Naturalist E.A. Preble, who bagged a nondescript
mouse on the bank of an irrigation ditch near Loveland, Colo., in
1895, might be surprised at the ruckus he’s caused. The meadow
jumping mouse named for him – a subspecies restricted to the
foothills of Colorado’s Front Range – is now at the center of a
controversy over the area’s housing
boom.
Streamside meadows favored by the mouse are
also attractive to developers looking for human habitat, turning
riparian zones into “our most abused habitats,” says Gwen Kittel of
the Colorado Natural Heritage Program. “From the foothills corridor
east, 75 percent of the riparian zones are in serious decline.”
Information about the mouse’s distribution and
behavior is scarce, but its disappearing habitat led the
Biodiversity Legal Foundation in Boulder to bring court action
against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the mouse under
the Endangered Species Act. The agency is expected to decide
whether to list the mouse by the end of March, says agency
biologist Peter Plage.
Meanwhile, a committee
organized by the Colorado Department of Natural Resources has been
trying to develop a plan to conserve the mouse’s habitat and keep
the rodent off the endangered list. The group of government
officials, developers and environmentalists has been meeting for
the past eight months and has received a federal grant to continue
its efforts. The committee has asked for a six-month delay in the
listing decision and designation of the mouse as threatened rather
than endangered.
Delay and a weaker listing are
opposed by many environmentalists, who say the committee is
dominated by business and government interests. Jasper Carlton of
the Biodiversity Legal Foundation says his group is prepared to sue
if the mouse does not gain endangered status.
“If
we had been doing our job and protecting our riparian systems, the
mouse wouldn’t be an issue,” he says. “It should be a wake-up call
to what we’re doing along the Front Range.”
For
more information, contact Doug Robotham of the Department of
Natural Resources at 303/866-4901.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The mouse that roared “Preble”.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
