The Tribune

WILDEARTH Guardians describes itself as a nonprofit environmental advocacy organisation that works to protect wildlife, wild places and wild waters in the United States.

The group says it works to protect imperiled species and their habitat throughout the US and beyond.

The organisation wants the US government to list the queen conch as ‘threatened’ or ‘endangered’ under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and to designate critical habitat for the species in US waters.

In its petition for federal protection for the queen conch, the group says the conch’s habitat and behavioural characteristics make it particularly vulnerable to exploitation because it is slow moving, easily identifiable, and often gathers in large aggregations in shallow water.

Loss of the species could negatively affect seagrass communities and other ecologically valuable species, it says.

The queen conch is threatened by four factors identified in the ESA, according to WildEarth:

First, the species’ habitat is

affected by a range of threats, including water pollution, degradation of seagrass beds, and destruction of essential nursery habitat.

The second threat is overutilisation of conch for commercial purposes, primarily the harvest of conch meat for growing local and international markets.

Third, existing regulatory mechanisms are inadequate to manage the unsustainable harvest or to eliminate the widespread practice of illegal fishing, claims WildEarth.

Fourth, conch are particularly biologically vulnerable to human exploitation and the resulting low adult densities limits population recovery.

Listing the queen conch under the ESA would provide needed protection for the queen conch by limiting or restricting US take and import of the species, the group argues.