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Wildlife service: Preble's mouse still endangered
LAKEWOOD, Colo. (AP)--The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Dec. 18 rejected a bid to take the Preble's meadow jumping mouse off the Endangered Species List.
The agency has been sued over its 1998 decision to list the mouse as a threatened species in Colorado and Wyoming and for designating 31,220 acres in the two states as critical mouse habitat.
"None of the available scientific information demonstrates that delisting the Preble's meadow jumping mouse is justified at this time," said Ralph Morgenweck, director of the agency's Mountain-Prairie region, based in Lakewood.
The mouse lives along streams in Colorado and Wyoming. Its status as a threatened species means landowners in mouse habitat have fewer building options or must set aside land to be protected.
The critical habitat designation covered 20,680 acres along 234 miles of rivers and streams in Douglas, Jefferson, Larimer and Teller counties in Colorado. In Wyoming, the area includes 10,540 acres on 125 miles of waterways in Albany, Converse, Laramie and Platte counties.
Earlier this year, the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation of Lakewood filed suit in federal court in Wyoming, saying the decision to list the mouse was based on incomplete data.
Foundation President William Perry Pendley called the listing "the epitome of bad public policy and junk science."
Fish and Wildlife has defended its handling of the mouse's protection, but agreed to review the listing after receiving petitions from Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-WY, and the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation.
"The range of the species corresponds largely to the rapidly developing Front Range urban corridor" between Colorado Springs and Cheyenne, Wyo.," the agency said in the Dec. 18 decision. "The decline of the species is indicative of the decline of riparian habitat throughout the Front Range."
Date: 12/29/03
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