News

Yesterday, the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Clinic filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, on behalf of a coalition of eleven scientists who are experts on either the American Burying Beetle or climate change impacts on vulnerable species. The brief supports the Center for Biological Diversity’s lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) 2020 decision to reduce the status of the American Burying Beetle from an endangered species to a threatened species. The Service took this step despite acknowledging that the Beetle may cease to exist in a majority of its remaining habitat as soon as 2040 due to climate change impacts.  

“Climate change is radically transforming our environment, with devastating consequences for countless vulnerable species,” says Allyson Gambardella, a student clinician who helped prepare the brief. “The Beetle exemplifies the challenges species face in a rapidly changing world. In the face of this environmental crisis, the Beetle and other species like it need greater protection under the Endangered Species Act, not less, before it is too late.” 

As the brief argues, the FWS failed to consider the full range of threats that climate change is posing on species like the Beetle, focusing almost exclusively on the average summer daytime temperature. “The scientific consensus indicates that climate change impacts extend far beyond a rise in temperature,” says Will Bennett, a student clinician who contributed to the drafting of the brief. We hope that the fuller picture provided by the amicus brief will help establish that the FWS must take the widespread impacts of climate change on the Beetle seriously and ensure that the species remains listed as endangered.”  

Allyson Gambardella, Will Bennett, and Staff Attorney Rebecca Garverman drafted the amicus brief under the supervision of Faculty Director Mary Hollingsworth on behalf of scientists who are concerned that the agency’s approach would result not only in the extinction of the Beetle but also of other species facing the increasing and compounding impacts of climate change, including from extreme weather events.  

After the FWS delisted 21 species due to their extinction, FWS Director Martha Williams declared, “[f]ederal protection came too late to reverse these species’ decline, and it’s a wake-up call on the importance of conserving imperiled species before it’s too late.” https://www.fws.gov/press-release/2023-10/21-species-delisted-endangered-species-act-due-extinction. The agency must now heed its own stated wake-up call and act to protect the Beetle from climate change before it is too late.