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PRESS RELEASE

Department of the Interior Proposes Expanding Conservation Technique as Climate Change Threatens Greater Species Extinction

Jun 6, 2022

Media Contactshttps://www.fws.gov/press-release/2022-06/department-interior-proposes-proposes-expanding-conservation-technique

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In the first Endangered Species Act (ESA) interpretive rule produced under the Biden-Harris administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to revisesection 10(j) regulationsunder the ESA to better facilitate recovery by allowing for the introduction of listed species to suitable habitats outside of their historical ranges. The proposed change will help improve the conservation and recovery of imperiled ESA-listed species in the coming decades, as growing impacts fromclimate changeandinvasive speciescause habitats within their historical ranges to shift and become unsuitable.

Reintroducing species of plants and animals back into areas where they have disappeared has been a regularly used technique in wildlife conservation for decades, and federal agencies were authorized by Congress to create experimental populations to aid in that…