LOVE YOUR UNCHARISMATIC MICROFAUNA
OK, so a fly may not seem all that loveable compared to ultra-furry pandas or cute baby elephants. But this stonefly is doubtless a critical part of its high-altitude glacial stream ecosystem. Little is known of its life cycle or role, but it may be almost too late to find out. Listed as critically imperiled on the NatureServe database (where it is also known as “Meltwater Lednian Stonefly”), the species is found only in minuscule populations within Glacier National Park in Montana, at Frying Pan Creek in Mt. Rainier National Park in Washington, and in one site along the Waterton River in Alberta, Canada. Entirely dependent on well-oxygenated glacial runoff, the species may be wiped out by rising temperatures and the melting of glaciers: Glacier National Park is expected to be glacier-free by 2030. One estimate reported recently by National Geographic has moved that date up, to 2020. The Mist Forestfly may have only a decade left.
Only organized global action on climate change can save glacier-dependent species like this one, so WildEarth Guardians is trying to force the government’s hand with its BioBlitz, 36 days of filing petitions and lawsuits to demand ESA listings for our most endangered species, regardless of whether they’re furry or huggable. “The uncharismatic microfauna deserve protection as much, and sometimes more, than the megafauna,” US Fish & Wildlife Service spokesperson Ann Carlson told the Missoulian. “They play a role in an ecosystem. Pull one away and sometimes the whole thing can collapse. So we don’t distinguish based on size, or how popular it is.” So far, the Obama Administration has been agonizingly slow to act on ESA listings. If they do nothing, it may be all over for this unique glacial insect.
Photo: Joe Gerisch
It Ought to be Prairie Dog Day!
Rodent Week continues on iWild, moving the spotlight to the Gunnison’s Prairie Dog, one of five species of prairie dog in North America that is edging ever-closer to extinction. Like the Passenger Pigeon, prairie dogs once numbered in the millions across the U.S. Now, due to poisoning programs, widespread extirpation across much of their range, uncontrolled hunting, and plague, the Gunnison’s is limited to small pockets. The Bush Administration refused to consider listing this or any other prairie dog species on the Endangered Species List, and President Obama’s Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, a fifth-generation Colorado rancher, has expressed his disdain for listing in the past.
The prairie dog is considered a “keystone” species by conservation biologists: It plays an important role in arid grassland ecosystems by constructing elaborate tunnels underground that funnel water to the water table. Its burrows and tunnels create a home for many other species, including burrowing owls, snakes, and other rodents; its digging aerates the soil and some ungulate species have been shown to graze preferentially around prairie dog holes, attracted to the mix of native grass species growing there.
While the IUCN Red List identifies only the Mexican species of prairie dog as endangered, that may change: Many environmental groups in the U.S. are pressing for several species to be protected under the ESA, particularly the Gunnison’s and the Utah, or white-tailed prairie dog. For more information, see WildEarth Guardians’ third annual Report from the Burrow, which gives most of the states in the west a failing grade, or a “D” in prairie dog management. The Guardians are also lobbying to declare February 2nd Prairie Dog Day in the West, something which iWild warmly recommends.
Photo: Caroline Fraser
SAVE THEM ALL, especially the rodents: Today’s Endangered All-Star is the Texas Kangaroo Rat, once an essential part of the grasslands, working in conjunction with bison and prairie dogs to maintain the health of the prairie ecosystem. Over the past century, however, the rat has fallen victim to the use and abuse of much of its habitat as cattle-ranching has turned grassland into grazing land. Once common, the species has disappeared from Oklahoma and is now reduced to pockets in only a few Texas counties. WildEarth Guardians has petitioned to list the rat as endangered, along with a suite of other prairie creatures: spot-tailed earless lizard, the prairie chub, Platte River caddisfly and the Scott’s Riffle beetle. For more on these species, visit the Guardians’ Western Ark page.
“The Little Things That Run the World”—That’s how E. O. Wilson once referred to invertebrates, the objects of his affection and study. These creatures play a disproportionately powerful role in the affairs of the planet: In 1987, Wilson surmised that there were 42,580 species of vertebrates described by humankind—including a paltry 4000 mammals—versus 990,000 species of invertebrates, the majority beetles. Most, however, remain undiscovered and undescribed, adding up to perhaps as many as a whopping 30 million. And as Wilson pointed out, both in a Conservation Biology essay and in a Nova program, these busy little creatures are keeping the planet alive: pollinating plants, composting waste, returning nutrients to forests, comprising a third of the biomass on earth.
SAVE THEM ALL: One invertebrate that has been described only to face imminent extinction is the Sacramento Mountains Checkerspot Butterfly, which exists in some 33 square miles of New Mexico, in the meadows around the town of Cloudcroft. Like so many invertebrates, it is dependent on a single plant, New Mexico beardtongue or Penstemon neomexicanus, which itself is endemic to the Sacramento and Capitan mountains: The adult checkerspots lay their eggs only the leaves of this plant, found in mixed-conifer forests at the 7,800-9000 foot range.
Threats are proliferating: Road construction, development, livestock grazing, pesticide spraying, and invasive species, and climate change are crowding out the butterfly and its host plant. In 2001, the species was proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act but several years later, the proposal was withdrawn pending the development of a draft conservation plan. That plan, however, offers less hope for the species since it applies only to publicly-owned land (which amounts to half the remaining checkerspot habitat), and has no force or effect on private land. WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity sued to force evaluation for an E.S.A. listing for the checkerspot, but in September, 2009, the US Fish and Wildlife Service denied the petition, saying there were no “current significant threats,” a decision termed “reckless and illegal” by the Guardians. Michael Nivison, a former mayor of Cloudcroft, had a different perspective: He told High Country News that the process of developing a conservation plan has changed minds in the town: “We’re a tourist community, so it allows us to maximize another facet of the mountains where we live to draw tourists here.” He failed to mention, however, that Otero County, where the butterfly is found, continues to pursue a policy of spraying pesticides that could potentially drive the species to extinction.
Photo: Julie McIntyre, USFWS
