CHEYENNE, Wyo.—A judge on Thursday ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to return a jumping mouse known for its long tail to the threatened species list in Wyoming.
The Preble’s meadow jumping mouse was classified as threatened in Colorado and Wyoming from 1998 to 2008 but has been listed as threatened only in Colorado since 2008.
Five environmental groups sued Fish and Wildlife over the divergent status of the mouse. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge John Kane in Denver granted a request by Fish and Wildlife to voluntarily reconsider the dual classification.
He ordered Fish and Wildlife to list the mouse as threatened in Wyoming until the agency can make a final decision on the species’ status, which must happen no later than June 1, 2013.
Environmentalists praised the ruling, which returns the mouse to the threatened list in Wyoming effective Aug. 11.
“Mice obviously don’t recognize when they’ve reached the state border and it doesn’t make any sense to protect them in one state and not another,” said Josh Pollock with the Center for Native Ecosystems, one of the five groups that sued.
A representative of another group that sued, the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, said the ruling will benefit dozens of other species that rely on the Preble’s streamside habitats.
“Given the precarious state of the jumping mouse in Colorado, Wyoming populations represent its best chance to escape extinction,” Erik Molvar said.
A Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman declined to comment because it is a legal matter.
Renny MacKay, spokesman for Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, said the governor was disappointed and would be reviewing the ruling with attorneys for the state. The state of Wyoming intervened in the case alongside two agricultural groups, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation.
A key issue in the lawsuit was a 2007 opinion by the Interior Department solicitor that focused on what it means for a species to be endangered or threatened over a “significant portion of its range” as written in the Endangered Species Act. The opinion defined the range of a species as the area where it currently exists, not everywhere it once existed.
Fish and Wildlife determined that the Preble’s mouse wasn’t threatened throughout its current range and in 2008 removed it from protection in Wyoming, where it is less at risk from development.
The solicitor’s opinion has led to other species classifications along state boundaries and courts in Montana and Arizona recently have called the opinion into question. The current Interior Department solicitor withdrew the opinion as indefensible last month.
Wyoming and the agricultural groups asked Kane deny the request to reconsider the threatened species status. They also argued that Kane should not look to the Arizona and Montana rulings as precedent—Kane agreed on that point.
“This does not, however, mean that these decisions are without persuasive value,” he wrote.
He called the 2007 solicitor interpretation a “dubious legal opinion.”
Kane told Fish and Wildlife to decide the final status of the mouse either within a year of a new solicitor opinion on the meaning of “significant portion of its range” or by June 1, 2013, whichever comes first.
The court ruling could result in unpredictable land use restrictions for farmers and ranchers with Preble’s mice on their land, said Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.
“It’s disappointing. It puts it back to where we were, as I understand it, prior to the delisting in Wyoming,” he said.
He also said the ruling creates uncertainty until a new solicitor opinion comes out.
