MINNEAPOLIS— In accordance with an agreement with the Center for Biological Diversity that speeds up protection decisions for 757 species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today proposed to protect the eastern massasauga as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The reclusive, nonaggressive rattlesnake has been waiting for protection for more than 30 years.

Eastern massasauga rattlesnake photo by Mike Redmer, USFWS. This photo is available for media use.

“As wetlands have been drained and destroyed, the massasauga has disappeared with them,” said the Center’s Collette Adkins, an attorney and biologist who works to protect rare reptiles and amphibians. “Endangered Species Act protection for this beautiful snake will help safeguard its future, and will also help save the wetlands that people need for flood-control and water filtration.”   www.biologicaldiversity.org

GR:  The Arizona population of Massasauga (Sistrurus catenatus) is considered “critically imperiled” (S1) by the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

Failure by U. S. Government Land Managers

“The decision by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) not to list the Greater Sage Grouse under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was an adroit dance of politics. The plan to “save’ the sage grouse has no clothes. The government proposed solution to the bird’s decline includes 14 new sage-grouse recovery plans—consolidated from 98 distinct Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) land use plans, that the agency says will “conserve” 35 million acres of federal lands across 10 states.

“The new plans adopted by the federal government may slow the bird’s decline, but are not likely to reverse its race towards extinction. The plans are mostly all show and lack real substance to address the major factors causing the bird’s demise. The most important factors are energy development, habitat fragmentation, and livestock grazing (which is intricately linked to cheatgrass wildfires burning up sage brush habitat).

SAGE GROUSE DECLINE

“What is tragic about the sage grouse decline is that we are not talking about a “rare” species. The emblematic bird of the Sagebrush Sea, the sage grouse, once numbered in the millions.”  Read more at:   www.thewildlifenews.com

GR:  The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U. S. Bureau of Land Management, and the U. S. Forest Service manage lands chiefly to benefit private financial interests.  This becomes very clear whenever protecting an endangered species such as the Sage Grouse would reduce profits by the timber, livestock, and other industries that harvest the public land for private profits.  In those cases, adequate protection is not provided.  A century of management of the public lands for special interests has robbed the nation of its foundation of natural resources.  Because of human nature, a government ruled by special interests rather than reason will invariably fail to conserve its resources.

See on Scoop.it – GarryRogers NatCon News

“With fewer than 300 individuals in the Lower 48, the wolverine is one of the most imperiled species in the U.S. Wolverines once thrived throughout the West’s high elevation mountain ranges but, by the early 1900s, they were trapped to local extinction throughout most of the states. Today, these 300 animals are hanging on in the Northern Rocky Mountains of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming and in parts of the North Cascades Range in Washington. And this week, news surfaced that wildlife biologists confirmed wolverine sightings in areas in Wyoming they hadn’t recently been recorded, including the Gros Ventre, Wind River and Absaroka Mountain ranges! We’re thrilled to see wolverines in this part of their historic range, since there remain many areas such as the mountains of Colorado and California where wolverine populations still do not exist.”  Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.defendersblog.org

GR:  We have killed off most of the wolverines.  Protecting the remaining few will require major revision of our land/wildlife management practices.  There would be costs to humans, but the benefit would be protection of many species that require wild forests. Do we just give up on all these species and declare that we can’t do anything about CO2 emissions?  Will we sacrifice all wildlife before we accept costs to humans?  (More on wolverines)