Note: a sidebar article, “The city mouse,” accompanies this feature story.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – On the 13th floor of the tallest building in town, Steve Sharkey, vice president of Picolan Inc., pulls out his plans for the Northgate development. It’s a 1,200-acre residential and commercial development at the edge of town, and it’s been under construction by phases for nearly 15 years.
A few years ago, Sharkey thought the project was finally on its way to completion. But in the spring of 1998, the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse gained federal protection as a threatened species, and a few of the mice were discovered on the north end of Picolan’s property.
So instead of breaking more ground, Sharkey started plodding through the complicated permitting process set in motion by an Endangered Species Act listing. He needed approval for his project from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Now, he doesn’t know if he can go ahead with his project, and he’s not sure the time and money he has invested in working with the agency has been worth it.
“If we went through the process, we were told, we’d look like some kind of good guys,” he says. “Let me tell you, there is no value to being a good guy.”
The 2-ounce Preble’s mouse is unobtrusive – it hibernates for eight months out of the year, and sleeps away the summer days – but its listing has caused a furor on the Front Range, all the way from southern Wyoming to Colorado Springs.
“It wouldn’t be a problem if Preble’s lived in a larger area, but it just happens to be stuck in between the plains and the mountains, where people have chosen to move in, too,” says Peter Plage of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Colorado office. “Here, land uses are changing from grasslands and shrub habitat to parking lots and condos. This species gets right in the middle of that.”
The Preble’s mouse is one of the first threatened species to collide with development in the Denver metro area, where the population is expected to grow by 40 percent in the next two decades. Since the mouse’s future may depend on the cooperation of private landowners, the Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to convince them that it’s worth it to be good guys.
At the same time, some environmentalists hope they can use the tiny mouse and the Endangered Species Act to do something that’s been impossible so far: slow down the area’s growth and save some of the last open space on the Front Range. They fear the agency’s concessions are making their job harder.
“Why were mousetraps invented?”
The mouse’s listing was a long time coming. When the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, a mammalogist at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History told the Fish and Wildlife Service about the Preble’s mouse and its dependence on the fragile streams of the Front Range foothills.
Almost 20 years later, the agency commissioned several surveys of Preble’s habitat, covering the species’ range. The surveys showed that the survival of the animal was tenuous, and that it deserved protection as a threatened species. Under threat of a lawsuit from the Boulder, Colo.-based Biodiversity Legal Foundation, the mouse was proposed to be listed in March 1997, and the listing became official in May 1998.
“It took 25 years to get listed, and the joke at the time was that’s about the normal time it takes for the federal government to do something,” Plage says ruefully.
Public reaction in the Denver metro area was immediate, and largely negative. “The mouse controversy is a combination of its being listed in an area where people don’t have lots of experience with the (Endangered Species Act) and the fact that it’s a mouse,” says Plage. “There are a lot of people just venting on the idea that it’s a rodent and disease-carrying.”
Not to mention just venting, period. Since February, when the agency proposed a temporary plan for managing the mouse, it’s received more than 600 written comments:
“You people have got to be the largest live cartoon on earth,” said Albert Hurley, president of Hurley Homes Inc. in Colorado Springs.
“I don’t think this mouse is any more necessary than the (Fish and Wildlife Service),” wrote Nick Dudash from Wyoming. “The longer you folks stay in business, the worse things get.”
“If we like these animals so much, why were mousetraps invented?” wrote Jon Reddy. He’s in eighth grade.
This spring, there was a stir in Castle Rock, a suburban community south of Denver, over the listing’s potential interference with the construction of a new town hall. “We are trying to do things for our community, and then we get this,” town mayor Al Parker told The Denver Post.
The story was also picked up by a Denver television station, which visited Castle Rock’s main street and interviewed residents angry about the listing. As it turned out, the Fish and Wildlife Service had never contacted the town of Castle Rock; the controversy there was touched off by a private consultant, who had told the town there might be a conflict. Plans for the town hall are proceeding on schedule.
Looking for buy-in
“The fearmongering has got to stop – the spreading of the idea that this little mouse is going to bring an end to the economic way of life on the east front of the Rockies,” says Jasper Carlton of the Biodiversity Legal Foundation. “These are scare tactics.”
Since most of the mouse’s habitat is located on private land, both the Fish and Wildlife Service and the state of Colorado have been working to address landowners’ fears. When the mouse was first proposed for listing, the state created a working group composed of environmentalists, ranchers, developers, agency staffers and a team of scientists charged with gathering the latest information on the species.
“The working group’s main question was: ‘What can we do right now to conserve this animal and not list it?'” says Plage. “But there wasn’t enough time to head off the listing. Even with all sorts of good intentions, a year wasn’t enough time to ensure the security of the species.”
It didn’t reach its original goal, but the working group has continued to meet after the listing, and the state’s science team is still collecting information to contribute to the recovery effort.
In December of last year, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt proposed an 18-month measure to temporarily protect the mouse. Called a 4(d) rule after its section in the Endangered Species Act, it’s intended to set out guidelines for species protection during the development of a habitat conservation plan. Babbitt’s interim plan would designate about 1,000 miles of stream in Colorado and Wyoming as either “mouse protection areas’ or areas requiring further study.
—-
In these areas, developers and ranchers would have to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service about their impact on the mouse. Outside these areas, mice killed by legal activities, like irrigation, cattle grazing and construction, would not be considered “take” under the Endangered Species Act.
The rule is designed to give private landowners some guidance about what they can and can’t do in mouse habitat. It’s also meant to take some pressure off the Fish and Wildlife Service. Without measures like the 4(d) rule, says Plage, the agency would have to rely on strict enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, and two overworked staffers would have to review all activities that could harm the mouse or its habitat.
“It’s an effort to get buy-in from the farmers and others,” Plage says of the rule. “For an 18-month period, they can continue what they’re doing, while we refine what activities are compatible” with the survival of the mouse.
Some environmentalists think the state and the federal government are working too hard to get buy-in from farmers and developers, and say the rule allows far too much leeway for habitat destruction.
“A 4(d) rule is supposed to provide for the recovery of the mouse,” says Neil Levine, an Earthlaw staff attorney representing the Biodiversity Legal Foundation. “This rule allows for continued development in riparian areas, allows people to continue to take out water from the riparian habitat, and doesn’t include a monitoring protocol. We need a rule that protects the mouse – this just rubber-stamps what was going on before with the authority of the (Endangered Species Act).”
A controversial middle road
Steve Sharkey’s planned Northgate development in Colorado Springs adjoins an existing development – houses on five-acre lots, most of which have been around for a decade or more. Many houses in the neighborhood look out over the Smith Creek drainage, the very same hollow owned by Picolan Inc. It’s also home to a population of Preble’s mice.
“This is one of the last undeveloped valleys on the east side of the I-25 corridor with a perennial stream in it,” says Herb Vore, who lives near Smith Creek and is active with the Northgate Open Space Committee. The local group is urging Picolan to scale down its plans.
“One reason we’re pushing so hard is that once that’s gone, there’s nothing left. The Preble’s jumping mouse is our big weapon here.”
Many environmentalists see the listing of the Preble’s mouse as a way to protect the foothill streams on the Front Range, fragile habitats attractive to both humans and wildlife. “The mouse is symptomatic of the destruction of this important part of the ecosystem on the east side of the Rockies,” says Jasper Carlton of the Biodiversity Legal Foundation.
But new strategies like the 4(d) rule make environmentalists wonder if the Endangered Species Act will be an effective conservation tool in urban areas. “The truth of the matter is, we haven’t seen the (Endangered Species Act) slow down development at all,” says Neil Levine. “We’ve seen it slow down logging in the Southwest and Northwest, but not development.”
It’s also not clear that the rule, which Plage calls a “cutting-edge” approach for the Fish and Wildlife Service, has helped to gain the backing of developers like Sharkey. While he says he’s willing to continue with the permitting process, it’s clear his patience is wearing thin. Next time, he might decide not to cooperate with the agency.
“I did not know (the Endangered Species Act) would be as onerous as it’s turned out to be,” says Sharkey. He calls the lack of scientific information “a major frustration.”
Several Front Range counties have now started to work on habitat conservation plans for the mouse. The agency expects the temporary rule to be in place later in the fall, but the Biodiversity Legal Foundation says it’s prepared to sue over the rule. So far, the agency’s middle road seems to have created more controversy than it’s extinguished.
“We need to figure out how to engage the private landowner to really make conservation happen, not just avoid a law,” says Chris Pague, head of the state’s science team and a conservation scientist with The Nature Conservancy. “We need to get them to ask, “What do we need to do to make things work?” “
That hasn’t happened yet. Still, Pague and other scientists believe the outlook is hopeful for the mouse. Although it did take nearly a quarter of a century to win federal protection, the Preble’s mouse is in better shape, and perhaps more resilient, than many other listed species.
“People don’t have to leave altogether, they just need to change their behavior to accommodate the needs of the species,” says Anne Ruggles, a field assistant for a Colorado Museum of Natural History research project on the Preble’s mouse. The population she studies, one of the healthiest known Preble’s populations, lives just outside of Boulder near a popular walking trail.
“It’s a great project,” Pague says of the recovery effort. “If you include Wyoming, we’ve at least got tens of thousands of mice to work with.
“We’re no longer dealing with the species that have only 200 to 600 animals left, like the peregrine falcon or the grizzly bear,” he adds. “Most of those species have been listed. Now we’re getting to things that are in vast decline, but not endangered in the same sense, like prairie dogs and the Preble’s mouse. We have to deal with them as early as possible. If we wait because of fear, it just gets worse.”
Michelle Nijhuis reports for High Country News.
You can contact …
- Chris Pague, The Nature Conservancy, 303/444-2950;
- Peter Plage, the Colorado office of the Fish and Wildlife Service in Lakewood, 303/236-7904;
- Jasper Carlton, Biodiversity Legal Foundation, 303/442-3037.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Can the Preble’s mouse trap growth on Colorado’s Front Range?.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
