Candidate Conservation/Species at Risk

Candidate Conservation

Candidate species are plants and animals for which the Service has sufficient information on their biological status and threats to propose them as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act, but for which development of a listing regulation is precluded by other higher priority listing activities.

The Panama City Field Office currently has seven candidate species of freshwater mussels which occur within Northwest Florida and Alabama rivers. The species are the round ebonyshell, southern kidneyshell, narrow pigtoe, southern sandshell, fuzzy pigtoe, tapered pigtoe, and Choctaw bean. You can read more about the status and threats of these species in the 2003 Candidate Notice of Review [PDF].

The Candidate Conservation Program provides a means for conserving these species and other species at risk*. Early conservation preserves management options, minimizes the cost of recovery, and reduces the potential for restrictive land use policies in the future. Effective candidate conservation may reverse the species' decline, ultimately eliminating the need for ESA protection.

Through Candidate Conservation Agreements and Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances the Fish and Wildlife Service can work with interested public and private parties to identify threats to candidate species or species at risk. The goals of these agreements are to 1) identify threats to candidate of species at risk; 2} develop measures to conserve species; 3) identify willing landowners and develop agreements; and 4) implement conservation measures and monitor effectiveness. Review the Candidate Conservation fact sheet [PDF] and the Candidate Conservation Agreement Handbook [PDF].

Species at Risk

*Species at risk [Excel Spreadsheet] are species being tracked by the Fish and Wildlife Service because they are likely to become candidates or proposed species in the near future.

The Panama City Field Office is currently working with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and local landowners on ways to reduce threats to the Panama City crayfish. We have also worked with Florida Department of Environmental Protection to educate landowners on the importance of rare plant species found only along the banks of the Sandhill Karst Ponds [PDF] located in northern Bay and southern Washington counties.