Section 9 of the Endangered Species Act prohibits any person, public or private, from “taking” a listed species of fish or wildlife.
“Take” is a term of art— and a relatively broad one that encompasses both direct harm to individual members of a protected species and indirect harm through habitat alterations that injure any such individual.
“Section 9 imposes extraordinarily broad liability, particularly in comparison to laws that preceded it.
The ESA directly entitles endangered species to this protection, while threatened species can only obtain section 9 protection via regulations. All threatened species (with limited exceptions) governed by the FWS have this coverage and the NMFS provides it case by case to individual species.
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