Whittling down the Endangered List

Liberty Matters News Service

11/17/04

A little fish that could have impeded the use of thousands of acres of land along the Arkansas and Canadian rivers has disappeared altogether from those waters, says a spokesman for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The FWS re-thought its position of designating thousands of acres of critical habitat for the fish along rivers in Kansas, Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle after a U. S. District Judge ruled in favor of landowners and Farm Credit Banks and other groups that filed suit challenging the critical habitat designation.

The FWS now believes the fish only lives in small stretches of the Cimarron River in Kansas and the Canadian in Oklahoma and Texas.

The FWS must hold a series of three "open-house" meetings across the area before it can officially remove the Arkansas River from the critical habitat list.

Meanwhile, environmentalists are crying in their beer after the FWS decided there was not enough solid evidence to place the white-tailed prairie dog on the endangered species list.

The Center for Native Ecosystems in 2002 petitioned the government to list the animal as threatened claiming it was dying off due to the plague and the effects of oil and gas exploration.

Spokesman for the group, Jacob Smith, said; "We'll look carefully at what they [the FWS] did and decide where to go from here, especially when they act so blatantly and illegally and make a decision that flies in the face of science."

Sharon Rose, FWS spokesman, said the group didn't provide specific data showing how the plague or development harmed the animals.

RELATED STORY:

Arkansas River shiner no longer in river - U.S. Fish and Wildlife proposes removing Kansas waterway from critical habitat list

By Dave Stephens
The Hutchinson News

11/17/04

The endangered Arkansas River shiner, a small minnow-like fish, is so rare that it no longer appears in the river it's named for.

Extensive surveys of the river by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks and university research teams have failed to produce any evidence of the fish in the Arkansas River or the Beaver/North Canadian rivers in Oklahoma, said Jerry Brabander, field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Tulsa, Okla.

Gone from more than 85 percent of its natural habitat, the Arkansas River shiner - listed as threatened on the federal endangered species list - is now only found in small stretches of the Cimarron River in Kansas and in the Canadian River in Oklahoma.

"Originally it was one of the most abundant river species," Brabander said, "but it's been in decline because of a lot of factors, things like major impoundments, reservoirs that slow down the flow of water, the amount of water withdrawn from the river, the encroachment of salt cedars and competition from other species."

Protecting the shiner, Brabander said, means protecting the fish's critical habitat. Under the Endangered Species Act, that could mean restricting some land use in the river's riparian zone - 300 feet of land on each side of the river.

In an attempt to designate habitat in 2001, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended listing the Arkansas River east of Great Bend and the Cimarron River east of Kismet as critical habitat.

But because of heated opposition against the habitat plan and a ruling by a U.S. District Court in New Mexico, the Fish and Wildlife service now is proposing to take the Arkansas River off of the fish's critical habitat list - meaning no new restrictions for landowners along the river.

"We are absolutely pleased by that," said Steve Swaffar, natural resources director for the Kansas Farm Bureau, a group that opposed listing Arkansas River as habitat for the shiner.

'Our whole goal is to bring the population back to a stable level.'
- Jerry Brabander, field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Tulsa, Okla.
"We have contended all along that the river should not be considered habitat," Swaffar said. "The Arkansas River did not harbor the fish species, and we think the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service has finally seen that and realized it can't be labeled as habitat."

Before the Arkansas River can be excluded from a critical habitat listing, however, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must host three public hearings to discuss the proposal.

Times and dates for the meetings have not been set, Brabander said, and they will be scheduled after an economic analysis of the decision is prepared.

Even if some rivers are removed from the critical habitat listing, the shiner could return to the Arkansas River someday, Brabander said. If populations in Oklahoma rivers become stable, experimental populations could be re-established in Kansas. That, however, could be difficult to do.

"It's not been attempted before," Brabander said. "But we have been able to propagate them before in captivity."

Swaffar said creating experimental populations in the Arkansas River wouldn't cause landowners harm, either. Federal regulations do not provide the same level of protection for introduced populations as they do for those that occur naturally.

Ultimately, said Brabander and Swaffar, the availability of water in the Arkansas River could determine the shiner's return. To have a long-term viable population, the shiner needs 135 miles of free-flowing stream in which to reproduce.

"Our whole goal is to bring the population back to a stable level," Brabander said. "In order to do that, we believe that if we could establish viable populations in two streams in addition to the south Canadian and Cimarron rivers, we'd bring them back to a stable level."