Liberty Belle
Well-known member
On Point: Species act abused
April 6, 2006
Last in a series
Concern for a common rodent, misleadingly called the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, is costing local governments and private landowners in Colorado tens of millions of dollars. But lots of people have a stake in preserving this ludicrous state of affairs. They have so much invested, in fact, that when the chairman of the Zoology Department at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science released research questioning the validity of the mouse's "threatened" status under the Endangered Species Act, the resulting clamor may have cost him his job.
I recounted Rob Roy Ramey's clash with the Preble's posse in a column Wednesday that can be read at www.rockymountain news.com/drmn/opinion/. But the story doesn't end with Ramey's flight last year from the museum. Because of his findings that Preble's was indistinguishable from meadow jumping mice that range as far north as Montana, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service had little choice but to reconsider whether Preble's was really threatened at all.
Not so fast, replied the Preble's posse. It enlisted Tim King of the U.S. Geological Survey, a scientist famously able to discern distinct "subspecies" where others have failed to see them, to resuscitate the Preble's fiction. And King dutifully delivered. His research, released in January, claims to discover significant genetic differences between Preble's and other jumping mice, giving the Fish & Wildlife Service the excuse it needed to freeze the Preble's delisting process.
How could Ramey's and King's studies reach such starkly different conclusions? Because the Endangered Species Act gives biologists astonishing freedom to define - essentially, to invent - separate populations that require federal protection.
Most Americans don't realize that the Endangered Species Act protects not only species, but also subspecies and "distinct population segments" - and that those last two terms open the door to manipulation and abuse.
"Federal biologists and environmental groups use these terms to put inappropriate groups in the ESA list," explains Matthew Cronin, research associate professor for the School of Natural Resources at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, in an article in Range magazine. "By my count, 70 percent of the ESA's listings of mammals in the United States are subspecies or populations."
"There is so much variation among populations of most species," Cronin notes, "that some combination of characters will distinguish each population from others and consequently there is no clear limit to the number of subspecies that can be recognized.
"Widespread species thus can be divided into any number of different sets of 'subspecies' simply by selecting different characteristics on which to base them."
He might as well be describing the meadow jumping mouse.
Naturally King was able to conclude Preble's is a different subspecies. There are scientists who could probably locate a separate subspecies, or at least a "distinct population segment," of some creature in a randomly chosen backyard.
Cronin would revise the Endangered Species Act so that it protected only full species. Ramey wouldn't go so far, but he too believes "we need to establish consistent, legally definable thresholds of genetic uniqueness to qualify for listings," and has even made this case in testimony before Congress. That's what really inflames the Preble's posse: that legitimate scientists would dare to expose the scandal of how the Endangered Species Act is being abused to pursue personal and activist agendas.
No one seems to understand this more clearly than Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and his counterpart from Wyoming, Patrick Crank. Last month they wrote a six-page letter to then Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Fish & Wildlife Director Dale Hall imploring them to help prevent a "serious mistake by the Fish & Wildlife Service Region 6 in Denver" concerning the Preble's mouse. Suthers and Crank argued, correctly, that Preble's should have been delisted even without Ramey's research given how many of the mice have been found in recent years, some in places no one even suspected they lived.
"The Preble's mouse is not threatened," they write, "it just was not well trapped in 1998" when it was first declared a threatened subspecies.
The letter goes on to recount the series of curious decisions by Region 6 that have thwarted every attempt to delist Preble's, adding that "we are growing more concerned about the impartiality of Region 6 on the Preble's mouse petitions as time wears on."
As they should be. By Fish & Wildlife's own estimate, the cost of the Preble's listing to public and private landowners is as much as $18 million a year, and yet still the agency dithers rather than retract a mistake. But thanks to Rob Roy Ramey, at least the dithering is a great deal more awkward for the federal bureaucrats than it ever was before.
Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes On Point several times a week. Reach him at [email protected].
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_4598923,00.html
April 6, 2006
Last in a series
Concern for a common rodent, misleadingly called the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, is costing local governments and private landowners in Colorado tens of millions of dollars. But lots of people have a stake in preserving this ludicrous state of affairs. They have so much invested, in fact, that when the chairman of the Zoology Department at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science released research questioning the validity of the mouse's "threatened" status under the Endangered Species Act, the resulting clamor may have cost him his job.
I recounted Rob Roy Ramey's clash with the Preble's posse in a column Wednesday that can be read at www.rockymountain news.com/drmn/opinion/. But the story doesn't end with Ramey's flight last year from the museum. Because of his findings that Preble's was indistinguishable from meadow jumping mice that range as far north as Montana, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service had little choice but to reconsider whether Preble's was really threatened at all.
Not so fast, replied the Preble's posse. It enlisted Tim King of the U.S. Geological Survey, a scientist famously able to discern distinct "subspecies" where others have failed to see them, to resuscitate the Preble's fiction. And King dutifully delivered. His research, released in January, claims to discover significant genetic differences between Preble's and other jumping mice, giving the Fish & Wildlife Service the excuse it needed to freeze the Preble's delisting process.
How could Ramey's and King's studies reach such starkly different conclusions? Because the Endangered Species Act gives biologists astonishing freedom to define - essentially, to invent - separate populations that require federal protection.
Most Americans don't realize that the Endangered Species Act protects not only species, but also subspecies and "distinct population segments" - and that those last two terms open the door to manipulation and abuse.
"Federal biologists and environmental groups use these terms to put inappropriate groups in the ESA list," explains Matthew Cronin, research associate professor for the School of Natural Resources at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, in an article in Range magazine. "By my count, 70 percent of the ESA's listings of mammals in the United States are subspecies or populations."
"There is so much variation among populations of most species," Cronin notes, "that some combination of characters will distinguish each population from others and consequently there is no clear limit to the number of subspecies that can be recognized.
"Widespread species thus can be divided into any number of different sets of 'subspecies' simply by selecting different characteristics on which to base them."
He might as well be describing the meadow jumping mouse.
Naturally King was able to conclude Preble's is a different subspecies. There are scientists who could probably locate a separate subspecies, or at least a "distinct population segment," of some creature in a randomly chosen backyard.
Cronin would revise the Endangered Species Act so that it protected only full species. Ramey wouldn't go so far, but he too believes "we need to establish consistent, legally definable thresholds of genetic uniqueness to qualify for listings," and has even made this case in testimony before Congress. That's what really inflames the Preble's posse: that legitimate scientists would dare to expose the scandal of how the Endangered Species Act is being abused to pursue personal and activist agendas.
No one seems to understand this more clearly than Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and his counterpart from Wyoming, Patrick Crank. Last month they wrote a six-page letter to then Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Fish & Wildlife Director Dale Hall imploring them to help prevent a "serious mistake by the Fish & Wildlife Service Region 6 in Denver" concerning the Preble's mouse. Suthers and Crank argued, correctly, that Preble's should have been delisted even without Ramey's research given how many of the mice have been found in recent years, some in places no one even suspected they lived.
"The Preble's mouse is not threatened," they write, "it just was not well trapped in 1998" when it was first declared a threatened subspecies.
The letter goes on to recount the series of curious decisions by Region 6 that have thwarted every attempt to delist Preble's, adding that "we are growing more concerned about the impartiality of Region 6 on the Preble's mouse petitions as time wears on."
As they should be. By Fish & Wildlife's own estimate, the cost of the Preble's listing to public and private landowners is as much as $18 million a year, and yet still the agency dithers rather than retract a mistake. But thanks to Rob Roy Ramey, at least the dithering is a great deal more awkward for the federal bureaucrats than it ever was before.
Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes On Point several times a week. Reach him at [email protected].
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_4598923,00.html
