Fish, Wildlife Service didn't designate critical habitat, coalition says
By John Flesher / Associated Press
TRAVERSE CITY — Several environmentalist groups sued the federal government Wednesday for failing to designate critical habitat for the endangered Hine’s emerald dragonfly.
The Center for Biological Diversity and four other organizations filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington.
“It’s too bad that citizen groups have to move into the courts to force the Department of Interior to do what they should be doing on their own,” said Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the center.
The suit is among roughly a dozen pending against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, an agency of the Interior Department, seeking court orders to designate critical habitat as required by the Endangered Species Act.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is years behind on identifying habitat for hundreds of endangered and threatened species. Agency officials blame funding shortages and competing priorities.
They say the lawsuits are doing more harm than good, siphoning money away from more urgent tasks such as adding species to the endangered list.
“This is keeping the Fish and Wildlife Service’s biologists from having the discretion to make professional judgments about what to do with their limited resources,” Interior spokesman Hugh Vickery said.
Listed as endangered in 1995, the Hine’s emerald dragonfly is believed to remain only in small wetland areas of northeastern Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri. It apparently has disappeared from Ohio and Indiana.
The insect has bright emerald-green eyes and a metallic green thorax, with yellow stripes on its sides. Its body is about 2.5 inches long, with a wing span of about 3.3 inches.
Habitat loss is the biggest reason for the dragonfly’s decline. Wetlands across the upper Midwest have been drained over the years for agricultural and urban development.
Pollution, logging, water diversions, off-road vehicles and construction of roads and pipelines also have taken a toll.
Under the law, once a plant or animal is added to the endangered list, the Fish and Wildlife Service must identify a geographical area with characteristics essential to the species’ survival.
Federal agencies must consult with Fish and Wildlife scientists before taking or authorizing actions that might degrade the critical habitat, such as issuing permits to drain a wetland.
Patterson said government records show endangered species whose habitat has been declared critical are “less likely to decline and twice as likely to be recovering as those without.”
But Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Georgia Parham said federal agencies are legally bound to consider how their actions might affect endangered species, whether or not critical habitat has been designated.
In some cases, Parham said, identifying critical habitat can actually harm a species’ prospects for survival. For example, it might attract collectors or people who would try to harm the endangered plants or animals.
Despite the lack of critical habitat, the agency completed a recovery plan for the Hine’s emerald dragonfly in 2001, she said. It calls for educating the public, searching for additional populations, improving breeding grounds and making captive rearing efforts.
That isn’t enough, environmentalists say. They contend the Bush administration hasn’t sought adequate funding for critical habitat designation, even when Congress invited it to do so.
“They just don’t want to designate critical habitat because of their anti-environment ideology,” Patterson said.
