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By Nathan Gilles. February 12, 2026. Columbia Insight

In 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made an exciting announcement.

The federal agency that oversees the implementation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) announced it was removing Bradshaw’s lomatium (Lomatium bradshawii), a perennial herb with a distinctive yellow flower, from the federal endangered species list because the plant’s conservation recovery effort had been a success.

In 2023, in the lead up to the 50th anniversary of the ESA , the USFWS would go on to delist the golden paintbrush (Castilleja levisecta) for the same reason. The plant with bright yellow bracts and green flowers was the “latest ESA success story in Washington and Oregon,” according to an agency press release.

From 2021 to 2023, the USFWS removed two other rare regional plants from the federal endangered species list—Nelson’s checker-mallow (Sidalcea nelsoniana) and water howellia (Howellia aquatilis).

All four species benefitted from long-term recovery efforts that helped bring their population numbers back from the dismally low numbers that qualified them for ESA protections decades earlier.

The USFWS cited these recovery efforts in its decisions to delist the species and to celebrate what it characterized as a broader conservation success story.

Now, however, for two of the four species that decision is looking premature.

And scientists in the Pacific Northwest, many of whom opposed the delisting in the first place, aren’t surprised.
Counts down

Since being delisted, the golden paintbrush and Bradshaw’s lomatium have experienced steep population declines, raising questions about the decision to delist the plants, as well as concerns about their long-term survival without federal protections and federal dollars to aid in their recovery. All four plants remain listed as either threatened or endangered in Washington and Oregon.

A pair of former State of Washington botanists is among those sounding the alarm about the health of rare plant species.

Jesse Miller, former lead state botanist for Washington’s Natural Heritage Program, which oversees the state’s own list of rare and endangered species, says the USFWS needs to bring back federal protections for the golden paintbrush and Bradshaw’s lomatium.

“Unless we see strong positive population trends in the years following delisting, which we’re not seeing for these plants, I think they should be [federally relisted]. I just don’t think their future is secure at this point without that,” says Miller, a faculty member at the Evergreen State College in Olympia.

Miller left Washington’s Department of Natural Resources last summer.

Read the full story at Columbia Insight