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Emergency Petition Aims to Save 32 Species

Posted on: Saturday, 14 June 2008, 18:00 CDT

An emergency petition seeking endangered designation for 32 species--some of which have not been seen in the country for years -- has been filed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

WildEarth Guardians, a Santa Fe-based conservation group, filed the petition last week, seeking emergency protection. In some of the cases it may be too late, acknowledged Nicole Rosmarino, wildlife program director for the organization.

"Part of this is about scientific honesty," Rosmarino said in an interview. "And in some cases, listing under the Endangered Species Act could generate research funds that could be used to search for these species."

The 32 species listed in the petition were among a group of 674 species that were included in petitions the organization filed in 2007. Nearly a year has passed, and none of those species has been listed as endangered or threatened.

The petition seeks protection under the federal Endangered Species Act and contends that the 32 species are "all at the knife's edge of extinction. Given the locations of these species on either no or only one known site on earth, a single event -- whether from drought, flood, habitat destruction, pollution, exotic species, or other factors--could literally erase them from the world.

The 32 are "the absolute rarest" of the 674, Rosmarino said. As an example, she pointed out that the San Bernardino springsnail didn't make the list, even though it was last seen at only one U.S. location in 2005 when it was being kept alive by workers using a garden hose. That's because the snail still exists in two locations in Mexico.

The Bush administration has been criticized for failing to act or rejecting petitions seeking designation under the act. Under President George W. Bush, an average of less than nine species have been listed yearly, and all were forced by lawsuits. The average was 58 listings per year under George H.W. Bush and 65 per year under President Bill Clinton, according to Rosmarino.

The petition seeks protection for a mayfly once found in Arizona and Mexico. It had not been seen since 1934 until a single specimen was found in 2005 in Gila County, Ariz. Also in the petition is the Salina mucket, a mussel that disappeared from the Rio Grande in 1972, but then three of them were found in 2003.

Rosmarino said the Salina mucket "is a good example of why it is premature to write off any of these 32 species as extinct. Fish and Wildlife should list them, search hard for them and protect them and their habitats."

The petition says some of the 32 species are members of "particularly at-risk groups of species, such as freshwater mussels, which are the most rapidly declining group of animals in North America."

"A lot of the species [in the petition] are aquatic species and reflect the serious problem of diminishing water in the West," Rosmarino said. "We are outrunning nature's boundaries and we ignore it at our own peril."

While some of these species have a narrow range, the "canary-in-the-coal-mine argument applies to most species," she said. "We must protect all native species because we don't yet know the consequences of any one of these species going extinct."

She added, "The passenger pigeon was gone nearly a century ago and in 2003 research showed that its elimination fundamentally changed eastern hardwood forests. That took a century to find out."

Source: Chicago Tribune/Mayfly image credit: University of Buffalo

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