Biologist Rob Roy Ramey figures he has risked his life many times for endangered species – scaling cliffs to help with peregrine falcons and California condors, challenging sheep poachers in Mongolia, being chased by elephants in Africa.
His toughest encounter, though, could be with a mouse thought to exist only in a narrow corridor along the east face of the Rockies.
His conclusion that the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse isn’t unique has made it the poster animal for critics of the Endangered Species Act and outraged fellow scientists and environmentalists who accuse him of faulty science.
The study by Ramey and his colleagues says the Preble’s mouse is the same as the more common Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse and shouldn’t be listed as a threatened subspecies. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed and has started the process to drop the mouse from the endangered-species list. A final determination is expected next year.
The decision comes as members of Congress and others say the law has failed to help most threatened and endangered animals and should be rewritten.
“It’s a great example of what’s wrong with the Endangered Species Act,” Denver lawyer Kent Holsinger said of the 1998 decision to protect the mouse. “We’re spending more money on a species that doesn’t exist than on the humpback whale.”
Holsinger represents Coloradans for Water Conservation and Development, a group of landowners, farmers and businesses, which, along with the state of Wyoming, petitioned in 2003 to delist the mouse. He said millions of dollars have been spent protecting mouse habitats from southeast Wyoming to Colorado Springs. A Denver-area water and sanitation district even added mouse tunnels and bridges to a project.
“I think it’s high time to act on the information and delist the Preble’s mouse,” Holsinger said.
The tiny mouse, which can jump more than a foot in the air, isn’t going away quietly.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is considering taking more public comment because Ramey recently revised his study, now scheduled for publication in late summer in the British journal Animal Conservation.
The American Society of Mammalogists wrote to federal officials in April, assailing Ramey’s work as “inconclusive at best, and methodologically flawed at worst.”
Ramey, chairman of the zoology department at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, stands by his work. Fish and Wildlife said eight of the 14 original peer reviews of the study agreed that the mouse wasn’t a distinct subspecies.
“Based on what data they gave us, it looks fairly clear-cut,” said Robert Bradley, an associate professor of biology at Texas Tech University who agrees with Ramey’s findings.
Critics contend some of the more positive reviews still questioned the methodology and said the mouse should be protected because of shrinking habitat.
Ramey said the latest study expanded the genetic testing – and that still supports his conclusion.
Ramey acknowledged feeling embattled since releasing his preliminary findings in December 2003. He joked that he felt safer when he faced those elephants in Zimbabwe.
“I think what’s important here is the realization that we can always do a better job,” Ramey said. “Sometimes it’s a good idea to utilize an objective approach to evaluate how we’re setting our priorities.”
