NOAA Says Smalltail Shark Does Not Warrant Endangered Species Act Listing

NOAA Fisheries has finished its 12-month review of a petition to list the smalltail shark under the Endangered Species Act and found that listing is not warranted. The petition came from the Center for Biological Diversity in October 2022, and NOAA moved forward with a status review after finding the petition presented substantial information.

That is how the ESA process is supposed to work: take the petition, review the best available scientific and commercial information, look at extinction risk, and make the call. Sometimes that call leads to a listing. Sometimes it does not. Conservation loses credibility when every species fight is treated like the answer was supposed to be decided before the review started.

Smalltail sharks still deserve serious management where they occur. A not-warranted finding is not a license to ignore habitat, bycatch, coastal pressure, or fishery impacts. It simply means NOAA’s status review did not support adding the species to the federal endangered or threatened list at this time.

That distinction matters for fishermen, coastal communities, and conservationists. ESA listings bring heavy regulatory consequences, and those tools should be used when the science supports them, not as a default political hammer. At the same time, staying off the list should not become an excuse for lazy management.

The right standard is simple: protect species that need protection, keep working fisheries accountable, and make decisions on evidence instead of pressure campaigns. Wildlife and fisheries management has to be tough enough to say yes when listing is needed and honest enough to say no when the record does not support it.