About this Collection
Five-Year Reviews of Listed Species
To make sure that all species listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act continue to have the appropriate level of protection, we conduct assessments of their status once every five years. We call these five-year reviews. (ESA section 4(c)(2) and regulations 50 CFR 424.21).
Possible outcomes
A five-year review utilizes the best available scientific and commercial data on a species to determine whether its status has changed since the time of its listing or its last status review.
Upon completion of a five-year review, we can make four possible recommendations:
- Reclassify the species from threatened to endangered (uplist)
- Reclassify the species from endangered to threatened (downlist)
- Remove the species from the List (delist)
- Maintain the species’ current classification (no change)
A five-year review does not automatically change a species’ protections or status, it only presents recommendations. Any change to a species’ federal status requires a separate rulemaking process which is published in the Federal Register which is open to public comment, and subject to peer review.
Ways to participate
- Visit federalregister.gov to search for a specific species
- Browse the “Endangered and Threatened Species” section of the Federal Register
- Search for a species on the Environmental Conservation Online System: https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp/
Instructions for submitting information are provided in the notices announcing the species we are reviewing. If you submit information, please support it with documentation such as maps, bibliographic references, methods used to gather and analyze the data, and/or copies of any pertinent publications, reports, or letters by knowledgeable sources. We will consider all information submitted, but raw data that has not been analyzed or summarized may have limited usefulness.