June 2, 2024

Advocates allege Fish and Wildlife Service isn’t protecting an endangered mouse from grazing

The Center for Biological Diversity says that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is not taking the steps necessary to protect an endangered mouse living in the Lincoln National Forest from cattle grazing. The wildlife advocacy group, along with the Maricopa Audubon Society, is pressuring the federal government to end cattle grazing in critical habitat […]

Hannah Grover

The Center for Biological Diversity says that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is not taking the steps necessary to protect an endangered mouse living in the Lincoln National Forest from cattle grazing.

The wildlife advocacy group, along with the Maricopa Audubon Society, is pressuring the federal government to end cattle grazing in critical habitat and has filed a notice of intent to sue should the Fish and Wildlife Service fail to take steps to protect the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse within the next 60 days.

The mouse once ranged from southern Colorado into central New Mexico as well as eastern Arizona, but riparian habitat loss and degradation has caused a significant decrease in the areas where the rodent is found.

Advocates say cattle grazing in the Sacramento Mountains in Lincoln National Forest is destroying riparian habitat that the mouse relies upon.

The Fish and Wildlife Service designated critical habitat within the national forest in 2016, but the wildlife advocates say cattle grazing in that critical habitat continues to degrade the riparian areas.

Additionally, the habitat where the mouse occurs is also home to the Mexican spotted owl.

“The jumping mouse and these spotted owls will only survive if the meadows and streams they rely on in the Sacramento Mountains are healthy, but cattle are wreaking havoc here,” Robin Silver, co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a press release. “Federal officials have a years-long pattern of failing to control destructive cattle grazing. It’s immoral and illegal for the Forest Service to neglect its responsibility to protect this critical habitat, and that failure will cause a local extinction.”

The U.S. Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service concluded in a biological opinion that allowing cattle to graze in the area would not jeopardize habitat for either the owl or the mouse. That decision, according to the advocacy groups, leaves “42 percent of the designated critical habitat unprotected on the Sacramento Allotment and 74 percent unprotected on the adjoining Agua Chiquita Allotment.”