Environmental groups sue to change Preble's mouse 'threatened' status
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Environmental groups sue to change Preble's mouse 'threatened' status
June 23, 2009 - 5:40 PM
R. SCOTT RAPPOLD
THE GAZETTE
Five environmental groups sued the federal government Tuesday, trying
to get the Preble's meadow jumping mouse listed as "endangered"
instead of "threatened" in Colorado, including northern El Paso
County, which has some of the greatest numbers of the tiny rodent.
The groups are challenging a Bush administration decision last year to
delist the mouse in Wyoming and keep its status as threatened in
Colorado. That decision was a reversal of a 2005 effort by the
administration to have it removed entirely, after some researchers
claimed it was not a separate animal from a more common jumping mouse.
Development in the urban corridors of Colorado and Wyoming has
destroyed much of the mouse's habitat, and it had been listed as
threatened since 1998.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Denver by the Center
for Native Ecosystems, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Natural
Resources Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity and
Defenders of Wildlife.
"Our country's endangered wildlife is suffering from these lingering
abuses of the Bush administration," said Jason Rylander, staff
attorney for Defenders of Wildlife, in a news release. "It makes no
sense for the protection of an imperiled animal to depend on which
side of the state line it lives."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service defines an endangered species as
"one that is in danger of extinction throughout all, or a significant
portion, of its range." A threatened species is "one that is likely to
become endangered in the foreseeable future."
Erin Robertson, staff biologist with the Center for Native Ecosystems
in Denver, said that under the mouse's threatened status, some
activities in Preble's habitat don't need a special review, but they
would if the mouse was endangered.
Those activities include rodent control within 10 feet of a structure,
ongoing agriculture, landscaping maintenance, noxious-weed control,
existing uses of water and ongoing ditch maintenance.