The folks over at Pacific Legal Foundation’s (PLF) blog have been nice enough to post about an article that I co-authored with Berry Brosi at Emory University (paywall protected, unfortunately!). The article investigates the role that citizen petitions and citizen suits play in the process of listing species for protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  We of course appreciate the publicity (any publicity is good publicity, right?).  But at the risk of sounding churlish, I think that PLF seriously misread our article.

First, a little background.  The ESA provides significant legal protections for species that are identified as endangered or threatened.  That means that the process by which species are identified for protection (the listing process) has potentially high stakes.  The ESA also allows anybody to file a petition asking the relevant agencies to list a species for protection under the Act; the ESA sets tight deadlines for the agencies to respond to the petitions, and allows anybody to sue the agencies if they miss the deadlines or reject a petition.

One question is how well citizens do in identifying species at risk that warrant protection under the Act compared to the agencies (which can list a species for ...

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