And our 2016 report A Wild Success found that the Act has been extraordinarily successful in recovering birds in particular: Under its protection 85% of bird populations in the continental United States increased or stabilized, and the average population increase was 624%.
Numerous later studies made that even more clear. To objectively test whether the Act was recovering species at a sufficient rate, our 2012 report On Time, On Target compared the actual recovery rate of 110 species with the projected recovery rate in their federal recovery plans, finding 90% of species recovering as specified by the plans. And our 2016 report A Wild Success found that the Act has been extraordinarily successful in recovering birds in particular: Under its protection 85% of bird populations in the continental United States increased or stabilized, and the average population increase was 624%.