The New Mexico meadow jumping mouse would make a great superhero character. The mouse is semiaquatic with back legs that can propel it up to 3 feet, and its presence is fleeting: The mouse hibernates an average of nine months of the year.
The mouse, which makes its home along streams in the Southwest, is being considered for endangered status under the Endangered Species Act. As part of the endangered designation, the secretary of the interior also must designate critical habitat for the mouse, and a small sliver of the proposed habitat extends along the Florida River in La Plata County.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is accepting comments on the proposal to list the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse as an endangered species and to designate a total of 193 miles of critical habitat for the mouse species in 12 counties across Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. The deadline to submit comments is Aug. 19.
La Plata County commissioners decided against commenting on the issue as the land is in the hands of private landowners and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, La Plata County Commissioner Gwen Lachelt said.
The proposed critical habitat in La Plata County stretches 8.4 miles along the Florida River from the Florida Ditch’s main headgate to Ranchos Florida Road.
The mouse also is found in Archuleta County.
The mouse has been a candidate for endangered or threatened status on and off for almost 28 years, according to the environmental nonprofit Wild Earth Guardians. Candidate status means the Fish and Wildlife Service determined the species warrants protection but must wait to be proposed for threatened or endangered status because of higher priorities.
Wild Earth Guardians has gone to court numerous times to protest the Department of the Interior’s handling of the Endangered Species Act, especially candidate species that have lingered in that status for years. In 2011, the two parties reached a settlement that set a deadline for the Fish and Wildlife Service to make a decision about 251 candidate species before the end of fiscal year 2016. The New Mexico meadow jumping mouse was on that list.
The mouse lives along the banks of southwestern streams and depends on a habitat of tall, dense vegetation. The species hibernates about nine months per year, making precious waking moments crucial to gathering food to build up adequate fat reserves.
According to Wild Earth Guardians, the mouse has been forced out of 70 to 80 percent of its historic range because of excessive livestock grazing; water use and management for agriculture and urban uses; and loss of beavers, whose dams help create the wetland habitats where the mouse thrives. Off-road vehicle recreation, camping, wildfires and subsequent erosion, flooding, ongoing drought and climate change also degrade the mouse’s habitat.
ecowan@durangoherald.com
