A magistrate judge rejected the agency’s argument that it needed until 2029 to complete an assessment that was due 12 months after the petition to list the species was brought in late 2023.
By Edvard Pettersson, Courthouse News Service
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to complete within nine months a delayed assessment of whether the San Francisco Estuary local population of white sturgeon should be listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Cisneros in San Francisco wasn’t persuaded by the agency’s arguments that it would need until 2029 to complete the so-called 12-month finding because of a backlog of pending petitions and staffing shortages from layoffs and a hiring freeze.
The judge specifically rejected the agency’s contention that setting an expedited schedule for the white sturgeon assessment would disrupt the Fish and Wildlife Service’s ability to resolve other petitions on schedule.
“The court finds that statement less than fully credible,” Cisneros said. “Defendants’ failure to meet statutory deadlines under the ESA appears to have resulted, in part, from adopting procedures that are inconsistent with those deadlines. Accordingly, any inability to meet other deadlines in light of this court’s order is at least in part a problem of defendants’ own making.”
San Francisco Baykeeper and three other environmental and sport fishing groups sued the Trump administration in February, saying it missed the statutory deadline to assess whether the white sturgeon should be protected as a threatened species.
The groups had petitioned for ESA listing in December 2023, and in October 2024, the Fish and Wildlife Service stated that the petition presented sufficient scientific or commercial evidence to warrant a status review.
However, soon after President Donald Trump was back in power, the federal government started slashing its workforce, including at the Fish and Wildlife Service. These job cuts and a hiring freeze by themselves weren’t enough to convince the judge that the agency couldn’t meet its legal obligations.
“The court accepts that […] the hiring freeze is in place and that it was imposed by the president, who is not a party to this case,” Cisneros said. “The court presumes that any reduction in force is within the control of the defendants named in this case, who include the Secretary of the Interior, and who are obligated by law to comply with the ESA’s statutory deadlines.”
San Francisco Bay hosts California’s only known reproductive population of white sturgeon, the largest freshwater fish in North America, which can live up to 100 years, according to San Francisco Baykeeper.
But environmentalists say the population has been devastated by excessive fresh water diversions from the Bay’s tributary rivers, which disrupt the high flows needed to reproduce successfully. Overfishing and recurring lethal algae outbreaks in the Bay have further accelerated the species’ decline.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service is required to respond to petitions to list species under the ESA within one year, and that deadline is past,” Eric Buescher, Baykeeper’s managing attorney, said in February when the lawsuit was filed. “The Trump administration’s executive orders can’t change that reality or circumvent basic requirements of the law.”
