The graduation of a threatened species off the federal endangered list is often a cause for celebration.
Some environmentalists are squawking, however, because the iconic wood stork will soon lose its federal protection, arguing climate change and environmental policy rollbacks continue to threaten its wetland habitat.
The long-legged, mostly white bird is the only stork that is native to North America. Georgia is one of its largest nesting hot spots, and the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is one of the stork’s critical habitats.
The large-billed bird — first spotted in the Peach State 50 years ago — was on the brink of extinction when it landed on the federal endangered species list in 1984.
Although the wood stork’s population was reported to be more than 150,000 in the Southeast at one time, the destruction of its habitat and the disruption of water flow through southern Florida led the numbers to plummet to just over 10,000 in 1990, according to the National Audubon Society.
Some of the birds began to migrate north to South Carolina and other neighboring states.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates the stork’s breeding population is between 10,000 and 14,000 nesting pairs across roughly 100 colony sites. This is more than twice the number of nesting pairs and more than three times the number of colonies since 1984.
The Fish and Wildlife Service said the stork has brought three times the number of babies to nests across parts of the Southeast since then, deeming it ready to fly free from federal protections.
It is scheduled to be removed from the Endangered Species Act on March 9, according to the agency.
“The wood stork’s recovery is a real conservation success thanks to a lot of hard work from our partners,” Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik said in an online statement.
The wood stork is listed under “least concern” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, deemed the world’s most comprehensive information source on global conservation of animal, fungi and plant species.
The IUCN’s Red List, a critical indicator of the health of the world’s biodiversity, has seven rankings, ranging from “least concern” to “extinct.”
That the bird’s population has soared doesn’t automatically mean it’s ready to come off the endangered species list, attorneys with the Southern Environmental Law Center said. Climate change continues to erode the coast and diminish critical wetland habitats. Proposed rollbacks to federal environmental protections by the Trump administration could make those problems worse, the SELC said.
“This delisting comes at a time when species face a storm of proposed federal rollbacks to habitat protections that are likely to imperil wood storks and countless other Southeastern species,” Ramona McGee, SELC’s Wildlife Program leader, said in a statement, calling the move shortsighted and premature.
President Donald Trump swiftly undid a number of environmental policies from the Obama administration during his first term. For his second term, he campaigned — and has made good on — removing regulations he has argued hamstring industries and the nation’s economy.
The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed delisting the wood stork in 2023 during the Biden administration. But it was a sweeping decision in May of that year from the U.S. Supreme Court that put its wetland habitat at the most risk, environmental groups say.
In Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, the high court ruled that as many as half the nation’s 118 million acres of wetlands were no longer protected by the federal Clean Water Act. This means developers, land owners and others could disturb them without any input or control from the EPA, though states can still provide some protections.
Last November, the Trump administration proposed a rule that would remove roughly 80% of the nation’s wetlands and small streams from federal protection, leaving them vulnerable to development.
Wetland habitats remain critical for wood storks in every stage of life, according to the SELC. The large, wading bird typically nests in bald trees such as cypress, sweet gum and mangrove, which are found in Georgia, South Carolina and other coastal plain states.
“Wood storks need wetlands to survive, and that habitat is facing overwhelming pressure,” McGee said. “It is disappointing that Fish and Wildlife Service largely brushed away serious concerns about how losses to wetlands protections and climate change’s consequences for our coast increase threats to our U.S. population of wood stork.”
A note of disclosure
This coverage is supported by a partnership with Green South Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. You can learn more and support our climate reporting by donating at AJC.com/donate/climate.
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