 the initiating organization, and lawsuits affected the amount of time 1338
 listed species spent in review between 1973 and 2014. Species waited a
 median of 12.1 years to receive protection, with plants and invertebrates
 experiencing longer wait times than vertebrates. These process times
 exceed ESA deadlines, which are two years when initiated from a third
 party; this may perpetuate population declines and hinder recovery
 efforts. We observed that at the time of a lawsuit filling for either a
 proposed or final rule, species had waited, respectively, 4.19 and 0.70
 years longer than species for which no lawsuits were filed, indicating
 lawsuits targeted species that experienced longer delays. We discuss how
 changes in ESA implementation over time interacted to produce high
 variability and often long wait times in the listing process. Our results
 indicated a positive role for both citizen petitions and budget increases
 to advance the listing process, thus hastening biodiversity protection.
description: Puckett_etal_BioCon2016-TotalProcessTimeDataData file with the following columns: Name (species name), Init_Prop (number of days between initiation and proposed listing date), Prop_List (number of days between a proposed and final listing), Init_List (number of days between initiation and a final listing), Initiator (which group filed the species initiation), SppGroup (taxon as listed in FWS TESS database), PropSuitAfter10 (Y- yes, N- no; Y indicates the species had a lawsuit during the initiation to proposal phase), ListSuit (Y- yes, N- no; Y indicates the species had a lawsuit during the proposed to final listing phase), and SppCode (FWS TESS database code for each species).Puckett_etal_BioCon2016-Annual_ListData set for the Annualized Listing Rate analysis. Data columns include: Year and Year_C, Init (number of species initiated in that year), Lst (number of species listed in that year), AdminList (number of species listed, shifted from a yearly start date of Jan 1 to Jan 20 due to presidential administrative cycles), L_Budget (US Fish & Wildlife annual listing budget in millions of $ adjusted for inflation to the value in 2014), Candidates (the number of candidate species for that year), Admin (the presidential administration including: RR: Ronald Reagan; GHB: George H W Bush; BC: William (Bill) Clinton; GWB: George W Bush; BO: Barack Obama); Phase (the policy phase as described in the text).Puckett_etal_BioCon2016-PropSuitData file for length of time for species where lawsuits were filed within the initiation to proposal phase of listing. Columns include: SppCode (US FWS TESS database species code), Init_PetSuit (number of days between initiation and lawsuit), PetSuit_Prop (number of days between lawsuit and proposed ruling).Puckett_etal_BioCon2016-ListSuitData file for length of time for species where lawsuits were filed within the proposal to final rule phase of listing. Columns include: SppCode (US FWS TESS database species code), Prop_Suit (number of days between proposed rule and lawsuit), Suit_List (number of days between lawsuit and final listing rule).Puckett_etal_BioCon2016-RcodeR code for the annualized listing rates, and process time analyses (initiation to proposed, proposed to listing, initiation to listing)