1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Providing ESA Timing Improvements That Increase Opportunities for Nonlisting Act of 2018 or the PETITION Act of 2018 . 2. Findings and purposes (a) Findings Congress finds the following: (1) The number and type of species-listing petitions received by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (in this Act referred to as the Service ) during the last two decades under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 ( 16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq.) routinely outstrip the capacity of the agency to process all such petitions within the timeframes required by that statute, constituting a petition backlog. (2) A significant portion of petitions in the backlog would ultimately be rejected as having failed to contain substantial information, or containing substantial information but not meriting a listing of a species as an endangered species or threatened species, if the Service were to issue findings on them. (3) The petition system has been overloaded with influxes of petitions submitted by well-funded petitioners with the express intention of creating a backlog that causes the Service to fail to adhere to timeframes established in the Endangered Species Act of 1973. (4) The deficit between total received petitions and petitions processed within statutory timeframes results in the Federal Government being exposed to legal liability on the basis of such a backlog, in accordance with such intention of petitioners. (5) Ensuing litigation initiated by such petitioners results in the Service agreeing to or being court-ordered to adhere to adverse timeframes, listing decisions, and settlements. (6) Such litigation secures listings for species and habitat designations for which the Service would otherwise not issue a positive finding on the basis of its regular, procedural evaluation of a petition. (7) Accordingly, such listings and designations are agreed or adhered to contrary to the public interest insofar as the public benefits from faithful execution of duly passed laws. (8) A statutory remedy