Since the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was passed in 1973, it has helped hundreds of species avoid extinction in the United States. The strong conservation policy has been used as a model in other countries. But it's not as successful as it could be, a new study finds.

Researchers have discovered most species are not being protected until their numbers have become so low that their chance of recovery is slim.

"The ESA is an incredibly powerful law for protecting our endangered wildlife. Yet, for decades, the agency primarily responsible for operationalizing the ESA- the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)一has been starved of resources," lead author Erich Eberhard says.

"As a result, we are very slow 10 give species the protection that they deserve. We typically wait until species are extremely rare and thus at extreme risk of extinction, and then, when a species is finally listed, the USFWS starts trying to recover it."

In 1993, a study found that few species received protection under the ESA until their populations became very small. For the new study, researchers repeated the methods used in the earlier research to see whether protections have become better since the problem was first noted. They also looked at trends in "wait times"一the amount of time between when a species is identified as potentially needing protection and when it actually receives protection under the ESA.

"Our analysis suggests that, in the nearly 30 years since attention was first brought to this problem, we have not become more active in protecting endangered species," says Eberhard.

The researchers found that the population sizes of species when they first became protected under the ESA are not statistically different from those in the 1993 study. They also discovered that there are long wait limes between when a species is identified as likely needing protection and when they actually receive them.

I can say that our study paints the current state of the ESA as a bit of cautionary (告诫的tale for the strong conservation policy," says Eberhard.