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June 23, 2009

Equal Protection sought for Preble's Meadow
Jumping Mouse in Wyoming

Denver— Five conservation groups, including Laramie-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, today challenged a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to protect only small portions of Endangered plants and wildlife as opposed to protecting species throughout their ranges.  Conservation groups are focusing their challenge on the loss of protections for the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse in Wyoming.

On July 10, 2008, the Service removed protections for the Preble's meadow jumping mouse in Wyoming while keeping the Colorado populations on the Endangered Species list. In Wyoming, Preble’s meadow jumping mice have had no protection since August 11, 2008.

Duane Short, wild species program director for the Wyoming-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance noted, “Preble’s lives exclusively in riparian or streamside habitat, along with an estimated 70% of all Wyoming wildlife species. Protecting Preble’s and its habitat also offers protecting to this diverse array of Wyoming wildlife.”

Due to habitat loss, the mouse has disappeared from much of the urban corridor in Colorado and to a lesser degree in Wyoming. Previous to the Service’s decision, Preble’s had been protected throughout its range in Colorado and Wyoming as threatened under the Endangered Species Act since 1998.

“Endangered species around the country are losing protections, while this illegal move by the Bush administration stands,” said Erin Robertson, senior staff biologist with Center for Native Ecosystems in Denver. “The fate of the mouse is important, but there is much more at stake.”                                                            

Preble's delisting in Wyoming is one of several decisions issued by the Service since receiving a memo in March 2007 from the Office of the Solicitor, proclaiming that the Endangered Species Act allows the agency to neglect all but the most threatened part of an Endangered species' range. Similar “split decisions” have failed to fully protect the gray wolf, Gunnison's prairie dog, and Queen Charlotte goshawk.

The Service had claimed in 2005 that the mouse was not a valid subspecies and therefore did not warrant continued protection but an independent scientific panel concluded in 2006 that the Service had relied on contaminated data, and that the Preble's meadow jumping mouse was unique and warranted protection under the Endangered Species Act.

"The science is settled," said Dr. Sylvia Fallon, staff scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. "The mouse is unique and in trouble. Mice don't read maps - it makes no sense for protections to end at the state line for endangered species."

In 2007, under pressure from Congress to account for politically motivated decisions about Endangered species, the Service admitted that the 2005 proposal to remove protections for the mouse and much of its critical habitat was instigated by political appointee Julie MacDonald. MacDonald resigned in disgrace before an Interior Department investigation concluded that she inappropriately overruled agency scientists’ conclusions and recommendations.

Short also said, "Patchwork protection for this mouse or any Endangered species is akin to planned extinction, by neglect. If we fail to protect the jumping mouse populations in Wyoming, there will be no hope of recolonizing Colorado habitats if those critically imperiled populations die out.”

The groups filing suit in Denver District Court today are Center for Native Ecosystems (Denver), Biodiversity Conservation Alliance (Laramie), Natural Resources Defense Council (New York), Center for Biological Diversity (Tucson), and Defenders of Wildlife (Washington, D.C.). They are being represented by Eric Glitzenstein of Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal and Mike Harris of the University of Denver Environmental Law Clinic.