Category Archives: endangered species

Rattlesnakes and Grizzlies: Endangered?

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Face to face with an eastern rattlesnake or a grizzly bear, you might not feel that it was the animal that was endangered. However, the eastern rattlesnake came closer to a possible Endangered Species Act listing earlier this month when the US Fish and Wildlife Service began a 12-month review of the species’ status.

Read more in the Chicago Tribune.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada found no solid evidence of decline in the nation’s grizzly bear population overall, so it denied the species endangered species status, instead designating the western population a species of “special concern.”

Read all about it in the Ottawa Citizen.

Rattlesnakes and Grizzlies: Endangered?

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Face to face with an eastern rattlesnake or a grizzly bear, you might not feel that it was the animal that was endangered. However, the eastern rattlesnake came closer to a possible Endangered Species Act listing earlier this month when the US Fish and Wildlife Service began a 12-month review of the species’ status.

Read more in the Chicago Tribune.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada found no solid evidence of decline in the nation’s grizzly bear population overall, so it denied the species endangered species status, instead designating the western population a species of “special concern.”

Read all about it in the Ottawa Citizen.

Trees and Levees

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The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) announced last week that it had sued the United States Army Corps of Engineers (Corps).

According to a press release:

DFG claimed in its lawsuit that the Corps failed to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and federal Administrative Procedure Act when it adopted a national policy requiring the removal of virtually all trees and shrubs on federal levees. The Corps developed its national levee vegetation removal policy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The department says that the levees provide the last available riparian habitat for several endangered species including Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Valley elderberry longhorn beetle, riparian brush rabbit, Western yellow-billed cuckoo and Swainson’s hawk.

Read the California Department of Fish and Game press release here.
Local media has not added anything to the story so far. Try this piece from Fox40 TV Sacremento.

Photo: Riparian brush rabbit, by Lee Eastman, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Trees and Levees

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The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) announced last week that it had sued the United States Army Corps of Engineers (Corps).

According to a press release:

DFG claimed in its lawsuit that the Corps failed to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and federal Administrative Procedure Act when it adopted a national policy requiring the removal of virtually all trees and shrubs on federal levees. The Corps developed its national levee vegetation removal policy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The department says that the levees provide the last available riparian habitat for several endangered species including Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Valley elderberry longhorn beetle, riparian brush rabbit, Western yellow-billed cuckoo and Swainson’s hawk.

Read the California Department of Fish and Game press release here.
Local media has not added anything to the story so far. Try this piece from Fox40 TV Sacremento.

Photo: Riparian brush rabbit, by Lee Eastman, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Proposed ESA Listing for 2 Washington Plants

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The US Fish and Wildlife Service would like to add the Umtanum desert buckwheat and White Bluffs bladderpod to the federal endangered species list, says the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

The two plants are found only in Washington State’s Hanford Reach National Monument, and were discovered during a survey of the area in 1995.

Read more in the Spokane Spokesman-Review.
Find the Federal Register listing, here. The comment period is open until July 16.

Proposed ESA Listing for 2 Washington Plants

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The US Fish and Wildlife Service would like to add the Umtanum desert buckwheat and White Bluffs bladderpod to the federal endangered species list, says the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

The two plants are found only in Washington State’s Hanford Reach National Monument, and were discovered during a survey of the area in 1995.

Read more in the Spokane Spokesman-Review.
Find the Federal Register listing, here. The comment period is open until July 16.

Counting Butterflies

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Maine and Minnesota both have citizen science butterfly projects.

Maine is hoping to attract 100 volunteers to survey the state for a butterfly atlas. Neighboring states and Canadian provinces (Vermont.Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Brunswick) have recently completed surveys, and a Maine butterfly atlas would round out the regional coverage.

Training will be in June.

Read this brief from New England Cable News.

In Minnesota, the state Department of Natural Resources is planning to do a population survey of the federally endangered Karner blue butterfly. Training for this survey will be held this week.

Read a short item in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, here.

Photo: Karner blue butterfly by J & K Hollingsworth, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

ESA Truce Is Tested Already

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When two environmental groups reached an agreement with the US Fish and Wildlife Service last year, pending court cases on the endangered species status of hundreds of species were settled as well.

An article last week in the Washington Post says that the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s decisions on dozens of freshwater snails, and some other 500 species so far was the easy part.

Now a decision is needed on two species that could have significant impact on development in the West, the article says: the dunes sagebrush lizard and the lesser prairie chicken. With oil wells and wind turbines at stake, any decision is likely to mean some angst for the Obama administration, the article says, and may threaten the fragile legal settlement with the environmental groups.

Read the entire Washington Post article, here.

Photo: Lesser prairie chicken, courtesy of the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture

Changes to Wisconsin Endangered Species List

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Snow EgretThe Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has proposed changes to the state’s endangered species list.

According to a DNR press release, it recommends removing seven animals from the list: greater redhorse (fish), barn owl, snowy egret, and Bewick’s wren, pygmy snaketail (dragonfly), Blanding’s turtle and Butler’s gartersnake. The proposal recommends nine plants also be removed from the list: American fever-few, bog bluegrass, Canada horse-balm, drooping sedge, hemlock parsley, prairie Indian-plantain, snowy campion, yellow gentian, and yellow giant hyssop.

The state is also recommending that eight other species are in need of greater protection by being listed as endangered or threatened. Those species include: three birds — black tern, Kirtland’s warbler, upland sandpiper; one freshwater mussel — fawnsfoot; and four insects — beach-dune tiger beetle, ottoe skipper, a leafhopper (Attenuipyga vanduzeei), and an issid planthopper (Fitchiella robertsoni).

The DNR will host two open house discussions of the proposal in early May.

Read the DNR press release here.

Photo: Snowy egret, photo by Lee Karney, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

Listings: Mussels on Fed. List; Eagles off Oregon’s

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Mature and juvenile spectaclecase mussels

Last month the US Fish and Wildlife Service added two more freshwater mussel species, the sheepnose and the spectaclecase, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Read the press release here. 

According to the press release, sheepnose are currently found in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Spectaclecase mussels are currently found in Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

(This is not to be confused with the addition, in February, of two other freshwater mussel species, rayed bean and the snuffbox, to the list as endangered species. That press release is here.)

Also in March, the state of Oregon removed the bald eagle from the state’s Endangered Species List. Read the press release here. (Only the first paragraph is about the de-listing.) The eagle was removed from the federal list in 2007.

Read a (brief) story about it in the Albany (Or.) Democrat-Herald.

Photo by USFWS; Tamara Smith