ABSTRACT

Background After 35 years, the ramifications of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) are still being felt, sometimes in ways more subtle than the original legislators may have foreseen. For while the public focuses on high-profile species such as bears, wolves and eagles, government regulators are required, under the law, to try to preserve all threatened and endangered species. Billions of dollars have been spent on habitat development, captive breeding and litigation. Many of these processes involve limiting human interaction with the species in order to allow its population to stabilize. Often overlooked in the equation are local landowners whose actions to disturb or preserve a species (knowingly or not) are trumped by government bureaucracy and political agendas. This is partly because many threatened and endangered species are found primarily on large tracts of public land whose periphery is often populated by private landowners. More recently, the focus in environmental thinking has shifted to species that had not been in the spotlight before, species considered by some to be “indicators” for the health of ecosystems. Others have viewed the listing of these species as an attempt by environmental organizations to push a political agenda. One such species is the Preble’s Meadow Jumping Mouse. This case furnishes an example of how agriculture has been affected by ESA-spurred land-use change (in this case away from rural residential development), as well as how the use of the ESA as a political tool has had unintended consequences. In May 1998 the Preble’s Meadow Jumping Mouse (PMJM), Zapus Hudsonius Preblei, was listed as a threatened species by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) under the Endangered Species Act. The PMJM is a small rodent about nine inches in length, 60 percent of which is tail. The PMJM occupies shrub habitat adjacent to streams and along irrigation ditches of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and southeastern Wyoming. At the time of listing, the species’ range in Wyoming was thought by the USFWS to be confined to portions of five counties (Albany, Converse, Goshen, Laramie and Platte).