Thank you, Kate, for this interesting little story, about the fate of a little cousin of ours.

The mouse in question, Zapus hudsonius preblei, lives in wooded riparian environments along the Rocky Mountain front from south-eastern Wyoming down to around Colorado Springs.  That puts it in the vicinity of Colorado's two largest cities, and generally its most populous region.  Therefore its listing as "endangered" would do much to save its preferred wetland habitat, but at the same time would be sorely inconvenient to many developers.

Unfortunately, whether it deserves to be listed seems to depend on its genetic distinctiveness.  And this is where things get complicated.

A team led by Rob Roy Ramey, formerly of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, recently did some studies of genetic relations among subspecies of Z. hudsonius.  They found that Z. h. preblei is not distinct from the very common Z. h. campestris.  The implication of their work is that Z. h. preblei does not deserve to be listed.

But then, as if questioning Ramey's work, the US Fish and Wildlife Service asked Tim King, of the US Geological Survey, to do a separate study.  And sure enough, King's team found that Z. h. preblei is indeed distinct.  So now the FWS have asked a third independent group to investigate the discrepancies between the Ramey and the King studies.

One might be tempted to suspect that Ramey is in one way or another influenced by business interests.  But that is not necessarily the case.  In a related article on the DMNS website, he shows great concern for endangered species, pointing out that there are so many of them, but the funding needed to save them is extremely limited, and so we need to prioritize.

Certainly that is true of his part of the country, which is growing in population, and perhaps a bit deficient in a sense of stewardship.  One trembles at the news that that famous friend of wildlife, Representative Pombo, is heading the Congressional examination of the mouse's status, instigated by a Republican representative from CO.

The situation in Wyoming is better known.  The greater prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus cupido) has already disappeared from eastern Wyoming.  And at present, the related sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) is under great pressure in that state from development associated with Dick Cheney's friends in the natural gas industry.

To the Denver Post's impressive editorial, which is ample evidence that there are at least some wise people in the mostly arid West who appreciate the need to preserve wetlands and their associated biodiversity, I would add that the  presence of Zapus hudsonius in Colorado is the southwestern-most limb of its range.  And already it is rare there.  (It seems in good condition in the upper Midwest, the East as far south as Georgia and Alabama, and all across the Boreal Forest from the Maritimes to Alaska.)  Though I cannot claim to understand either the nuances of population studies in biology, or Dr. Ramey's concerns about funding (does it really cost money just to keep a species on the list?; does being listed require that studies need constantly to be done in order to keep counts up to date?), it strikes me that the uniqueness of the Colorado environment is itself an argument for distinctiveness in this population of mice, behavioral if not genetic, whether or not it turns out Z. h. preblei deserves to be collapsed into Z. h. campestris.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!