This Article, adapted from Chapter 16 of What Can Animal Law Learn From Environmental Law?, 2d Edition (ELI Press, forthcoming 2020), explores existing and potential wildlife conservation policies that could play a vital role in mitigating global climate change. It describes how climate change is impacting wildlife and biodiversity around the globe and reviews the history and current state of U.S. policy, including how the federal government currently manages climate change issues under the ESA. It then proposes ways that the ESA and other wildlife conservation policies can mitigate climate change as natural climate solutions. It analyzes new wildlife conservation policies for their potential to mitigate climate change, and concludes that these can provide much-needed protection for species and biodiversity, while also serving as a valuable and meaningful tool to combat climate change.

The Endangered Species Act defines an endangered species as one at risk of extinction “throughout all or a significant portion of its range.” The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) has repeatedly defined “significant portion” to mean an area of the range essential to species persistence. This definition is redundant, and various iterations of the definition have been struck down in the past. At the same time, other proposals to list a species only in a portion of its range fail to satisfy the statutory requirements. This Article proposes to define “significant portion of its range” so as to allow DOI to list a species as endangered throughout its entire range based only on the risk of extinction in a portion of its range. The Article also provides a framework for understanding how past policies have failed.