Friends of Sand Mountain :: View topic - USF&WS will initiate status review of butterfy

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Sand Mountain - In the News - USF&WS will initiate status review of butterfy

Crowdog - Aug 08, 2006 - 03:31 PM
Post subject: USF&WS will initiate status review of butterfy

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| Date: August 8, 2006 | (775) 861-6300|
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U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE TO INITIATE A STATUS REVIEW OF THE
SAND MOUNTAIN BLUE BUTTERFLY

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has completed an initial evaluation of a petition to add the Sand Mountain blue butterfly (Euphilotes pallescens arenamontana) to the Federal list of threatened or endangered species and determined that substantial biological information exists to warrant an in-depth examination of the butterfly?s status. The finding initiates a 12-month status review of the species. Once the review is complete, the Service will determine whether to propose listing the species as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

"Our finding is based on scientific information contained in the petition to list the butterfly," said Steve Thompson, manager of the California/Nevada Operations Office. "The finding does not mean that the Service has decided it is appropriate to list the Sand Mountain blue butterfly. It is the first step in a process that triggers a more thorough review of all the biological information available. We encourage the public to submit any relevant information about the butterfly and its habitat."

The Sand Mountain blue butterfly is a small, pale-blue butterfly known only to occur at Sand Mountain, a dune system located in Churchill County, Nevada. The butterfly occurs in close association with its host plant, Kearney buckwheat, on an estimated 1,000 acres within and adjacent to the 4,795 acre Sand Mountain Recreation Area managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

The Service?s decision, commonly known as a 90-day finding, is based on scientific and commercial information about the species provided in the petition which was submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity, Xerces Society, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and Nevada Outdoor Recreation Society. The Service published this finding in today?s Federal Register.

This 12-month status review will determine whether the Sand Mountain blue butterfly warrants listing as a threatened or endangered species. To ensure this status review is comprehensive, the Service is soliciting information from state and Federal natural resource agencies and all interested parties regarding the Sand Mountain blue butterfly and its habitat.
Based on the status review, the Service will make one of three possible determinations:
1) Listing is not warranted, in which case no further action will be taken.
2) Listing as threatened or endangered is warranted. In this case, the Service will publish a proposal to list, solicit independent scientific peer review of the proposal, seek input from the public, and consider the input before a final decision about listing the species is made. Generally, there is a one-year period between the time a species is proposed and the final decision.
3) Listing is warranted but precluded by other, higher priority activities.

This means the species is added to the Federal list of candidate species, and the proposal to list is deferred while the Service works on listing proposals for other species that are at greater risk. A warranted but precluded finding requires subsequent annual reviews of the finding until such time as either a listing proposal is published, or a not warranted finding is made based on new information.

As a part of the review, the Service will also consider a public planning effort to develop a conservation plan for the Sand Mountain blue butterfly initiated by the Lahontan Valley Environmental Alliance (LVEA).

Participants in this effort include representatives from the LVEA, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Service, the City of Fallon, Churchill County, the Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribe, the Friends of Sand Mountain (FOSM), the California Off-Road Vehicle Association (CORVA), the United States Naval Air Station Fallon, and private citizens.

The purpose of this conservation effort is to provide long term protection for the Sand Mountain blue butterfly and its habitat; particularly its host plant, Kearney buckwheat. One of the actions identified in the plan is the designation of a mandatory route system wherein recreation users will be required to stay on established trails within the recreation area to prevent damage to the butteryfly?s habitat. If successfully implemented, this plan could preclude the potential need to list the Sand Mountain blue butterfly as threatened or endangered under the ESA.

To submit information regarding Sand Mountain blue butterfly, write to:
Field Supervisor, 1340 Financial Blvd., Suite 234, Reno, NV 89502. Send electronic mail to sandmtblue@fws.gov . Comments must be received by October 10, 2006.

For more information about the Sand Mountain blue butterfly and this finding, please visit the Service?s web site at. http://www.fws.gov/nevada.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the principal Federal agency responsible for conserving, protecting and enhancing fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. The Service manages the 95-million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System, which encompasses 545 national wildlife refuges, thousands of small wetlands and other special management areas. It also operates 69 national fish hatcheries, 64 fishery resources offices and 81 ecological services field stations. The agency enforces federal wildlife laws, administers the Endangered Species Act, manages migratory bird populations, restores nationally significant fisheries, conserves and restores wildlife habitat such as wetlands, and helps foreign and Native American tribal governments with their conservation efforts. It also oversees the Federal Assistance program, which distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in excise taxes on fishing and hunting equipment to state fish and wildlife agencies.

www.DuneGuide.com

Crowdog - Aug 08, 2006 - 09:24 PM
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Why the Sand Mountain blue butterfly does not warrant being listed as an endangered species

August 8, 2006
By Jon Crowley, www.DuneGuide.com

Just today, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in Reno, Nevada reported that is had decided to take the next step towards listing the Sand Mountain blue butterfly as a federally protected species under the Endangered Species Act. While this news is not surprising, most folks still fail to grasp the big picture of protecting this little insect that lives in the middle of the Nevada desert.

The Endangered Species Act was passed into law with the noblest of intentions over thirty years ago, but it has become a favorite tool for environmental extremist bent on shutting down access to public land. The original purpose of the act was to protect species like the bald eagle, wolves and grizzly bears. The intent of the act was never to provide protection for species like insects, or subspecies where the species as a whole are not threatened.

What makes the case of the Sand Mountain blue even more frustrating is this butterfly is a subspecies of a larger family of blue butterflies found throughout the Great Basin. When this new butterfly was ?discovered? and described back in the 1990?s, there was discussion about whether to lump it in, or split it into a new subspecies. Few people realize that there is absolutely no government oversight over this process of creating a new species or subspecies. The classification of a subspecies is arbitrary, artificial and subjective depending on who's in charge. Some tend to lump and others split. But once this new subspecies has been recognized, it can then have the same full protection under the Endangered Species Act as a bald eagle.

Insects tend to have a smaller range, and often have slight variances based on location. In the case of the Sand Mountain blue butterfly, it has very slight color differences and the size of its genitalia is slightly different from its close cousins. The differences are so slight, that you cannot identify a Sand Mountain blue from the larger family in the field. Are these minor geographical variances worthy of federal protection and the enormous cost associated with protecting it?

The Endangered Species Act has fallen victim to unintended consequences, politics, and counter-productive lawsuits filed by environmental extremists. What was born of a desire to apply American ingenuity to the cause of saving species has become a tool not for species recovery, but for political, ideological, and fundraising goals. It is time to reform the Endangered Species Act, and bring some common sense to species protection, and sensible land use.

www.DuneGuide.com

Crowdog - Aug 08, 2006 - 09:51 PM
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Feds Agree to Review Rare Nev. Butterfly

By SCOTT SONNER
The Associated Press
Tuesday, August 8, 2006; 8:53 PM

RENO, Nev. -- Federal officials agreed Tuesday to conduct a yearlong review of whether a rare Nevada butterfly at one of the largest sand dunes in the West should be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

More than two years after conservationists petitioned for a listing, and after a lawsuit was filed, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ruled there is enough scientific data to justify a formal review of the Sand Mountain blue butterfly.

The decision comes over the objections of off-road enthusiasts, but was hailed by environmentalists who want to protect the 4,750-acre Sand Mountain Recreation Area managed by the Bureau of Land Management about 80 miles east of Reno along U.S. 50.

"I don't think this was expected because it has been very, very difficult to get any kind of pro-conservation decision out of the Bush administration," said Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist for the Center for Biological Diversity based in Arizona.

"What it shows is the overwhelming scientific evidence that the Sand Mountain blue butterfly is in big trouble and not even the administration can deny that. Right now, it is really on its death bed, in critical condition," he told The Associated Press.

His group, along with the Xerces Society, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and Nevada Outdoor Recreation Society first petitioned for the listing in April 2004. In January of this year, they filed a federal lawsuit in Sacramento accusing the agency of violating the Endangered Species Act by failing to respond to the petition.

The act requires the government to provide a preliminary response to petitions within 90 days and often again within a year, but agency officials said they had other priorities.

Steve Thompson, manager of the agency's California-Nevada office, said a preliminary review determined an in-depth examination was warranted. The conclusion triggers a 12-month review to determine whether a listing should be proposed.

"The finding does not mean that the service has decided it is appropriate to list the Sand Mountain blue butterfly. It is the first step in a process that triggers a more thorough review of all the biological information available," Thompson said.

Thompson said the small, pale-blue butterfly with a wingspan of less than an inch is known to exist only at Sand Mountain in Churchill County. It lives in close association with its host plant, Kearney buckwheat, on an estimated 1,000 acres within and next to the BLM recreation area.

"BLM must manage Sand Mountain for true multiple uses, including recovery of the butterfly, not just off-roading," said Charlie Watson, director of the Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association. He said Clayton Valley Dunes near Silver Peak in Esmeralda County is more appropriate for intensive off-roading.

Off-road vehicle groups don't believe the butterfly or its habitat are endangered.

The conservationists' "intent is to shut down Sand Mountain," said Jon Crowley, a member of Friends of Sand Mountain, a four-wheel-drive club that has been encouraging off-roaders to stay out of posted butterfly habitat. "The truth is, they would like to see all off-roading banned from public."

"The biggest problem is the Endangered species Act is slanted toward being too cautious. It really needs to be reformed," Crowley said from his home in California.

Patterson said only a federal listing will save the butterfly at the 600-foot tall, two-mile long sand dune where an ancient lake once existed. Voluntary restrictions on off-road use have been unsuccessful, he said.

"The BLM has allowed 80 percent of the habitat to be destroyed there and refused to protect the remaining habitat," he said. "We certainly aren't going to let the Sand Mountain butterfly go extinct by somebody's idea of fun _ driving all over its habitat."

Patterson said listing the butterfly as endangered would "bring more resources, focus and management to save this species."

"Sand Mountain will not be closed to off-roading. I don't foresee that. That is certainly not our objective."

___

On the Net:

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Nevada: http://www.fws.gov/nevada/nv_species/sand_blue.html

Center for Biological Diversity: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/

Friends of Sand Mountain: http://www.sandmountain-nv.org/

Crowdog - Aug 09, 2006 - 09:23 AM
Post subject:

http://www.lahontanvalleynews.com/artic ... /108090031

Sand Mountain blue butterfly petition heads for status review

CHRISTY LATTIN, clattin@lahontanvalleynews.com
August 9, 2006

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced on Tuesday it will initiate a 12-month status review of the Sand Mountain blue butterfly, following its 90-day finding on a petition filed by several environmental groups seeking to list the butterfly as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

The announcement of the status review does not immediately affect the Sand Mountain Recreational Area, said Bob Williams, Nevada field supervisor for the USFWS in Reno.

"This finding carries no regulatory power under the ESA. We're just letting folks know there was a positive finding," Williams said.

In a release from the USFWS, Steve Thompson, manager of the California/Nevada operations office said, "Our finding is based on scientific information contained in the petition to list the butterfly. The finding does not mean that the service has decided it is appropriate to list the Sand Mountain blue butterfly. It is the first step in a process that triggers a more thorough review of all the biological information available. We encourage the public to submit any relevant information about the butterfly and its habitat."

A petition to list the butterfly as threatened or endanger was submitted to the Department of the Interior by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Xerces Society, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association in April 2004.

The groups submitted a 26-page petition which lists the species of the blue butterfly, its host plant the Kearney buckwheat and evidence of the plant's declining habitat at Sand Mountain. The petition contains satellite photos showing an increase in the number of trails at the site as well as photos taken over a 26-year span that illustrates the decline in the buckwheat. The petition extrapolated that since the buckwheat habitat has declined, the butterfly is threatened.

Daniel Patterson, ecologist and director of the Deserts and Endangered Species Outreach for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the positive result of the 90-day finding is a benefit to the butterfly.

"From a conservation perspective, we will consider this a very good thing to prevent it from going extinct," he said. "Without some real protection, the Sand Mountain blue could be lost forever."

Patterson said there are only 1,000 acres left "on the whole planet" for the Sand Mountain blue and conservation groups would like to see it protected.

Off-road groups, however, see the positive 90-day finding as a step closer to listing the butterfly as endangered. Jon Crowley, owner of DuneGuide.com and past president of the Friends of Sand Mountain off-road vehicle group, said in a prepared statement the blue butterfly is just a subspecies of a larger group of butterflies found in the Great Basin with slight color and genitalia differences.

Crowley also said "classification of a subspecies is arbitrary, artificial and subjective depending on who's in charge. But once this new subspecies has been recognized, it can then have the same full protection under the Endangered Species Act as a bald eagle.

"Are these minor geographical variances worthy of federal protection and the enormous cost associated with protecting it? The Endangered Species Act has fallen victim to unintended consequences, politics, and counter-productive lawsuits filed by environmental extremists."

Crowley ended his statement by calling for the reform of the Endangered Species Act.

Williams said the conservation plan, which was agreed upon by Lahontan Valley Environmental Alliance, the Bureau of Land Management, the city and county, the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe and two off-road vehicle groups, will be taken into consideration by the USFWS when conducting the 12-month status review.

Williams said he was pleased to see the various groups working together to help mitigate the threats against the butterfly. He said the 12-month status review will be conducted by a USFWS staff botanist and will be concluded by April 2007. The 90-day finding is calculated into the 12-month review.

www.DuneGuide.com

flatfender - Aug 09, 2006 - 11:02 AM
Post subject:

For never having counted the butterfly nor knowing the extent of Buckwheat acreage, Patterson sure comes up with a lot of phony statistics.

Richard

Crowdog - Aug 09, 2006 - 11:19 AM
Post subject:

Christy at the LVN did a decent job cutting through it:

quote:
The groups submitted a 26-page petition which lists the species of the blue butterfly, its host plant the Kearney buckwheat and evidence of the plant's declining habitat at Sand Mountain. The petition contains satellite photos showing an increase in the number of trails at the site as well as photos taken over a 26-year span that illustrates the decline in the buckwheat. The petition extrapolated that since the buckwheat habitat has declined, the butterfly is threatened.

www.DuneGuide.com

Crowdog - Aug 09, 2006 - 11:32 PM
Post subject:

http://evolvethought.blogspot.com/2006/ ... rving.html

Here is an interesting article regarding the "lump vs. split" argument amongst taxonomists:

Thursday, April 20, 2006
When is a species worth conserving?
It's not often one gets to see a dustup between taxonomists in the media. After all, taxonomy is such a civilised discipline, usually nobody gets killed and hospitalisation is rare. But here, in the Fort Wayne News Sentinel, is a piece on a match between Rob Roy Ramey, and Tim King, both field biologists, over the status of a mouse.

What's at issue is its status under the US Endangered Species Act, which focuses on conservation in terms of species rather than ecosystems, biodiversity, or viability of broader ecological systems. Ramey denied that a previously listed endangered species, Preble's meadow jumping mouse (that's some mouse, if it can jump entire meadows!) was in fact a species at all, but rather a subspecific population. King reanalysed the matter and decided that yes it was a species. And what is more, it was intimated, according to the article, that Ramey was "politically tainted" (which is code for, a Republican shill).

I'll get to the politics in a minute, but the taxonomic issues are of interest to me. The article talks about the "lumpers versus splitters" dispute in taxonomy, and wrongly attributes the recognition of this to Darwin (it predates him enormously, probably as long as naturalists have been describing species). A lumper blends variation into single taxa, while a splitter finely discriminates variants into their own taxa. There are lumpers and splitters at all levels of taxonomy, from superkingdoms down to subspecies, but the usual argy bargy is about species. Transitional forms have always been a problem. One anecdote about a student of Agassiz, Nathaniel Shale, tells of him stomping on transitional shells and exclaiming "That's the way to treat a damned transitional form!", in the late nineteenth century. One major problem of the nature of living things is that, well, they vary enormously and over gradients (morphoclines). Drawing the boundaries is tough, and sometimes a matter of convention.

Ramey disputes that the studies are really at odds. He says the differences come down to a question of how one interprets the data and where one chooses to draw lines between species. King draws them extremely finely; Ramey, less so. "What species concept you apply determines how you allocate your resources," Ramey told me. "We have so many things listed and too few resources to get the job done. We could go down the road of saying that every local population segment is a listable subspecies. But can we afford it, and will we be shortchanging arguably more important species? We can end up saving lots of little fish in each creek, and lose those creatures that are really unique."
And here is the problem. It's a matter of triage, due to limited economic resources. But focus on the "species concept" question. There is only one species concept - what is at issue here is the definitions and associated techniques and criteria for identifying a species. With the rise of DNA-based identification techniques, including the much-touted and much-criticised "DNA barcode", it is either the case that the genes used overgroup (lump) or undergroup (split) depending entirely on the evolutionary genetic history of the organisms. So the issue is really which serves the purposes best. In older days, species identification was based on phenotype, or in the older terminology, morphology - body shape, skeleton form, organs, and so on. This was convenient, but despite the mythology you'll find in some texts, it wasn't the whole story - naturalists before the modern period knew very well that there was variation of form, and that the identification keys were just conveniences. But some over-reliance on these techniques, hallowed by time and authority, led to bitter disputes. We see the same things happening today, only based on choices of molecular data rather than phenotype.

But what purposes are served by identifying species in conservation biology? It would seem that species is the focus because there is something objective about species, and so it validates the choices made for conserving biodiversity. If the diagnosis of species is assay-relative, that is, if it depends on what you use as the identification, the choice of assay is crucial. And that choice can be made to serve nonscientific purposes as well as scientific ones.

There is a movement, apparently successful (of which it seems Ramey is a part) to have the ESA rewritten. A movement known as the National Endangered Species Act Reform Coalition has successfully lobbied Congress to allow more political interference and economic considerations in the conservation process. The coalition includes such bodies as

American Farm Bureau Federation
American Forest & Paper Association
American Public Power Association
Colorado River Energy Distributors Association
Edison Electric Institute
Mid-West Electric Consumers Association
National Association of Counties
National Association of Home Builders
The National Grange
National Marine Manufacturers Association
National Rural Electric Cooperative Association
National Water Resources Association
Northwest Horticultural Council
Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association
all of which have vested interests in the outcome. If the Secretary of the Interior can overrule the Parks and Wildlife Service, based on whatever "scientific information" (the new wording of the revised act HR3824, the "Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005," which has passed the House of Representatives in the US, and is now before the Senate for ratification), economic interests will come to predominate.

Now this is not entirely a bad thing, for two reasons. First, it is entirely true as Ramey said that limited resources should be used to best conserve ecosystems, and second, that without the full support of the local communities and businesses, conservation is as doomed in the US as it is in the Congo. What worries me is that the tenor of the change indicates that this is not the motivation, but that this is a smokescreen for the undercutting of science that has been seen elsewhere by the present administration. All you have to do is change what is used to identify the species, and you can lump or split to serve political purposes.

Something like the Preble's mouse issue happened once before. The Red Wolf had been listed in 1967 as endangered under an earlier version of the ESA, but it turned out that as numbers declined, they hybridised with the more abundant coyote. A major debate followed, in which it transpired that there were no apparently unique alleles in the Red Wolf, and that it might not be a proper species. The Biological Species Concept was employed by those who argued that it was not a species, since it freely hybridised, so species concepts played a major role in that discussion too.

Part of the problem lies, I believe, in the focus on species. And that is a fundamental problem of the use of various, often arbitrarily chosen, measures of biodiversity. What really matters about biodiversity is the viability of entire ecosystems. At best, individual species are surrogates for that property. But nobody seems to be able to identify what that property really is. The problem is certainly with the ESA and equivalent legislation around the world, but the solution is hard to find. Some think there is no solution - biodiversity is just what we want to conserve in each particular instance. I think there is something worth pursuing here, and I have put in a grant application to follow it up. If it comes through, I'll certainly have more to say about this.

But it's nice to see my favourite species of biologists in the news. Taxonomy matters...

www.DuneGuide.com

Crowdog - Aug 09, 2006 - 11:34 PM
Post subject:

And here is more detail on the mouse controversy:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/o ... 30,00.html

On Point: The mouse that roared

April 5, 2006
Rob Roy Ramey's distinguished career at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science began its death spiral not long after he released research questioning whether a Front Range mouse is a unique subspecies and therefore worthy of federal protection. Coincidence? Ramey, the former chairman of the museum's zoology department, doesn't think so, and he has documents to back him up.
Ramey's conclusions, first announced in December 2003 and refined until their publication last year in Animal Conservation, a journal of the Zoological Society of London, startled and upset many of those involved in endangered species protection and environmental activism. Among those most irate, evidently, was an official in the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, whose complaints became so vocal by September 2004, according to Ramey, that museum executives met with him to smooth his feathers. But he remained unappeased - or so it seems based upon a letter the museum's chief curator and another top official sent to him on Oct. 26, 2004.

"Labeling Dr. Ramey as 'pro-development' is unfortunate and inaccurate," they advised. Moreover, they suggested, "to suspend all funding for continued understanding of this animal," as the federal official apparently threatened to do, "seems counter to the principles of the USFWS" - as of course it was.

But Fish & Wildlife was hardly alone in its displeasure with Ramey's research on the Preble's meadow jumping mouse. Environmentalists repeatedly tried to impugn Ramey's credibility (Westword's David Holthouse did a fine job of recounting some of these attacks in an article published in January of last year), while professionals in the research and consulting communities weighed in, too.

For example, Ramey shared with me the copy of an e-mail he received during a particularly tense period in 2004 from Carron Meaney, a private consultant and "research associate" at the museum, warning Ramey "there are a lot of people who question your approach and have concerns about working with the museum in the future. I love the DMNS, and am very concerned to watch the alienation your behavior has wrought between the museum and the biology community."

Not the most subtle warning, was it?

Ramey says that despite the brave front the museum presented to Fish & Wildlife, in fact his superiors fretted repeatedly about outside pressure. At one point, he says, a museum official asked if there was anything in his past that could "embarrass" the institution. Another suggested Ramey was being "co-opted" by developers. And his relationship with the museum continued to deteriorate into the early months of last year, until he saw the writing on the wall and officially resigned.

But make no mistake: Ramey insists his departure, here publicly detailed for the first time, was a direct consequence of the inflamed reaction to his research. And that reaction, let's also be clear, had less to do with science than with the political agenda of environmentalists and their allies in federal and state agencies who are determined to use the Endangered Species Act to influence land-use decisions up and down the Front Range.

Not surprisingly, the Fish & Wildlife Service and Denver Museum of Nature & Science dispute Ramey's version of events. "We had nothing to do with what they did with Mr. Ramey," Fish & Wildlife's Sharon Rose told me. Moreover, "it was never expressed by us that there were any problems with his work."

Museum officials were even more emphatic, while lavishing praise on Ramey himself.

"We strongly support Rob's research," said CEO George Sparks. "He's a great scientist."

"We don't make personnel decisions based upon what someone (on the outside) wants," Sparks also insisted. "Ethically it wouldn't be right."

Richard Stucky, curator of paleoecology and evolution, went further. There "was no direct feedback to me at the museum" suggesting Ramey had become a problem, he said.

There are several obvious objections to such wholesale denials, even if museum officials had legitimate reasons for disenchantment with Ramey that they feel they can't disclose. To begin with, Sparks didn't join the museum until November 2004 and was in no position to assess the reaction to Ramey's research during many critical months. Stucky, meanwhile, is one of two museum officials who signed the 2004 letter protesting the description of Ramey as "pro-development." If that term doesn't qualify as "direct feedback," perhaps it's no surprise Stucky can't remember other examples, either.

For that matter, Stucky was copied with Meaney's e-mail in which she mentioned "colleagues at CU-Boulder, DU, UNC, USFWS, and the coalition of environmental organizations here in the Front Range" as being upset with Ramey. And yet Stucky failed to object when Sparks assured me, "I don't think there was any unhappiness with the research."

Right. No unhappiness whatever - outside of CU-Boulder, DU, UNC, USFWS, and that coalition of environmental groups.

www.DuneGuide.com

Crowdog - Aug 09, 2006 - 11:42 PM
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http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/l ... 65,00.html

Ramey says Preble's nearly identical to other meadow mice.

Biologist backs delisting Preble's mouse
By Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News
July 25, 2006

Denver-area biologist Rob Roy Ramey said Monday that the latest attack on his Preble's meadow jumping mouse research - this time from an expert panel appointed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - doesn't change the bottom line:

The Colorado-dwelling mouse is nearly identical to other meadow jumping mice and doesn't deserve the special protections it enjoys as a "threatened" subspecies under the Endangered Species Act.

"If you're willing to keep this listed as a subspecies, then how far are you willing to go?" said Ramey, a former Denver Museum of Nature & Science curator who now works as an Interior Department consultant.

"We basically have lowered the bar to the point where we can list almost anything" on the federal list of threatened and endangered wildlife, he said.

On Monday, Fish and Wildlife released an 82-page report from a three-member expert panel that compared Ramey's 2003 work with a Preble's study released this year by U.S. Geological Survey biologist Tim King.

The panel agreed with King that Preble's is a unique subspecies, limited to parts of Colorado and Wyoming.

Ramey had concluded that Preble's is nearly indistinguishable from a more common meadow jumping mouse, the Bear Lodge mouse. Relying largely on Ramey's finding, Fish and Wildlife last year proposed pulling Preble's from the federal list - potentially removing a costly barrier to Front Range development.

The agency will decide early next month whether to move ahead with plans to delist Preble's or leave it where it is.

Much of the disagreement between the Ramey and King studies centered on seven dried rodent pelts from a Kansas museum.

Ramey analyzed the seven skins and concluded they contain genes from both Preble's and Bear Lodge mice.

The shared genes suggest that the two types of mice interbred in the relatively recent past. That finding was used to bolster Ramey's argument that the two creatures are nearly identical.

But King looked at the same skins and found no trace of Preble's DNA - only Bear Mouse genetic material. The expert panel reviewed both studies and sided with King.

The panel said there is "no reliable evidence" for the shared genes Ramey reported. In fact, it now appears that contaminated laboratory samples may have misled Ramey, the panel said.

"From a genetic standpoint, we've clearly demonstrated that you can differentiate this subspecies, and that's exactly what the panel concluded," King said Monday.

But Ramey insisted that the seven disputed Kansas skins are not very important.

"If you just took those seven individuals and tossed them, it doesn't change the result that much," he said. "These things are still extremely closely related to each other."

www.DuneGuide.com

Crowdog - Aug 09, 2006 - 11:52 PM
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This is a good one.....

http://www.opinionjournal.com/cc/?id=110008128

Of Mice and Men
A tiny rodent is the hottest political issue in Colorado.

BY STEPHEN MOORE
Thursday, March 23, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

DENVER--Here in Colorado, the hottest political issue of the day may not be the war in Iraq or the out-of-control federal budget, but rather the plight of a tiny mouse. Back in 1998, a frisky eight-inch rodent known as the Preble's meadow jumping mouse gained protective status under the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA). What has Coloradans hot under the collar is that some 31,000 acres of local government and privately owned land in the state and stretching into Wyoming--an area larger than the District of Columbia--was essentially quarantined from all development so as not to disrupt the mouse's natural habitat. Even the Fish and Wildlife Service concedes that the cost to these land owners could reach $183 million.

What we have here is arguably the most contentious dispute over the economic impact of the ESA since the famous early-'90s clash between the timber industry and the environmentalist lobby over the "endangered" listing of the spotted owl in the Northwest. That dispute eventually forced the closure of nearly 200 mills and the loss of thousands of jobs. Last week the war over the fate of the Preble's mouse escalated when a coalition of enraged homeowners, developers and farmers petitioned the Department of the Interior to have the mouse immediately delisted as "endangered" because of reliance on faulty data.

The property-rights coalition would seem to have a fairly persuasive case based on the latest research on the mouse. It turns out that not only is the mouse not endangered, but it isn't even a unique species.

The man who is almost singlehandedly responsible for exposing the truth about the Preble's mouse is Rob Roy Ramey, a biologist and lifelong conservationist, who used to serve as a curator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Mr. Ramey's research--published last year in the peer-reviewed journal Animal Conservation--concluded that the Preble's mouse "is not a valid subspecies based on physical features and genetics." The scientist who conducted the original research classifying Preble's as unique now agrees with Mr. Ramey's assessment. Even scientists who defend extending the mouse's "endangered" status admit that it is 99.5% genetically similar to other strains of mice.
Nor is the mouse on the road to extinction. "The more people look for these mice, the more they find. Every time scientists do a new count, we find more of the Preble's mouse," Mr. Ramey says. It's now been found inhabiting twice as many distinct areas as once thought. These are mice, after all, and the one thing rodents are proficient at is breeding. The full species of the meadow jumping mouse, far from being rare, can be found over half the land area of North America.

"The federal government has effectively shut off tens of millions of dollars of economic development," complains coalition spokesman Kent Holsinger, "based on saving a species that we now know doesn't even exist." But green groups and Department of Interior bureaucrats, who regard the ESA as a sacred pact--the modern-day equivalent of Noah's Ark, as former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt called it--pledge to fight any change in status.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Ramey has been accused of being "dishonest," a "whore for industry" and a "shill for the Bush administration." Under intense political pressure from environmental activists, he was removed from his curator's job at the museum. "I've been nearly stampeded by a herd of agitated elephants in Africa and suspended from some of the highest cliffs in North America, but nothing prepared me for the viciousness of the attacks from the environmentalist lobby," he tells me.
Meanwhile, the Preble's mouse continues to impose huge costs on local communities. One water district in Colorado was recently required to build two tunnels for the mice under a man-made pond to spare the critters the inconvenience of having to scurry around it. Regulators even asked local officials if it would be feasible to grow grass in the tunnels for the mice, which was only slightly less absurd than padding the mouse thoroughfares with red carpet. The extra cost to the water project to make it mouse-friendly? More than $1 million. The Fish and Wildlife Service also has the authority to assess penalties on property owners if they even inadvertently spoil mouse habitat. Owners can even be fined if their cats do what cats do: chase and apprehend mice.

Because of preposterous regulations like there, many land owners resort to extreme measures. A comprehensive 2003 survey found that more than one in four land owners impacted by the Preble's mouse regulation "admitted to actively degrading habitat following the species listing in 1998." This is often precisely what happens in these situations: Because most of 1,500 or so species that have been listed as threatened since 1972 are anything but, people have no respect for the designation and attempt to force the species away from their land. For truly endangered species, the ESA is a disaster.

Many of these land owners have been so strong-armed by federal bureaucrats that they have come to believe--with good reason--that the original and widely supported intent of the ESA has been subverted into a back-door means to slam the brakes on economic development. "It's a cost-free way for the government and the greens to impose land-use control on property owners," says R.J. Smith, an ESA expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Therein lies the crux of the problem. The law tries to achieve the societal policy goal of saving species from extinction by imposing all of the costs on a hapless few. House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo has sensibly proposed reforms that allow land owners to get fair compensation from the government if their land is depressed in value due to a wetlands or endangered species designation. That seems equitable: If society wants to preserve habitat for the common good, then the cost should be borne by all taxpayers, not individual land owners, who would no longer regard endangered species as an economic plague on their property.
If anything good can come out of the Preble's mouse fiasco in Colorado, it will be that it has awakened Congress to the reality that the ESA isn't just failing property owners but the very irreplaceable species it was designed to protect.

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