HARVARD UNIVERSITY Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology REAT BASIN NATURALIST MEMOIRS ber 3 Brigham Young University 1979 MAR 2^1980 The Endangered Species: A Symposium GREAT BASIN NATURALIST MEMOIRS Editor. Stephen L. Wood, Department of Zoology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602. Editorial Board. Kimball T. Harper, Botany; Wilmer W. Tanner, Life Science Museum; Stanley L. Welsh, Botany; Clayton M. White, Zoology. Ex Officio Editorial Board Members. A. Lester Allen, Dean, College of Biological and Agricul- tural Sciences; Ernest L. Olson, Director, Brigham Young University Press, University Editor. The Great Basin Naturalist was founded in 1939 by Vasco M. Tanner. It has been published from one to four times a year since then by Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. In gener- al, only previously unpublished manuscripts of less than 100 printed pages in length and per- taining to the biological and natural history of western North America are accepted. The Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs was established in 1976 for scholarly works in biological natu- ral history longer than can be accommodated in the parent publication. The Memoirs appears irregularly and bears no geographical restriction in subject matter. Manuscripts are subject to the approval of the editor. Subscriptions. The annual subscription to the Great Basin Naturalist is $12 (outside the United States $13). The price for single numbers is $4 each. All back numbers are in print and are available for sale. All matters pertaining to the purchase of subscriptions and back num- bers should be directed to Brigham Young University, Life Science Museum, Provo, Utah 84602. The Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs may be purchased from the same office at the rate indicated on the inside of the back cover of either journal. Scholarly Exchanges. Libraries or other organizations interested in obtaining either journal through a continuing exchange of scholarly publications should contact the Brigham Young University Exchange Librarian, Harold B. Lee Library, Provo, Utah 84602. Manuscripts. All manuscripts and other copy for either the Great Basin Naturalist or the Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs should be addressed to the editor as instructed on the back iRE AT BASIN NATURALIST MEMORS U Brigham Young University 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium CONTENTS Introductory remarks. Joseph R. Murphy 1 The epoch of biotic impoverishment. Thomas E. Lovejoy 5 Culture and species endangerment. Roland C. Clement 11 Perspective. John L. Spinks 17 The law and its econimic impact. Donald A. Spencer 25 Endangered animals in Utah and adjacent areas. Douglas Day 35 Endangered and threatened fishes of the West. James E. Deacon 41 Rare aquatic insects, or how valuable are bugs? Richard W. Baumann 65 Endangered and threatened plants of Utah: A case study. Stanley L. Welsh 69 Management programs for plants on federal lands. Duane Atwood 81 Strategies for preservation of rare plants and animals. G. Ledyard Stebbins 87 Strategies for preservation of rare plants. Arthur H. Holmgren 95 Strategies for the preservation of rare animals. Clayton M. White 101 Rare species as examples of plant evolution. G. Ledyard Stebbins 113 The meaning of "rare" and "endangered" in the evolution of western shrubs. Howard C. Stutz 119 Some reproductive and life history characteristics of rare plants and implications of management. K. T. Harper 129 The importance of bees and other insect pollinators in maintaining floral species compo- sition. V. J. Tepedino 139 Endangered species: Costs and benefits. Edwin P. Pister 151 Endangered species on federal lands. Panel: Part I, Introduction. John L. Spinks 159 Panel: Part II, Forest Service philosophy of endangered species management. Jerry P. Mcllwain 159 Panel: Part III, The Bureau of Land Management's endangered species program. Rich- ard Vernimen 163 Panel: Part IV, Summary of the endangered plant program in the Bureau of Land Man- agement. Kenneth G. Walker 165 Index 171 12-79 1.5M 41728 No. 3 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs The Endangered Species: A Symposium Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 1979 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS' Joseph R. Murphy- As this symposium commences, it is appro- priate to ask what motivated the conveners to choose this particular time to address yet again a now-famiHar subject. More to the point, what specific aspects of the endan- gered species problem might be confronted in the framework of another symposium? At least three kinds of rationale for such a meet- ing come to mind. First, the endangered species program in the United States, if not throughout the world, stands at a crossroads in terms of pub- lic and legislative support. Recent news- worthy events, wherein an endangered ani- mal or plant is seemingly pitted against the agencies of human progress and welfare, have focused attention on what appear to be "either-or" alternatives regarding the species in question as opposed to some real or imag- ined public good; the Tellicoe Dam incident exemplifies this kind of dilemma. One result of this is that industry representatives, and of- ten government agency personnel, live in constant fear that some obscure and hitherto undescribed species of clam or lousewort will forestall a multimillion dollar development. Politicians, at both local and national levels, frequently exacerbate the situation; short on biology and long on demagoguery, they at- tempt to undermine the basic concern of the public for the welfare of endangered or threatened species. Overzealous con- servationists may further complicate matters by adopting inflexible and unrealistic posi- tions. These polarized opinions leave little common ground for effective compromise. It is to be hoped that this symposium can con- tribute, in at least a small way, to some reso- lution of these tensions. A second rationale for the symposium may be found in the fact that the invited partici- pants, as well as those who have come to lis- ten, represent a broad spectrum of agencies and organizations involved in endangered species concerns. Among those present are resource management personnel from numer- ous state and federal agencies, representa- tives from public and private utilities and other industries, university researchers, and spokesmen for private conservation organiza- tions. This diversity of viewpoint and expe- rience should promote a broad examination of the various issues, and perhaps a greater tolerance for the views of the "opposition." Too often, conferences on endangered spe- cies involve groups with identical or similar 'The symposium convened in the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, Brigha 'Department of Zoology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602. Young University, Provo, Utah, 7-8 December 1978. Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 philosophical positions; this gives partici- pants an excellent chance to reinforce one another's views, but little or no opportunity to gain new insights. Third, this particular symposium differs from many held in the past by virtue of its emphasis upon several taxa of the humbler and less spectacular creatures, e.g. plants, in- sects, and other invertebrates. The public im- age of endangered species is probably embo- died in or symbolized by such "glamour" forms as the peregrine falcon or blue whale. Though strong public support for these spe- cies is necessary and important, it is mis- leading and imdesirable to focus all attention on them alone. Biologists realize that the condition of the so-called "matrix" species of plants and invertebrates often supplies a more accurate indication of the overall health of an ecosystem than does the plight of one or a few species of top consumers. Hence the status of these lower forms be- comes a matter of priority for all of us, and not just for the erudite specialist. In a very real sense, then, this symposium seeks to break new ground in placing appropriate em- phasis upon many species which have here- tofore been neglected. Obviously, the foregoing are not the only valid reasons for convening this series of meetings. There is still a genuine need to ex- amine the fundamental philosophical prem- ises vmderlying the management of endan- gered species. That there yet remain substantial areas of disagreement concerning the status of protected organisms was made manifest in the recent congressional debates directed toward making significant changes in the Endangered Species Act itself. In seek- ing these modifications, congressmen claimed to be responding to a "grass roots" demand for relaxation of standards promoted by a vocal segment of industry representatives and the public, who contend they have been eco- nomically disadvantaged by decisions such as that regarding the snail darter and the Tell- icoe Dam. The long-term consequences of any substantial amendments to the present act will be closely monitored by those on both sides of controversies involving endan- gered species. Broadening the concern for vanishing spe- cies to a worldwide scope, we find that there is increasing global concern for the perpetu- ation of threatened plants and wildlife, as pressures brought against natural ecosystems by expanding human populations inexorably mount. This subject will be treated in great detail by several of the invited speakers, and I only wish to point out here that, while there is much cause for pessimism, there are a few hopeful signs as well. At the risk of ex- posing my own biases regarding the relative worth of threatened wildlife, I will cite a few positive examples from the realm of avian conservation, an area in which I have some first-hand experience. Certain species of raptors have responded favorably to the voluntary or enforced de- cline in the use of persistent pesticides, for- merly a major source of environmental con- tamination. Noteworthy in this regard is the apparent recovery of breeding populations of the peregrine falcon in the United Kingdom and parts of northern Europe. A similar pat- tern of recovery has been detected among many populations of the osprey in the United States and elsewhere. It is to be hoped that this encouraging trend can continue, and that hard pesticides will be replaced by new-gen- eration chemicals in those areas of the world where these problems still exist. In the battle to save the peregrine, additional successes have been achieved through the release of captive-bred birds into areas from which the species has been extirpated in recent decades. Results have been sufficiently encouraging to stimulate the drafting of plans for a similar effort on behalf of the seriously endangered California condor; another such program is contemplated for the Philippine eagle, a vic- tim of the all-too-familiar story of destmction of forest habitat to meet the needs of a rapid- ly growing human population. The kinds of success obtained with raptors can certainly be expected in the intensive management of other species of birds and threatened wildlife in general. For example, the International Crane Foundation of Ba- raboo, Wisconsin, has imderway an ambitious program of captive breeding and restocking which has as its objective the perpetuation of each of the endangered species of that group. Some additional optimism in respect to the whooping crane has been engendered by a scheme to produce more young whoopers for 1979 The Endancered Species: A Symposium later release into the wild by cross-fostering of eggs and nestlings, using sandliill cranes as smrogate parents. There is another category of species whose decline may have been arrested by increased public awareness and more enlightened man- agement practices of wild populations. Such would appear to be the case with the golden eagle in the western United States. While di- rect and indirect persecution still account for considerable mortality throughout the West, there is good evidence that breeding popu- lations are healthy and stable at the present time. There are also indications that at least many of these eagles adjust well or become habituated to various types of human disturb- ance, and are not as sensitive or inclined to abandon nests as many of us had previously thought. This in turn suggests that not all of our direst predictions need come true in every case, although it is obvious that many endangered species are not as adaptable and versatile as we would want. Another plus for the future of the golden eagle is that a long- awaited federal management plan for this species appears to be forthcoming. This plan is intended to offer management guidelines that will address problems of eagle depreda- tion as well as deal realistically with the sur- vival of the species. It is hoped its principal function will be to keep the golden eagle at a healthy distance from the endangered species list; to the extent that it is successful, it could serve as a model for the management of many other species. In closing, I am tempted to deliver a stir- ring peroration in which I would remind you of the necessity for coming to grips with the issues at this critical time in the history of the conservation movement, of our custodial re- sponsibility toward the subhuman species with which we share the planet, and of the challenge to initiate innovative and effective solutions. Instead, I will merely quote some rather straightforward if somewhat trite words ascribed to the late King George VI, which were adopted as the motto of the Tim- bavati Nature Reserve in South Africa: The wildlife of today is not ours to dispose of as we please. We have it in trust. We must account for it to those who come after. Perhaps it is this intrinsic kind of value that we should always have before us in our deliberations on even the least spectacular of the endangered species. THE EPOCH OF BIOTIC IMPOVERISHMENT Thomas E. Lovejoy' Abstract.— 1978 was the first year in the history of man that legal power to eradicate a species was established. It is one of a number of signs of rapidly accelerating rates of extinction which may result in reduction of biological diversity by one-seventh to one-fifth, with a parallel reduction in the planet's capacity to support man and a per- manent reduction in the potential body of biological knowledge. Species loss of such a degree would warrant desig- nating the close of the Recent epoch and the opening of a new one of Biotic Impoverishment. A great deal of the extinctions will occur in the tropical forest areas of the globe but with possible environmental effects extending into the temperate regions. It will fall to science to help slow the rate of extinction, to decide on which species and ecosystems to concentrate conservation efforts, and to communicate the importance of biological diversity to govern- ment and society. It is an encouraging sign for conservation that during this first week of December 1978, both this symposium and the first meeting of private conservation organizations in Central America are taking place. It is interesting that the latter is occurring in Guatemala, a country which honors the Quetzal, a trogon of extraordinary beauty, in three ways: as its national bird, as its monetary imit, and with a statue in Guatemala City. At the same time the travel route many of us followed here takes us through Salt Lake City, where stands one of the few other statues in honor of a bird: the gull which rescued the Mormons from orthopteran plagues, and the specific identity of which is probably lost forever in history. But 1978 will also be remembered as the year when, for the first time in the history of civilization, the power to exterminate a spe- cies other than a pathogen was legally estab- Ushed. This certainly was not arrived at in any particularly intelligent manner, and its full meaning in the history of the biological degradation of the planet was and is appreci- ated by few: it is the first indication in the body of law that we are not going to save, or try to save, the full array of species in the biota, and raises the terrifying questions of which and how many species will be written off. The new Endangered Species Legislation takes a step toward answering those questions by according lower-class status to the faunal majority represented by the invertebrates, as opposed to those lucky enough to have spinal columns. At first, species will wink out one by one like city lights as night deepens, but soon there will be a rushing torrent of extinction. This year also saw all but the last remnant of natural forest on Bali cut over, leaving little natural habitat for the Rothschild's Mynah, which fortunately does thrive in zoos. As far as I know, nobody has answered the question of how many extinctions the Bali forest de- struction represents. It carries special mean- ing when we reflect on how much was learned about how the world works when Al- fred Russell Wallace crossed the narrow strait between Bali and Lombok and began to conceive of the science of zoogeography and, later, of natural selection. He grasped natural selection independently of Darwin, yet so ef- fectively that he propelled Darwin into pub- lishing the volume which so greatly changed man's view of his place in nature. It is indeed likely that some of the recent extinctions on Bali were of species actually described by Wallace, a sad tribute to a man who did so much to advance knowledge. One little-appreciated aspect of the recent and forthcoming extinctions is the implica- tion for the future growth of knowledge (Lovejoy 1978). An extinct species is one 'World Wildlife Fund, 1601 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20009. Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 about which we can learn httle, either in terms of its specific biology or role in nature, except what can be gleaned from the sad remnants of information held by museum specimens— remnants which are nonetheless valuable and deserving of more appreciation. Many species will, in fact, disappear without even a mention of their existence in the chronicles of science. While there certainly is some knowledge to be gained from the response of biological systems to destructive manipulation, it re- mains negligible when compared to what can be learned from living biological systems over the long time available when species continue to exist. Indeed one might think of human knowledge, whether in general or about biology in particular, as a growing n- dimensional hypervolume, with a volume Ve at any point in time. Whether there is a total potential body of knowledge is probably a question for lengthy discussion, but for the moment and for the sake of argument, let us assume that there is such a definable body, and that it can be represented by another hy- pervolume, Vp, which contains, and is many orders of magnitude larger than, Ve (Fig. 1). Until relatively recent times, it can be said that throughout human history society has striven to enlarge Ve, deriving considerable benefit from doing so, and essentially driving Ve to approach Vp. The effects of the rela- tively small number of man-generated extinc- tions up to this moment have been minor, but now, as we enter the epoch of Biotic Impov- erishment, which prol3ably deserves to be treated as an epoch distinct from the Recent, we are allowing Vp to shrink and to ap- proach Ve. Yet, as living organisms, surely we must realize that biology is the most im- portant branch of knowledge for human wel- fare. Most of us, even endangered species biolo- gists, tend to underestimate the extent of the impoverishment of the biota that may lie be- fore us. Here in the United States, already a highly developed nation with a human popu- lation now predicted to peak at a mere 253 million, it is possible to entertain the notion that we can have our fauna and flora and the sybaritic pleasures of the consumer society as well. There are occasional problems with en- dangered species and public works projects in conflict, but it seems possible to at least dream about having both. But such is certainly not the case in the tropical forest countries of the world, which are, with a couple of exceptions, all lesser-de- veloped nations eager to ape our ways. The FAO estimate that tropical forest destruction currently occurs at 50 acres a minute is truly terrifying. These forests are a biological treasury, and the conflicts between tradition- al development projects and endangered spe- cies are many orders of magnitude greater than in temperate regions. I recently had the Fig. 1. The relationship of expected (Ve) and poten- tial (Vp) knowledge. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symi difficult task of producing for a presidential study an estimate of extinctions that will take place between now and the end of the cen- tury. Attempting to be conservative wher- ever possible, I still came up with a reduction of global diversity between one-seventh and one-fifth, principally because of what will happen to tropical forests. No doubt some of my colleagues think I am mad, but I would challenge them to produce a better estimate. If my estimate turns out to be too high it will either be because society has made consid- erable changes in its ways, or because it will take a bit longer to reach the same reduction in diversity. The U.S. example to the inter- national community will be very important. The problem of biotic impoverishment then is considerably greater than can be ap- preciated from an overview of endangered species here in the United States. Our Ameri- can collection of endangered flora and fauna really represents but part of the forward con- tingent of a great rush to extinction. This all raises many questions for science and society, including the most terrible one of all, one which few are brave or foolhardy enough to ask: namely, can we continue to treat the val- ue of a human life as a constant whatever the number of people may be? I am enormously uncomfortable even asking it, let alone trying to answer it, yet, even if ignored, it will in part be answered by the degraded capacity of the planet to support man if biotic impov- erishment proceeds apace. It is more comfortable to try and answer the scientific and technical questions raised by biotic impoverishment and it is these that this symposium is largely addressing. Cer- tainly science has a critical role to play in ef- forts to reverse the tide, and it needs to be recognized that such science is as in- tellectually respectable and as useful to so- ciety as, for example, laboratory work on DNA hybridization. In many cases it is a race with time. World Wildlife Fund is launching a major research program on the problem of the minimum critical size of ecosystems, or why and how ecosystems set aside in the midst of land- scapes converted to man's purposes shed or lose species. How much more desirable it would be to have the results in hand now, be- cause most opportunities to set aside a repre- sentative series of the planet's ecosystems will occur in the next two decades. Yet we have to make do with the situation. It is important that universities and agencies recognize that conservation is an appropriate activity to which biologists should devote some of their time. Indeed it is probably correct to say that today a biologist can make as much of a contribution to sci- ence by helping to save species and ecosys- tems, and, therefore, future opportunities to study biology, as by more traditional scholar- ly pursuits. To science should fall the terrible questions about which species and ecosystems to save and which not to save. Which of us would be comfortable about saying one species is more important than another? Yet it is clear that all will not be saved, and that it is preferable for scientists to address those questions rather than deferring to the less knowledgeable. Certainly we would be wise to try and avoid having to make such decisions in imthought- ful haste— but maybe the awful nature of the questions will drive us that much harder to keep the number of such decisions small. There is another critical role for science, namely articulating the true meaning of biot- ic impoverishment for society. Too often both scientists and society in general focus on the individual species rather than on the rec- ognition that the impoverishment of the biota represents a reduction of the planet's capacity to svipport man. Just on the basis of destroyed coastal wetlands it can be said that the fimdamental capacity of the planet to support man is less today than a century ago. This erosion of our biological wealth has been masked by the constantly refined abili- ties of technology. Technology has fostered the illusion that we can get more and more from less and less, a dream that soon will be shattered; the cracks are already appearing. Scientists must articulate the true meaning of endangered species as indicators of stressed ecosystems and as yet another sign of erosion of the basic quality of life. When the Devil's Hole pupfish was being endangered by a lowered water table, the real question was about the rights to reduce that natural resource base. It is not always easy to deduce the complete meaning for society of any par- ticular endangered species, but it will always Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 be generally true that it will reflect deterio- ration of a biological system. When arguing the case, we cannot always expect the exploi- ters to play fair; poor human behavior with respect to questions of dwindling resources is all too familiar. Our society is generally ignorant of the im- portance of biological resources and hence of endangered species. One Supreme Court judge harbored the view during the case of the Tellico Dam and the snail darter that the Endangered Species Act meant endangered species might be found behind already exist- ing dams and it would be necessary to run around letting the water out. And a distin- guished senator was concerned most of his state might be declared critical habitat for the grizzly bear; perhaps he was worried about their votes? It is really up to all of us to employ all our energies and intellects to correcting this dangerous state of ignorance. We should clearly make the case, for ex- ample, that dwindling biological resources are making a major contribution to problems of economic inflation. Society worldwide has been rocked in re- cent weeks as the story of the charnal mille- feuille of Jonestown emerged layer by layer in the media. How many of us recognize that we are well into the beginnings of a biologi- cal Jonestown? As in Jonestown, there will be human survivors once the epoch of biotic im- poverishment passes. But their existence will be forever an impoverished and degraded one. The question of how degraded and how impoverished lies before science and society. Acknowledgments I acknowledge with gratitude the help of Richard O. Bierregaard, Helen Hays, Eleanor Stickney, and Clayton White. Questions to Mr. Lovejoy Q. It would be interesting to have a figure on that one- sixth of the species lost you have computed. A. You mean in terms of numbers of species? If the to- tal biota for the planet is estimated at lying some- where between .3 million and 10 million species, which gives you some idea of how ignorant we are about the biology of the planet, and if one takes the more conservative figure of 3 million, the loss is on the order of 500,000 to 600,000. The actual home- work I went through to arrive at all of that is going to be published in the Global 2000 Study, which was requested by President Carter more than a year ago in his environmental address of 1977 and will emerge sometime in the coming September. That particular section will certainly stand out because a lot of the reviewers of that study who are not biolo- gists and not particularly aware of whats happening in the tropical regions found it very difficult to be- lieve and so it may be the only portion of that study with a name actually attached as an author. Q. Would you explain your statement about fauna without vertebrae having less of a status in nature than vertebrates? A. Well it's true. When it comes to invertebrates the secretary of interior has the ability to exempt certain public works projects from the Endangered Species Act without taking it through the long process to ul- timately what some of us call the "Extinction Squad" setup in the new legislation. It really doesn't say flat out that the secretary of interior can allow a nonvertebrate to go extinct, but it says that he need not recognize discrete populations. Maybe some of the Department of the Interior people can explain it a little more fully than I, but there was a clear dis- tinction drawn between the two. Q. What are the strategies to address the problem of the destruction of tropical rainforests? A. As currently treated, tropical rain forests are gener- ally regarded as one-time use resources to be cleared and replaced by something else. That something else is often not economically viable in the long term. It's really a matter of proving that there are in fact con- siderably more gains from protecting as much of the tropical rain forests as we can than from converting them to short-time use. Q. The recent modification of the Endangered Species Act was supported around the country. Some of the major conservation groups supported that modifica- tion. Now I understand that the World Wildlife Fund also supported the modification and I'd like to know if that's correct or what your position is. A. During the period when the new endangered species legislation was being considered in recent months, some conservation organizations supported the mod- ification. Was World Wildlife Fund one of these? It was not. The problem was that the biological reality and the political reality simply did not coincide. It is very clear, particularly from the Senate vote, which I think was something on the order of 94 in favor of modification, that there was little sympathy within the Congress for maintaining the Endangered Spe- cies Act as originally laid out. We, in fact. World Wildlife Fund and some other organizations, worked quietly behind the scenes to try and get as strong successor legislation as we could possibly get, but we simply were not about to go on record and condone anything that might lead to extinction. I think this was well understood by the staff of the Senate sub- committee in question. Q. I have two comments to what you had to say today. First of all, forgive me if I have trouble thinking about tropical rain forests today. I deal in the area of management, which is where most of the problems 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium are being solved, at least in this country. If we set ourselves as biologists aside and say it's iis against them, then two things may happen. First, we may become like a federal agency that I know of that says we have this pristine untouched piece of land and we're going to keep it pristine and untouched by allowing 10,000 people in and then it's going to stay somehow miraculously pristine and untouched. Second, which is more likely, the "other side" will win because they have more influence and more people. I think that we need to concentrate more heavily on the interface between the scientific com- munity and the people and, in a democratic country, I think that is more appropriate. \. I don't have any difficulty with that at all. In fact, I think in a sense that's what I was trying to say by saying we have to articulate what it all really means. But it's all in the best interests of all of us to be wor- rying about what is essentially the proper biological management, not only of the United States, but of the entire planet and that naturally falls into two distinct parts. One is making sure that you protect all the pieces— all the biological pieces— with a series of representative ecosystems properly designed so that thev can be managed to protect their integrity, and I might add that it's getting harder and harder to protect an ecosystem anywhere without manage- ment of some sort. The other part is making the rest of the face of the planet biologically productive in a sustainable fashion and in a fashion that will in no way threaten the sort of species bank you've set aside. For example, we at World Wildlife Fund are taking a long shot at trying to talk to the last of the American billionaires, Daniel Ludwig, who has an operation in the Amazon about the size of Con- necticut where he has cleared forest and is growing trees for pulp and rice. If I actually do get a chance to have a reasonable discussion with him, my point to him is not going to be that he shouldn't be doing what he's doing, because it is probably more in- telligent than most of what's being done in the Ama- zon, but rather that the long-term security of his own operation depends on protecting the ecological integrity of the Amazon as a whole. Q. You alluded to a correlation between biotic impov- erishment and economic inflation. Would you care to elaborate on that subject? A. Probably, if one searched around, examples could be found. For instance, the price of fish is increasing as the supply dwindles and the demand stays high. I only began to think about this ten days ago, but cer- tainly this process has to be occurring here and there. The problem is to sort it out from the incred- ible maze of vectors that comprise economics and really demonstrate what's happening— and that's part of the problem. Q. Mammoth is now about $5 a poiuid. The summer Chinook is in very great danger; we might have to drain Grand Coulee Dam to save it. In one of your other statements, you said that we have to protect habitats that have been damaged or destroyed and renew them. No summer Chinook were caught this year, except for about 1,.500 by the Indians. At one time there were billions of pounds of Chinook. Crab is now about $5 a poimd. A. I'm really delighted to have that example. Well, in fact, if you probably start thinking about it, the price of lobsters and other marine products has cer- tainly risen a great deal in recent years and that may be one of the more clear-cut situations. The world fisheries peaked about 1970. They made a slight re- covery this year, I believe, but all along there has been an increasing catch effort, an increasing amount of actual fossil fuel energy going into the pursuit of these fish, and certainly the demand for them has been increasing, too. Q. Are there any calculations on how much of a de- crease we are going to get in atmospheric oxygen if these tropical forests are destroyed? A. The problem of tropical forests with respect to oxy- gen turns out to be no real issue. They, in fact, con- sume about as much oxygen as they produce. The real problem in terms of biogeochemical cycles may well lie in the carbon which is stored in tropical rain forests. Tropical rain forests represent the largest terrestrially stored pool of carbon, and it was esti- mated as long ago as 1954 by Evelyn Hutchinson that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmo- sphere probably came equally from the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests. The whole problem of global circulation of carbon and where the sinks are certainly isn't a clear matter, but we do know that CO2 is increasing and that if we destroy two-thirds of the tropical forest (which is the esti- mate by 2000) we will release an enormous amount of carbon into the atmosphere. The question is how rapidly the natural sinks can absorb it and bring it back to normal level. If there is a pulse of carbon in the atmosphere, then we may get into problems of climatic change, change in rainfall regimens, and temperatures in the temperate zones. The tropical rain forests really aren't all that far away. Q. It seems like we're expanding on the strategy of the common ideal. How can we deal with individual countries that are bent on destroying a habitat which may affect the rest of us? A. If I had the answer to that I might be head of the U.N. There is no easy answer to it at the moment. Many, such as Roland Clement or I, work on a coun- try-by-country basis. I endeavor to persuade the Bra- zilians, for example, that proper management of the Amazon is in their best interests as well as that of the rest of the world in terms of, say, carbon. On the other hand, there is increasing recognition within governments, even in Latin America, which people were despairing about for so long, that there are ma- jor problems. There is now an Amazonian pact among all the Amazonian nations which, at least in rhetoric, talks about proper management of the Amazon. There are some interesting questions in- volved in that. Take the example of the contribu- tions of biological species to modern medicine, espe- cially the importance of a primate species. Take a cure that comes from one of those species and it is verv rapidly distributed around the world as an in- ternational resource, so we may be approaching the time when some biological resources, at least, are 10 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 recognized by the international community as being international resources, and pressure will therefore fall on some of the less well-behaved countries to clean up their act. Q. Are people as much a problem as governments? A. Oh, it certainly is both. Roland Clement is going to address problems of people. Q. Is corruption ever a problem? \. Well, corruption is a problem. I would guess that at least in Latin .\merica, which is my major "beat," ignorance is a greater problem than corruption. Q. Do you think there really is a middle ground be- tween biotic deprivation and the goals of preserva- tion of the biota? A. I think there has to be. It's just a matter of how much we want to let it hurt before we really re- spond to it. 1 think it's as simple as that. Q. What about the review board set up under the new endangered species legislation to make decisions on seemingly irresolvable conflict between endangered species and public works projects? How busy will they be, and how eager will they be to exercise that power? A. We're really talking about a play of attitude and how that will affect the whole process. The Endan- gered Species Act up to the point where it was re- vised certainly involved thousands of cases of seem- ing conflict that were all resolvable at staff-level discussion with the Department of the Interior. The single exception was the Tellico Dam and snail dart- er, and that really became an exception only be- cause the TVA was completely recalcitrant and re- fused to acknowledge that it was subject to the law. If one reflects on those figures, it might say that only rarely will the Extinction Squad have a nasty deci- sion to make. If, on the other hand, agencies feel that the creation of the Extinction Squad has weak- ened the power of the Department of the Interior, they may feel less need to be pliable in discussion and they may get very busy up on top. I don't think they're going to be happy to do this at all. My own particular .solution to the whole thing is to erect a large black marble slab on the mall in Washington so that we can engrave on it the name of the species exterminated and the names of the members of the squad at that time. Literature Cited LovEjoY. 1978. The Curious Animal, Symposium on "Impact of Federal Wildlife Regulations on the Svstematics Ecology Community," sponsored by the Society of Systematic Zoology and the So- ciety of Plant Taxonomists, 14 Febniary 1978. CULTURE AND SPECIES ENDANGERMENT Roland C. Clement' .\bstract.— Species endangerment has so far been addressed mostly by biologists. It is now important to involve social scientists, inasmuch as the problems are man caused. The history of our attitudes, our uses of the land, and the reasons wherefore are problems for everyone. The evidence suggests that the causes of endangerment may be grouped under (1) direct and indirect exploitation of resources, and (2) population displacement by modern agriculture, with consequent migration to the city or to the forest frontier, where accelerated forest destruction is the result. The displaced people are part of the marginalized two-thirds of the human race and will destroy what is left of nature in order to survive unless we help them become self-sufficient. Such a refocusing of Western civilization, which has so far been parasitic on nature and a marginalized humanity, will require a new world view by the dominant one-third of us, perhaps based on Whiteheadean philosophy, wherein we accept a participatory role in a complex of processes that evolve from one another. The focus of this paper is an attempt to broaden perspectives on contemporary spe- cies endangerment. The biology that is cur- rently being elucidated by a spate of dis- cussions of this problem is fascinating and helpful, but not enough in itself. Let us first summarize very quickly the two principal causes of man-caused endan- germent under two categories of pressure: ex- ploitation and competitive exclusion. These are well known, but we tend to generalize them too much. For example, there is abun- dant and growing objection to direct exploita- tion, such as whaling, sealing, even hunting, and more recently against economic devel- opment which destroys key habitats. But we still neglect the impact of the killer-buyer relationship in the exploitation of wild spe- cies, partly because it is diffuse and largely il- legal, and therefore difficult to quantify. It is also a more recent phenomenon. The new traffic in animals and their parts We need to confront and regulate is a by-product of the jet age and the mass-consumption society. It is a result of uneducated affluence. There is cause to believe that the United States alone generates a $10 million annual traffic in live birds; that two to four times the number of individuals delivered perish en route; and that "products" made from wild animals involve sales which are several times $10 million. The Justice Department is now attempting to assess this traffic more accu- rately, almost for the first time. There is also a need to study the implica- tions of the sheer weight of human numbers on management policy. Numbers probably now mitigate against the rational manage- ment of our wildlife resources. What we re- cently considered "moderate use" now adds up to excessive demand and exploitation. It is the same with competitive exclusion. We stress human population growth and tend to point the finger at the poor who still favor large famlies. But we have neglected the so- cially disruptive displacement of people by agricultural "modernization." Thirty years ago, the growth of capital-intensive and tech- nology-intensive mechanization in U.S. agri- culture sent 10 million blacks to the cities, and today the Green Revolution or some less spectacular form of agricultural modern- ization is doing the same thing to world peas- antry. The only way to call this modern- ization progressive is to overlook the social and ecological disruptions for which it con- tinues to be responsible. The displaced people are flooding the cities and rapidly destroying their viability because the cities are incapable of assimilat- ing such numbers. Or the people become modern-day colonists along the frontiers of R2, Norwalk. Connecticut. 068.50. 11 12 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 the remaining forest, destroying it at a ca- tastrophic rate. Having been slow to understand the social dynamics of labor displacement by machines and gasoline, we have misidentified the im- pact of marginalized human groups. We blame what seem to us insensitive attitudes toward forest destruction by these people, or we point to over-population as a basic cause. We must learn to recognize that today's for- est destruction is a by-product of our own economic demands. It was to facilitate min- ing activities by foreign capital that Brazil's trans-Amazon highway network was built; and it is to satisfy America's hamburger cul- ture that cattlemen have displaced corn farmers from nearly half of Central America. Another neglected element of competitive exclusion which needs to be seen as a sense- less ecological pressure is that of the mecha- nized mobility of this generation. This is ex- hilarating, but it allows one species to disrupt the existence of all other species as never be- fore. Its unfavorable effects are another result of uneducated affluence. This effect may, of course, be constrained within a decade or so by the energy shortage. At a La Jolla seminar on endangered spe- cies, Lovejoy (1978) outlined the scientific needs of late twentieth-century conservation. He called for species research to identify minimum habitat requirements, for island biogeography-type studies to identify species maintenance needs as against individual needs, and for ecosystem research. Lovejoy also called for a new conservation anthropol- ogy focused on the study of human attitudes and values, but leaving out the needs of the Third World, important as he knew these to be. He asked that this new field of study in- quire into the biology of our own species, so that we may learn what has led us to take such an adversary stance toward the environ- ment. As already suggested, much as I would val- ue more biological knowledge of ourselves and other species, this will not suffice to re- duce the rate of extermination which is now underway. We need a conservation anthro- pology but it must be a much broader inquiry than attitudinal res-earch; it must investigate our world view, which is the way people "characteristically look outward upon the universe." This calls for an investigation of our culture, because culture is the sum of our ideas about ourselves, our environment, and the social institutions we have devised to get things done. Anthropologists (Hall 1977) tell us that we cannot understand our own culture by self- examination or introspection, but only by comparing the approaches of other cultures. Other cultures furnish us a necessary point of reference. Therefore, rather than the psy- chologist, it is the historian, studying older cultures, and the anthropologist and the ge- ographer, systematically studying existing cultures, who are our best guides to under- standing ourselves and our neighbors. They can help us unravel the social psychoses that cause us to undermine our own existence through internecine struggles and the impov- erishment of the biosphere. How ironic that we have heretofore been so heedless of the survival of other cultures. We need one an- other, if only for dead-reckoning purposes! Will it turn out to be the same with those other nations, the wild species? Our own culture, a variant of Western civ- ilization, is now old enough to be viewed somewhat objectively by mature historians. Ordinary citizens cannot yet do this because they have internalized culture and are not yet scholarly enough. But they can be taught. Two of the most intriguing historians of our day who may serve as models and teachers are Fernand Braudel (1978), the Frenchman who is the authority on the growth of civ- ilization in the Mediterranean basin, and Im- manuel Wallerstein (1974), who is engaged on a three-volume study of the modern world system which is our economic system. The particular importance of Wallerstein for our theme is that he has disaggregated the modern world system. We are all familiar with the fact that the nations of the world normally include one or a few dominants, but Wallerstein is convincing in demonstrating that this is an interdependent system, where- in a small group of core nations system- atically exploit a larger group of peripheral nations. The danger is that the core nations build up such a high life-style by exploiting the peripheral nations that they become de- pendent on this unbalanced system of ex- changes. It is noteworthy that it is this sub- 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 13 sidized well-being that allows the core nations to enjoy the internal political free- dom they boast about and mistakenly see as the cause of their well-being instead of a by- product. The peripheral nations, conversely, must impose some form of coerced labor to extract the raw materials for export, while consumption at home is constrained. Eco- nomic development for the core nations is maintained by underdevelopment of the per- ipheral nations. This is a large part of the Third World problem. History also teaches that dominance in this system is a shifting phenomenon. Spain was the first leader, but for less than a century. The British enjoyed dominance for a very long time, but lost it to the United States dur- ing World War II. There are many signs that the dominance of the United States may not be longer lived than Spain's unless we be- come more appreciative of the relationships involved and modify the system to remove its worst inequities. In any event, because the most worrisome threats of extinction are focused in the world's tropical regions, and these areas are all peripheral nations in the world economic system, it is obvious that we must look to the exploitive life-styles of the core nations if we are to introduce a more rational balance be- tween numbers of people, their material de- mands, and the carrying capacity of the re- gions involved. It is the mass-consumption society that has the most "give" in it. A first task in this monumental transition may be to analyze and display those ecologically sense- less agencies in our culture that have provid- ed the compulsive drive to exploit the planet as though it were a midden heap. People must be shown that their culture has become counterproductive before they can be ex- pected to make the necessary changes. In addressing the particular problems of the Neotropics, we will benefit from Brazi- lian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro's (1971) analysis of our Western Hemisphere system. The cultural complexity of the hemisphere is highlighted by Ribeiro's need to recognize three categories of people. First are the Wit- ness People, the descendants of earlier native civilizations that were crushed by the Span- ish invaders. These are the Aztecs of Mexico, the Maya of Guatemala and environs, and the Incas of Peru and Bolivia. These people com- prise a large but marginalized component of the modern-day populations of their new countries. A second group is that of the New People, where the European colonists amalgamated lesser tribes, including im- ported African slaves, and thereby created a new mixed human stock. Such an amalgam is characteristic of Brazil in particular, and of Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, the Antilles, southern Central America, and the southern United States. Finally, there are two groups of Trans- planted People, New World Europeans so-to- speak, who simply pushed native peoples aside on first conquering their areas. These are the Anglo-Americans of Canada and the United States; and the River Plate people of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. Notice that these two groups occupy the temperate zones of our hemisphere. We are still, in many respects, a bunch of tribes, but we are tied together by an economic system whose exploitiveness has become unbearable for two-thirds of the world population newly en- lightened about their true status by American movies, radio, and television. Let me be more specific by calling atten- tion to recent studies of what is happening in Central America. In what is unfortunately a somewhat obscure publication for many of us, Berkeley geographer James J. Parsons (1976) reported that the expansion of arti- ficial pastures in Central America at the ex- pense of both cropland and natural forest is a regional phenomenon with drastic, over- looked consequences. In most of this region in the 15 years prior to Parson's report, the area in planted pasture (mostly in African grasses) and the number of beef cattle had nearly doubled. But the per-capita con- sumption of beef in those same countries had actually declined, because most of this pro- duction was for export. This expansion of cattle raising was done at the expense of the Indians and mestizos who formerly raised corn for themselves on these marginal lands. Dispossessed by the cattlemen, these people have either migrated to the cities or have gone to the forest frontier to engage in shift- ing cultivation by cutting the forest. Within a few years, of course, the colonists find it nec- essary to abandon their plots and to cut new 14 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 forest, mostly because weeds become more expensive to fight than cutting forest. The cattleman then moves in behind them, rents the abandoned acreage for a pittance, and plants it to grass. The peasants have not only been dispossessed, but they have become a free labor supply for cutting the forest. Although lauded as progressive and mod- ernizing by local and national governments and bv international agencies like AID and FAO, it is this system of land use which has become the chief cause of tropical forest de- struction in the neotropics. It is, of course, also impoverishing already marginalized hu- man populations. We have all known for years that the pressure of so-called land squatters, with machetes and fire, were a serious threat to any forest preserve in Latin America, but Parsons and a few young an- thropologists were the first to show that this destruction is the end product of a wide- spread economic system anchored in the hamburger culture of the United States. The U.S. link has not yet been spelled out in de- tail, but it seems obvious. The dire effects of this extensive land use shift of the last 20 years or so on the Indians of Chiapas are now being documented by Robert Wasserstrom (1977, 1978), James D. Nations (1979), and their colleagvies who worked, until recently, as the Centro de Investigaciones Ecologicas del Sureste (CIES) in San Cristobal de Las Casas. It is time to suggest that the environmental awareness that has come to so many in this decade of the seventies is akin to a religious revelation. Having become aware that our economic system is parasitic on both nature and people, we are now challenged to redes- ign our world view in line with a more con- sistent vision of the joint realities of our lives: the environmental, which is the substrate of our existence; and the social, which is a mea- sure of our humanity in making intelligent, perhaps even enobling use of our opportu- nities. This calls for a reassessment of our sci- ence and technology, our values, and even our unstated, unexamined theological as- sumptions, since willy-nilly, we have some vague concept of the destiny of mankind. Obviously it must be a joint venture, and it will take time, but each of us can help by engaging in some fraction of the task and by involving others. We are likely to discover in that process of review that the principal assiunptions of our Western civilization— homocentricity, ration- ality, technocracy, and progress— have be- come an embarrassing myth. We have ido- lized our own creations instead of simply appreciating them as events in our history as developing organisms. Having demytholo- gized nature and his origins, modern man himself now stands in need of demythologiz- ing! Ecology has taught us that we are involved in systems within systems, and that we both impact and are impacted by these systems. But scientific reductionism, useful though it may be as methodology, has become a dan- gerous, unwitting philosophy. It seems likely that a great deal of that sense of relationship to the environment which we lack, but which the ancients had, is due to the specialism and incrementalism encouraged by reductionism. This has, of course, also affected our educa- tional approaches and made for a hasty em- phasis on specialization for the sake of pre- paring practitioners. Education should involve helping people see whole systems be- fore training them to analyze and manipulate the elements of these systems. However, to invent a new outlook is not to destroy the old, but to give it a new form, a new emphasis, a new reach. Jay Forrester (1978), who prepared the way for the Limits to Growth debate, has now suggested that we have perhaps already been through the tech- nological age. This does not mean that we are through with technology, but that the age which is dawning will not be awed by tech- nology and will use it in the service of all men instead of as an end in itself and for a relative few. It seems obvious that, if we are to save the million or so species we fear may be lost along with the destruction of the tropical for- ests of the world, we must open our system of inventive production to that two-thirds of the human race which was marginalized during the mad rush for domination. The margina- lized people will otherwise be forced to chew up the forest in a frantic effort to survive. But the earth cannot support its present overload of humans at a standard of living we 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 15 would like. The first step must therefore be to eliminate waste in order to make our re- sources satisfy more people; then to tailor our demands to more modest proportions; and finally to adjust our numbers to a new sustained yield economy instead of the pres- ent liquidation of resources that passes for production. Done in stepwise fashion, we will be pleased to see that efficiency and frugality do not hurt. We can draw inspiration from the process philosophy of A. N. Whitehead (1933) of a half century ago, and from the new interest in the implications of historical con- sciousness. Whitehead's cosmology is summa- rized in the thesis that "the ultimate and fim- damental reality of the universe is a multiple and never ending complex of processes devel- oping out of one another." This is both a sci- entific and a metaphysical statement of fact. To think in process terms is to acknowledge our dependence on the systems that produce us and our responsibility to contribute, in- sofar as we can, to the advancement of these processes instead of destroying them for tem- porary self-satisfaction. The way of historical consiousness (Stevenson 1969) is a restate- ment of the same concept: that when the reality of existence, and we ourselves, are un- derstood as historical, we become aware of a responsibility to and for history. In both cases the appeal is not to morality as injunction, but to participation in a process. The theologian Paul Tillich once said that the salvation of man and nature are one and the same task. More recently the anthropo- logist Edward T. Hall said that the popu- lation-environment crisis and the crisis of relationship to self must be solved together. It seems to me we have enough testimony to get started on the reconstruction of our cul- ture. Postscript A frequent response to the approach taken in this paper is that it is too optimistic, as though I expected things to right themselves as soon as awareness is more widespread. It is also objected that "education" takes too long. But education is not restricted to that long sequence of school attendance we currently impose on our young. It may also affect those in control of our social systems, and, through them, all those in between. A culture does not change until all the people in it also change. There is no telling how long this will take, but a crisis or unusual leadership may make it happen rather suddenly. The destructive portend of current prac- tices has caused British astronomer Fred Hoyle (1977) to suggest that the salvation of the human race may depend on an early col- lapse of our economic system. He sees two likely options for a high-technology society like ours: (1) if an essentially unlimited source of energy were perfected before the human race agrees to limit its population and subsist by less destructive life styles, a collapse lead- ing even to extinction is likely. If, on the oth- er hand (2) an early economic collapse causes us to come to terms with ourselves, and we limit population everywhere, the consequent rebirth of invention, if it then provides ample energy supplies, may allow the human race to rise to new heights that are hardly imagi- nable at present. Questions to Dr. Clement Q. How can we show people that their culture has be- come counterproductive and needs to be changed? A. Let me first make the point that cultures don't change until almost everybody changes. It is an educational process, and scientists will need to help by pointing out the implications of what ecology is teaching us; that way we will revamp our education- al system. If the people don't understand that they partake of larger systems, they will continue the short-sighted exploitation which has characterized our civilization. We always begin by accepting the cultural systems we are born into. And it was a great, exciting, and in one sense enlarging expe- rience to be caught up in this wave of exploitation. But now the very system of exploitation is in ques- tion, so we must help people understand that we are not proposing a Marxist revolution but a revamping of our system before it breaks down. There are abun- dant signs that the breakdown is already underway. Q. Will we succeed in revamping our civilization to prevent the extinctions you and Lovejoy are so con- cerned about? A. Let me take a different tack. Education usually takes a generation, but it may come quickly if a crisis oc- curs and our leaders can point out new directions; the people may then ttim around almost overnight. One reason I'm optimistic about the future is that our system is so close to its end that we will not achieve the growth projections in which the business world believes. We are already so deadended in so many areas that if we don't wake up to our problems 16 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 in a decade or so, we'll be squeezed down to size. It would take another lecture to develop this point, but the petroleum problem is a good clue. We have a naive faith that all we need do is invest more in production at home to get more energy. Of course we can do this, but only at increasing cost. Every million feet of new oil well costs more than it did yesterday, both in dollars sunk and in diminished re- turn. And the more we pump, the quicker we will run out. This is what needs to be made obvious to the people. We currently buy the surpluses of the Middle East because these are the cheapest ones. Even American agriculture will have to be turned around because of the energy crisis. Q. You talked about marginalized people in Latin America, but are there not marginalized people in the U.S. who will get caught in this crossfire? A. There are many other marginalized people— the blacks, the hispanics, and the Amerindians at home, and the people of Asia and Africa. Reassimilating these people into the world economic system will not be done overnight, but if we at least accept this as a challenge and work at it, we will soften the im- pacts. Q. What kind of progress is Canada making toward be- coming a conservationist society? A. I'm afraid they are not making much. The Cana- dians are making all the same mistakes in exploiting their energy resources that we have made. This is not surprising because Canadians are a marginalized people too; they are exploited by the United States. Q. You spoke of the need to educate the public to the fact that our system has serious problems; you also said that we must convince people that they will need to get by on a smaller piece of the resource pie. How can you really expect this to work? Won't some economic penalty be necessary? People usually change when they see a personal payoff of some kind. A. Well, yes, but you are opening up another area which cannot be addressed with a simple answer. There are no simple answers. In a democratic so- ciety we must seek to persuade rather than impose. But if time runs out we face a dilemma. Within a decade or so we will probably truly be in an energy crunch, and we will then learn that volimtary ap- proaches to the conservation of energy are not enough; they put the good guys at the mercy of the cheaters. When that time comes, it is hoped some- one will have the persuasive skills to put this over. If we don't accept this, we'll have to fight over it; and if we do that we're in real trouble. Q. Isn't that happening now? This audience is aware of many of these problems, but we also have large cor- porations with lots of money advertising in national magazines and on television, saying: "Don't worry. Buy your gas dryers and gas stoves. We'll have gas for as long as we need it." A. Exactly. We already have a conflict of approaches. \ large section of the economic community actually still believes that resource "production" is simply a matter of investment. Look at the ads nm by Mobil Corporation, "The Capitalist Revolution." They say, just get the government off our backs and everything will be all right. They seem ignorant of the fact that they are liquidating the resources. Of course, if you don't care about the future, that's another matter. Q. Isn't it correct that increasing the price of, say, pe- troleum may not solve problems of exhaustion and inflation? A. Yes, but price is important. If we can make people pay the full social costs of what they wish to do, they must then decide what they most wish to do in- stead of greedily trying to do everything, or con- suming everything. If we have artificial price struc- tures, the public is misled. Industry agrees with this view. The question is who will get the price in- crease? It should be a tax that we can use for con- stnictive uses— in the case of energy, to rebuild a mass transit system where the people are. Let me now add that I'm delighted at the re- sponse you provided because a large part of the an- swer to this big problem is people like you tackling questions energetically and in an open fashion. We must then try to involve more people in our tenta- tive conclusions. If we don't, our troubles won't go away. Literature Cited Braudel, F. 1978. Afterthoughts on material civilization and capitalism. Johns Hopkins. Burger, J. M. 1965. Experience and conceptual activity. MIT Press. Forrester, J. W. 1978. Changing economic patterns. Technology Review, Aug. /Sept. Hall, E. T. 1977. Beyond culture. Anchor Books. Hoyle, F. 1977. Everyman's universe. In: Ten faces of the universe. W. H. Freeman and Co., San Fran- cisco. LovEjoY, T. E. 1978. Late twentieth-century con- servation: the science of a simplifying biosphere. First International Conference of Reserve in Conservation Biology, Univ. California, San Diego. Nations, J. D. 1979. Cattle, cash, food, and forest: the destruction of the American tropics and the La- candon Maya alternative. Culture and Agricul- ture, Univ. California, Davis (in press). Parsons, J. J. 1976. Forest to pasture: development or destruction? Revista de Biologia Tropical, Costa Rica. 24(1): 121-138. RiBEiRO, D. 1971. The Americas and civilization. Geo. Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London (translated from Portuguese). Stevenson, W. T. 1969. History as myth/ the import for contemporary theology. Seabury Press, new York. Wallerstein, I. 1974. The modern world-system: capi- talist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. Aca- demic Press, New York. Wasserstrom, R. F. 1977. Land and labor in central Chiapas: a regional analysis. Development and Change. 4:441-46.3. 1978. Population growth and economic devel- opment in Chiapas, 1524-1975. Human Ecology. 6:127-144. Whitehead, A. N. 1933 (1955). Adventures of ideas. Mentor Books. PERSPECTIVE John L. Spiiiks' Abstract.— The fact that mankind has desecrated much of the natural world is recognized. The rate of plant and animal extinction has increased in North America from an estimated 3 species per century 3,000 years ago to an average of 143 per century since 1620. Endangered species protection began in the Fish and Wildlife Service in 19.38 with the purpose of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge for the whooping crane. A committee on rare and endan- gered species was formed in 1962 by the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service and a tentative list was published in 1964. The Endangered Species Acts of 1966, 1969, and 1973, together with subsequent amendments, provide the legislative authority for the present program. The intent of Congress, through this legislative authority, is to avoid irreversible or irretrievable commitments of resources by identifying problems of environmental impact projects early in the planning stage. Examples in the step-by-step development of the legislation and its operation were re- viewed. I certainly sympathize with the difficulty that Tom Lovejoy and Roland Clement had with their presentations prior to mine, but with all due respect I think perspectives are a bit difficult to address. Perspectives are very individualistic things held certainly very precious to those individuals who have them. When organizations or groups have a similar perspective on something, they're often in- stitutionalized. I would not be so presump- tive as to try to imply that the Fish and Wildlife Service collectively or myself indi- vidually has the only perspective on endan- gered .species and endangered species pro- grams. All we can do is hope that a general public interest and a realistic perspective can be gained by all of those who may affect or be affected by our administering the Endan- gered Species Act of 1973 as amended. To have any perspective I think you must have a little historical sense as to how we got here from there. Then I want to get into the nitty-gritty things that are not so much per- spective as they are pragmatic problems we're going to have in administering the 1978 amendments. We do not have all the answers to a number of rather weighty ques- tions presented by tho.se amendments, but I would like you to leave here today with at least as much knowledge as we have as to how we're going to proceed. The fact that we have desecrated much of the natural world is almost given at this point. There have been various ways to quan- tify this. Nobody is sure what the quan- tification means. We are not exact in saying that it means a certain loss to us by having made a given species extinct. At least we do know what happened here in North America. In the 3,000-year period prior to our arrival, the natural extinction rate was about 3 spe- cies per 100 years. Since the Puritans arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620, over 500 species and subspecies of North American flora and fauna have become extinct. Norman Myers expresses the impact we have had on re- sources, on species and subspecies in an ex- cellent statement, condensing earth's exist- ence down to one calendar year, as follows: To condense the evolution of life on earth into a more comprehensible frame of reference, suppose the whole history of the planet is contained within a single year. The conditions suitable for life did not develop until late June. The oldest known fossils are living creatures about mid-October and life is abundant for both animals and plants, mostly in the seas, by the end of that month. In mid-December dinosaurs and other reptiles dominate the scene. Mammals appear in large numbers only a little before Christmas. On New Year's Eve at about five minutes to midnight, man emerges. Of these five min- utes of man's existence, recorded history represents about the time the clock takes to strike midnight. The period since 1600 A.D., the one refer- enced earlier, when man-induced extinction began to increase rapidly, amounts to about three seconds. The quarter-century just be- gun, when the disappearance of species is put on the scale of all the mass extinctions of the 'Chief, Office of Endangered Spec.es, U.S. Fish and WildUfe Service, Washington. D.C. 20240. 17 18 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 past put together, will take one-sixth of a sec- ond. So the process by which species have become extinct has been incredibly accelera- ted by the impact of man. We have classic cases here in North Amer- ica, such as the passenger pigeon, which once numbered in the billions and became extinct in 1914. It is very difficult to say what the re- action of the people who lived in that time might have been as these species went by the boards. There were certainly some who were economically sensitive of the loss. Passenger pigeons made great feed for hogs. They could be caught on their roost and killed by the barrel loads with sticks, so there was some re- action, but it was not really a societal at- tempt, with money behind the movement, to do something about endangered species. It was not until the 1930s, when the 1932 Ani- mal Damage Control Act was passed by Con- gress (which is still in the operative legisla- tion, incidentally, for federal activities in ani- mal damage control), that there was a hue and cry from the Society of Mammalogists about consequences to vulnerable species. Dr. E. Raymond Hall still remembers vividly his concern as a young man for what had happened to the gray wolf, and he did not like the future prospects. The Fish and Wildlife Service really began "endangered species" protection, in terms of major fiscal outlays, in 1938 with the pur- chase of the Aransas National Wildlife Ref- uge for Whooping Cranes. The cranes at that time had reached a low of 14 birds and were in a very critical situation. The service con- tinued to work on whooping cranes, and in 1956 a coordinating committee was estab- lished between the service and representa- tives of the National Audubon Society to see what could be done about a concentrated ef- fort to save the whooping crane. Since then progress has moved steadily in terms of sensi- tivity and concern for vanishing animals, but I would emphasize that the early concern was more for animals and more specifically mammals and birds than any consideration of lesser lifeforms. If it had big brown eyes and was cuddly or in some way looked noble, then folks had an increased tendency to love it and be concerned if it was disappearing. Skuas and invertebrates really didn't turn folks on too much then and, as a matter of fact, they don't turn folks on very much now. That's another story. In 1962, a committee on rare and endan- gered wildlife species, composed of the vari- ous divisions of the Fish and Wildlife Service, was formed by the director to begin wres- tling with the problem of what should be done with these critters for which we should be responsible. By January 1964, a tentative list of endangered species was put together by the service and circulated for review, and this resulted in 1966 as "the red book," the good old red book you may have seen in your libraries on native, rare, and endangered spe- cies. Perspectives. How did we get from the last passenger pigeon in 1914 to a federal action in the late 1960s? It's difficult to say. Endan- gered species are very difficult animals to think about and the legislation that protects them is a very difficult type of legislation to understand. I think one perspective that folks have on the Endangered Species Act reminds me of Mark Twain's comment on the Bible. He said that he didn't understand very much of it, but what he did understand scared the hell out of him. In many respects this is where we have been with endangered species legislation. The first Endangered Species Act of 1966 was a rather innocuous piece of legis- lation, in all honesty, and particularly so when compared to the 1973 act. It allowed us to list native, endangered species and to acquire land with Land and Water Con- servation Fund monies. There was no pro- cedural requirement as to how things were put on the list, however, and it didn't do a critter a lot of good because being listed af- forded no protection from taking. It was, however, a first fledgling step to a mean- ingful national law protecting endangered species. Also, there was only one category, an endangered species, and an endangered spe- cies was basically a basket case, something that was in dire straits. Reference was made to rare species in the red books published in 1966 and 1968 but rare species were not in- cluded in legislation. In 1969, a second en- dangered species act was passed. The Endan- gered Species Conservation Act, and this act went a bit hirther than the 1966 act. It did broaden the definition of fish and wildlife to include moUusks and crustaceans, a rather 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 19 large step forward because, heretofore, pre- dominant concern had been with vertebrates, mostly those that were lovable. The Lacey Act was amended to allow a broader degree of enforcement by including reptiles, am- phibians, moUusks, and crustaceans. Foreign species could be listed for the first time under the 1969 act. A very important international step was taken by the 1969 act when the sec- retary of the interior was directed to seek the convening of an international ministerial meeting before 30 June 1971, at which would be concluded a binding international conven- tion on the conservation of endangered spe- cies. That convention took place and is now the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species or Wild Fauna and Flora, a very important international agree- ment to which some 46 countries are now parties. Then came the big one, the Endan- gered Species Act of 1973, which President Nixon signed into law on 28 December. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 could accu- rately be described as a "sleeper." I am sure Congress was unaware of the fviU implica- tions of its provisions. Tellico Dam is a good case in point. Tell- ico had been imder litigation from local citi- zens who were opposed to it for a number of years before the snail darter swam into the picture. Perhaps Tellico and the snail darter could be likened to the whale who swallowed Jonah under inverse circumstances. Jonah swallowed the whale and the snail darter seems to have engulfed Tellico Dam. After the snail darter was scientifically described, an emergency rule making listed the species and determined its critical habitat. We were petitioned to do so. The federal district court in which the case was first tried did not find for the plaintiffs. In addressing the issue of saving either Tell- ico Dam or the snail darter, they found for the Tennessee Valley Authority. The district court's decision was appealed. It was re- versed in the federal appellant court and ulti- mately came before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court also ruled for the snail darter but not in the true context of that statement, in that the Supreme Court said, "Yes, this is really what the Endangered Spe- cies Act says. This is what Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act says." It says that all federal agencies shall insure that actions au- thorized, funded, and carried out by them do not jeopardize the continued existence of a threatened or endangered species or adverse- ly modify or destroy its critical habitat, and that's what the TVA's actions were clearly going to do. There was no question of that being the ultimate outcome should the dam be completed and the gates closed. The ripple that reached tidal wave propor- tions following the decision could perhaps be characterized as the "Chicken Little Syn- drome." Do you remember Chicken Little? Chicken Little was out in the barnyard one day when an acorn dropped on his head and he assumed the sky was falling. Other parties with similar federal works projects saw the acorn fall on Tennessee Valley Authority's head and assumed the sky was going to fall. It was Chicken Little all over again. There was a deep concern that economic progress, if you will, inckiding many important public works projects, would be halted because of endangered or threatened species being pres- ent. We felt in the Fish and Wildlife Service at that time, and we still do to this day, that the concern was an overconcern, that we could find no justification for it. The service had completed some 5,000 formal and informal consultations with other federal agencies. Three of those at that time had been liti- gated. In one instance involving the Indiana Bat and Merramac Park Lake, the court found in favor of the U.S. Army Corps of En- gineers both at the district court level and the appellant court level. In the second case involving the Mississippi Sandhill Crane and Interstate 10, the court did find for the plaintiffs, but that highway has since been completed. The questionable interchange is going in. The conflict was resolved ulti- mately by the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Federal Highway Administration work- ing cooperatively, so we could have our cake and eat it, too— or have our cranes and their interchange, too, if you want to put it like that. We felt there was a degree of over- reaction to the problems that were going to be caused by Tellico. We thought it was an anomaly. It was not typical of what the En- dangered Species Act was going to do in the future. Nevertheless, a number of individuals 20 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 were concerned about this, and a number of bills were put before Congress to address the problem. There were any number of varia- tions on these bills, including specific exemp- tions for the Tellico Dam and for another TVA project on the Duck River. Some 14 or 15 bills were being considered by Congress, some introduced in the House of Representa- tives, some in the Senate. The first thing that happened, in terms of action, was a Senate bill, cosponsored by Sen- ator Culver of Iowa and Senator Baker from Tennessee. This bill presented a mechanism by which an appeal could be made and a project exempted from the Endangered Spe- cies Act. A focus was finally made in the House of Representatives on a bill reported out of Mr. Legget's subcommittee which had that provision as well as a preliminary review step by a review board. The outcome of all this was an amendment to the Endangered Species Act which passed Congress in the eleventh hour on 14 October, just before Congress was going to adjourn. Unfortu- nately, our appropriation authority to admin- ister the Endangered Species Act had expired at midnight on 30 September. We were out of business for two weeks because we had no money to operate the program. The act itself remained in effect, the prohibitions of the act remained in effect, and our obligations to consult remained in effect. However, we had no money to do any of these things. President Carter signed that bill on 10 November at 10:00 p.m. That was the last day the presi- dent had to sign the bill before it was pocket vetoed. That made a total of 41 days that the Office of Endangered Species, indeed the en- dangered species program, was out of busi- ness. We are now back in business. We're dig- ging out and we're trying to understand the 1978 amendments to the Endangered Species Act. I want to go over these with you briefly. They are too complex to focus on in great de- tail. Again I would qualify an ultimate con- sideration of what these amendments say to the extent that, until we have a firm reading from our solicitor's office on some finer inter- pretations of the intent of Congress, we are going to be walking a tightrope blindfolded at times to try to administer these and keep the intent of Congress uppermost in our minds. One of the more interesting happenings was a redefinition of critical habitat. There had been no definition of critical habitat in the original 1973 act. It was mentioned in Section 7 of that act and it was defined by regulation by the Fish and Wildlife Service in the Section 7 regulations. The new defini- tion basically confines critical habitat to the geographical area in which a species present- ly occurs. It does make allowance for consid- eration of specific areas outside the geo- graphical area where the species is found, but only if these areas are determined to be es- sential for conservation. What does essential for conservation mean? Conservation is de- fined in one place in the act, but we are not sure what the degree of essential is. Another important happening was the def- inition of species. Tom Lovejoy alluded to the lessening of protection for invertebrates and, at one point, in one earlier bill which was not enacted, there was a rather glaring distinction made against invertebrates— as I recall, something to the effect that they could not have critical habitat determined for them. That was changed in the final act. The major difference made between in- vertebrates and vertebrates is that we cannot list invertebrates at the population level. They may only be listed at a subspecific lev- el. Now for Section 7 itself. The key elements for requiring an agency to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service, if their activities may affect a listed species, are still in place. This has not changed at all. As a matter of fact, the necessity for consultation has been stengthened by these amendments because, without a good-faith consultation, an agency will not qualify for an exemption under other provisions of the act. There is more definition given to the opinion to be rendered by the secretary of the interior, i.e., the director of the Fish and Wildlife service to whom the authority to administer the act has been dele- gated. It now specifies what must be con- tained in the biological opinion. An entirely new element called a biologi- cal assessment has been introduced which only applies to agency action for which no contract for constniction has been entered 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 21 into and for which no construction has begun on the date of the amendments. A biological assessment must be done on projects that fall in this category. The agency that has the ac- tion must request from the secretary of the interior a list of proposed or listed species which may be found in the project area. The agency has 180 days in which to conclude a biological assessment to see what indeed is there. The intent of Congress is that you find out the problem in the early planning stage before you get in the middle of a dam and then end up with another confrontation on your hands. During this process and during the consultation process, the action agency cannot make an irreversible commitment of resources. A federal agency, the governor of a state in which a project is located, or a license or permit applicant whose permit or license is being denied because of endangered or threatened species can appeal for exemption to an endangered species committee. The ap- pellant has 90 days after a biological opinion has been rendered in which to submit this ap- peal. The endangered species committee is composed of seven members, the chairman of which is the secretary of the interior and the other members being secretaries of agricul- ture and the army, the chairman of tlie Coun- cil of Economic Advisors, the EPA, the ad- ministrator of NOAH, and one person or persons appointed by the president from the state(s) affected by the project action. Before the committee gets to look at the exemption or the request for one, however, it is first referred to a review board, a sec- ond-tier process which was not included in the Baker-Culver amendment from the Sen- ate. This review board has three persons on it, one appointed by the secretary of the inte- rior not later than 15 days after the appli- cation, one appointed by the president, and an administrative law judge. It is the job of this review board to examine the application for exemption, and they look at four basic fac- tors: (1) Does an unresolvable conflict exist? (2) Has the agency carried out the con- sultation in good faith? (3) Did it conduct the biological assessment required of it? (4) Did it refrain from making an irreversible com- mitment of resources? Within 60 days after receiving the appli- cation for exemption, the review board must have been appointed and have positively de- termined that these criteria have been met. The board reports to the committee, and within 180 days after they make a determina- tion they must recommend to the committee reasonable and prudent alternatives to the action, summarize the evidence as to whether or not the agency action is within the public interest and of national or local significance, and decide if mitigation and enhancement measures should be considered by the com- mittee. Once the committee gets all this in hand it has 90 days to decide whether or not it will exempt a project from the require- ments of Section 7. In the process of doing this, the committee must make four findings: that there are no reasonable or prudent alter- natives to the agency action, that the benefits of the action clearly outweigh alternative courses consistent with preserving the species or its critical habitat, that such action is in the public interest, and that the action is of regional or national significance. However, after proceeding this far in the exemption process, if the secretary of the interior deter- mines the exemption would cause the extinc- tion of a species, he so advises the committee and the committee has 30 more days in which to decide whether or not the project will cause the extinction of a species by vir- tue of granting an exemption to the agency action. There is also a review provision by the secretary of state that if the exemption would violate any international treaty or ob- ligation then the exemption cannot be al- lowed. This will be addressed in the regu- lations promulgated by the committee itself. They have 90 days after enactment of the 1978 amendments to propose these regu- lations. This is the core of how the exemption pro- cess works, only the core. The complete, re- vised version of the act, with the 1978 amendments incorporated, will be available from the Fish and Wildlife Service sometime around 1 January. At the present time, we only have a copy of the signed bill itself and this can be rather confusing unless you are fa- miliar with the 1973 act and can see where all the "wherefore's" and "thou art's" go. One other thing that the amendments did was to provide for immediate consideration 22 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 of exemption for both Tellico Dam and Gray Rocks Dam. The committee has 30 days to begin consideration of both projects and 90 days to decide whether it will exempt. If it fails to act within 90 days, both projects are exempted by virtue of this statute. There was an amendment to Section 6 of the act which for the first time brings plants under the purview of the grant-in-aid pro- gram. Heretofore Section 6 cooperative funds were only available for animals, not plants. Also, the bill authorized our expenditures un- der the act. I indicated earlier that we went out of business when our appropriation au- thority expired. We only received 18 months of reauthorization, which means we will go through the same process of having the act reauthorized in 18 months. We anticipate oversight hearings on the Endangered Spe- cies Act this spring, probably in both houses of Congress. What we are going to do about getting on with listing of endangered and threatened species and determining critical habitat for these species is something else again. We had originally planned on some 200 rulemakings in fiscal year 1979. Our present estimate is that maybe 20 to 30 rulemakings will be pos- sible. The reason for this is the greatly in- creased workload to list a species. It will be a more expensive process; it will be a more time-consuming process. Some of the ele- ments involved in the new listing process are good: holding public hearings, notifying local people that an action is contemplated, pub- lishing in a local newspaper. We think that the increased public involvement in the deci- sion-making process will be beneficial in the long run. We hope we can resolve some of the con- cerns that have been expressed over many proposals. It appears, however, that there are a couple of "Catch 22's" in terms of present proposals. There is a two-year expiration pro- vision in the 1978 amendments. It says, in ef- fect, that, if a species or critical habitat has been proposed for two years and it hasn't been finalized within that two-year period, it expires and must be withdrawn by the secre- tary of the interior. There is a one-year grace period, however, for existing proposals. That one year will be up on 10 November 1979. Over 1,700 plants are proposed. We realize we will be able to list perhaps a fraction of those. All of the existing critical habitat pro- posals will more than likely be withdrawn because of the new requirements involved in determining critical habitat. Those require- ments include doing an economic analysis and an analysis of other relevant impacts and we're not sure what other relevant impacts really means. Here again the lawyer will come to our rescue. We are going to place in priority form the existing proposals based on degree of threat before the on-year expiration period comes up. We do not have a large staff in the pro- gram. Basically the law charges us with the responsibility for the animal and plant king- doms of the world. We have something less than 200 permanent full-time positions with- in the endangered species program split be- tween the Office of Endangered Species, Federal Wildlife Permit Office, the Division of Law Enforcement, and the National Wild- life Refuge System. So the dilution of per- sonnel across the program scope is tre- mendous. It is a challenge, a challenge which we welcome, and the espirit de corps within the program has never been higher. Back to perspectives again. Perspectives are very difficult. At times it is difficult to justify, depending on the individual's per- spective, listing a species and perhaps imped- ing a given project. The question keeps com- ing back. What good are endangered species or threatened species? Tell us in a very tan- gible fashion what good a snail darter is. We cannot answer that. We cannot give you a dollar and cent answer to that kind of ques- tion. The most lucid comment which address- es this concept, however, is one which was made by Aldo Leopold, who said that the first sign of intelligent tinkering is that you don't throw away any of the parts. With all of our sophistication, I think we are tinkering with phenomena that are much more sophis- ticated than we. Ovir concern is certainly for the survival of the species. It is also for the survival and well-being of mankind. It is our posture that, until our knowledge, as a race, as a society, evolves to the point that we can clearly know the consequences of our action by making a species extinct, it is very, very foolish to do so. It may be the part that we needed to make the clock run for another centurv or so. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 23 Qu ESTIONS TO Dr. Si Q. Have I been given an impossible task then to provide for the Fish and Wildhfe Service in Utah the data on 200 endangered species of Utah plants? A. If you think we're going to do it next week, you'll be disappointed. If you think we're not going to do it at all, you're wrong. It's going to be a lot of jumping through hoops. We've had some other difficult hoops to jump through and our intent is to get this program unwound as rapidly as we can. We've been digging out from 41 days of inactivity, but I feel rather confident in telling you that your data is not going to be gathering dust for an indefinite period of time. If those species for which you are providing the information fall out as priority species having the most danger, the greatest degree of threat, they'll be among the first we get to. Q. Is there any aspect of litigation involved in this new amendment? In other words, how do we give people the chance to question something we say is becom- ing extinct, like the snail darter? Does the applying agency have to provide research fimds or try to relo- cate the snail darter even though they might not be successful in that aspect of threatened or endan- gered species? A. Yes. The committee will actually direct the appeal- ing agency as to what must be done on behalf of that species, and the agency taking the action is respon- sible for bearing the cost of that. Now in terms of construction projects, this cost is not considered in evaluating the cost-benefit ratio of the project. It will be an additional cost; but it would not, for in- stance, bring a project below parity and thereby make it unfeasible or illegal to build. Q. In all the time limits that have been set, the 30 days, the 90 days, the 180 days, what happens if an agency or committee fails to meet these deadlines? A. There is no slap on the wrist if anyone fails to meet the actual time frame. Some of those time frames, incidentally, are negotiable in that the 180-day bio- logical assessment could be lengthened if the agency requested it with agreement between the agency and secretary. If you add up all the maximum time frames, however, including the 180 days, the total is something like 750 days that the entire process could take. Q. But there is no traditional mechanism? A. No, but the citizen suit provision of the act still ap- plies, and anyone could litigate against any party that failed to meet its deadlines. Q. It has been the thmst of the whole program all along that the brunt of the responsibility has fallen on oth- er federal agencies, besides the Fish and Wildlife Service, and private organizations, too. But isn't it true in the West, where field work for proposed spe- cies is just starting? Now suddenly I'm being pushed. I know I'm speaking to you in a sense, but I'm also speaking to me. I'm one who elected the people who are passing these things, but 20 or 30 are not going to be enough. We need more people. There are a lot of areas where work needs to be done. A. There is a "Catch 22" in everything, I guess. There's also a hiring freeze in the federal government at the moment which affects permanent, full-time posi- tions. .\s a matter of fact, there is nothing we can do about that. 1 hope you can also appreciate the diffi- culty of bringing in a permanent part-time or some other less than permanent position and expecting that person to walk in and start doing something productive the next day. It takes a lot of expertise and training to write a decent rulemaking, for in- stance, one that will get by the scrutiny of the solic- itors and be legally justifiable and adequate. Q. .\11 I'm asking is to just make an effort. .\. We are. Q. Pertaining to the exemption process, other than liti- gation, where is the avenue for public involvement? A. There is a provision which provides the meetings of both the review board and the committee to be open. It will depend on whether the committee de- cides to take testimony from the public. That point, I'm sure, will be addressed in regulation pro- mulgated by the committee and by the review board. The final decision of the committee is subject to judicial review. It can be appealed to the courts, and there is specific provision in the legislation for that. Q. When would you determine the rulemaking for criti- cal habitat for the grizzly bear? A. As I indicated earlier, it is very likely that all exist- ing proposed mlemakings for critical habitat will be withdrawn. In effect, that proposed rulemaking would be invalidated and a reproposal would come forth. The reproposal would have to meet the new criteria of the 1978 amendments, including an eco- nomic impact analysis and identifying actions or ac- tivities within the area, which might be affected by having the area designated as critical habitat— both federal actions as well as private actions. We do not have an economist on our staff and, quite frankly, it gives us .some heartburn to consider a meaningful economic analysis. I am not being facetious when I say meaningfid, because we're not going to try to short-cut the intent of Congress in this thing. They want an economic analysis, one that is meaningful, and that is what they are going to get from us. We don't know where the help is going to come from, perhaps from within the department and other agencies which do have economic expertise. A. You recently listed some species in California with- out listing critical habitat. Are these being consid- ered for withdrawal under new amendments? .\. No, anvthing that is already listed that did not have critical habitat determined at the time it was listed will remain a listed species. The amendments say that we may determine critical habitat for these spe- cies at some point in time. We can do this; we don't have to do it yesterday. What we do have to do in the future, however, unless it is pnident not to do so, is to propose critical habitat at the same time we propose listing of species, so these two things go along simultaneously. There was no provision for critical habitat in either the 1966 or 1969 acts. That is why we have a huge backlog of listed species that have no critical habitat. Q. Isn't it true that any agency must consult the Fish and Wildlife Service before beginning any project? 24 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Do we mean any project or are we defining proj- ects? No, when an agency identifies that its actions may affect listed species, that is when they must initiate consultation. It is the may affect. Now the confusing element here may have been my comments con- cerning constmction contracts, projects for which no contracts have been let and for which no constmc- tion has begim. These are the ones that would have to do a biological assessment before things could proceed if there are listed or proposed species in the area, but that is different than consultation per se. THE LAW AND ITS ECONOMIC IMPACT Donald A. Spencer' Abstract.— There is no adecjiiate inventory of population size and distribution of most of the world's animal and plant species and lower taxa. Furthermore, populations are rarely static and continue to change in response to both natural and man-made factors. Thus clearance today for public works or industrial projects can be reversed tomor- row as new information becomes available. Lacking assurance that a project can be completed without new endan- gered species surfacing places an untenable constraint on the commitment of dollars for new long-term programs. As a consequence of the absence of data, studies to determine occupied range, population levels, and habitat re- quirements of specific endangered species must be conducted on each project area. The direct costs of these studies are the responsibility of the project applicant. The time consumed results in project delays which can become a major expense item. Additional economic impacts are inherent in construction modifications and subsequent project operations intended to accommodate an endangered species. Finally, the withdrawal of natural resouces to support endangered species can conceivably reach a point where the squeeze on other societal programs becomes unacceptable. Thank you for making this time available to me. It's always a privilege to get together with a group that is intentionally interested in a good program and talk problems out. I brought along this book. I thought some of you might want to obtain a copy of it. It is a proposed environmental impact statement on the effect of grazing on some of our west- ern lands. This little book cost $250,000 to prepare. It is, actually, an excellent study; you'll be much impressed by what the au- thors and the various research teams have put together in it. But as I read through it and came to the areas of my own expertise, I found that, if we are going to consider endan- gered species on this 800-square-mile area this book is about, we're going to have to do the job. The information on endangered spe- cies, on wildlife and nongame species in gen- eral, is treated once over lightly. In the back of the publication, I began to read the letters received about this program from people who actually lived on the area; and who were going to be affected by it, not an outsider like me who was reading what I considered to be a very excellent program. Then it occurred to me that this was just like what had been happening to me. You know most of my professional career has been spent in research in the field of animal biolo- gy. When you come up with a new tool or a new program or a new project that is the re- sult of research and you're very proud of ac- complishing something new for wildlife man- agement, you send the report all over the coimtry for trial. When it comes back to you from first one point then another, reviewers state that it won't work here or that it pro- duces an adverse affect there. You're very bitter about it— you even tend to react vio- lently. Then you begin to realize that of all tlie things research values most highly it is knowing the limitation of the new tool. Where are the boundary lines where it works most effectively? If you do not recognize those boundaries early, you are liable to lose the use of the tool in the areas where it would be valuable. There are literally hun- dieds of examples in the last four or five years to bear this out and I won't have to elaborate. One thing we have to realize is that in ask- ing for habitat for endangered species we are in competition, and I'm using that term ad- visedly, with a lot of other conservation ob- jectives. For example, over 100 years ago we began a national park system that has grown to some 300 units encompassing in excess of 31 million acres. The Brown Pelican, which has been so much in the news of recent years, initiated the first unit of the National Wild- life Refuge System that has now grown to 34 million acres. We have now reserved be- tween 100 and 150 million acres where wild- '13508 Sherwood Forest Terrace, Silver Spring, Maryland 20904. 25 26 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 life receives top billing. Building on these established programs, and adding such new ones as the Wild and Scenic Rivers (1968), National Sea and Lake Shores, Wilderness (1964), National Trails System, Marine Protection Research and Es- tuaries (1972), Research Natural Areas, Coastal Zone Management Act, Agriculture's Water Bank Program, Wetlands, etc., has be- come a veritible national obsession. Cur- rently President Carter, under the authority of the Antiquities Act of 1906, has pro- claimed 56 million acres in Alaska as national monuments, and the secretary of the interior has temporarily withdrawn an additional 54 million acres from any commercial devel- opment. The U.S. Forest Service has under review some 62 million acres of "roadless areas" for possible inclusion in the Wilder- ness System. The Bureau of Land Manage- ment, overseer of 470 million acres of public lands, is engaged in a similar "roadless area" review to determine what lands of theirs would qualify for wilderness designation. In a very limited way, habitats purchased specifically to protect an endangered species add to the set-aside totals. But the greatest impact will result from "critical habitat" des- ignations that, while not infringing on any use that does not adversely modify the habi- tat for a given endangered species, still im- pose costly constraints on change, to the point of completely preventing some projects useful to man. Alternate uses that are affect- ed by critical habitat constraints can be quite varied, as the following from the U.S. Forest Service's Wildlife Management Manual illus- trates: Maiiv projects and practices authorized or carried out hv the Forest Service are of such a nature that modifica- tion of the vegetation or land is often a direct or indirect result. These include activities such as recreation site development, land exchanges, timber sales, revegetation and reforestation, type conversions, water impound- ments, road and trail construction, grazing by herbi- vores, and development that results in significant in- creases in the level of human activity in an area. The patterns for establishing critical habitats give little as.surance that very many areas will be free of constraints to protect one or more endangered plants or animals. A num- ber of critical habitats, both established and proposed, are disturbingly large. The critical habitat for the Manatee includes every major estuary in peninsular Florida, sits astride the busy intercoastal waterway, and is one of the most intensively used recreational boat areas in the United States. The proposed critical habitat for the grizzly bear suggests 13 mil- lion acres in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming which encompasses two national parks, Yel- lowstone and Glacier. Throughout the visitor season, a succession of trails, campgrounds, and back-country are closed to people be- cause of bears. As for the Whooping Crane, a proposal will about triple its present 90,000- acre wintering ground and provide seventeen migratory stopovers in six states and a new nonhistorical experimental breeding range in three other states. Some of these brief stop- over points are not necessarily small areas. Along the Platte River in Nebraska the linear 54 miles of bottom land totals about 103,000 acres; the proposed migratory stopover on the Niobrara River is 115,200 acres; the large proposed area along the Canadian border in northwest North Dakota probably exceeds 2 million acres. Then, surprisingly, it is pro- posed to include the dams and lake margins between maximum and minimum pool of the two largest flood control impoundments on the Missouri River (Lake Oahe and Lake Sakakawea). As tne endangered list grows by the addi- tion of relatively little-known species and subspecies from the enormously large pool of living plants and animals these resource set- asides can provoke a reaction that will dam- age even the best features of the program. The Regulatory Thicket The independent, consumer-owned power companies serving some 200 municipalities in eight Missouri Basin States found their pres- ent capacity for electric power desperately below what would be needed in the years just ahead. So they formed the Missouri Basin Power Project, which began constructing its first generating plant, the Leland Olds Sta- tion, in 1962. The construction required only one government permit and was completed in four years. Unit No. 2 at this site required five permits and went on line in 1975. Their next cooperative project, the Laramie River Station and Grayrocks Reservoir, got under construction in 1976 and has thus far re- 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 27 cjuiied 43 pennits and approvals from feder- al, state, and local authorities. Their third project, the Antelope Valley Station, begun in June of this year (1978), has at this early stage required 69 federal, state, and local per- mits—a\\ of this within the experience of one vital cooperative project serving an eight- state area. Like illustrations of the maze of govern- ment regulations are at every hand. For ex- ample, the atomic-powered electric plant un- der construction at Midland, Michigan, has acquired some 93 pennits to date. The redundant nature of some of these regulations is a sad commentary on the effi- ciency that has marked so much of America's progress. Take, for example, the construction of a transmission line that links North Dakota and Minnesota. Not only did the federal Ru- ral Electrification Agency require an Envi- ronmental Impact Statement (Study), but a Certification of Need had to be obtained from the Minnesota Energy Agency, a Cer- tificate of Corridor Compatability from the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board, and two separate permits for Site Compatability and for Route Designation from the North Dakota Public Service Commission. The transmission corridor crossed four navigable rivers requiring four separate construction permits from the U.S. Corps of Engineers. It made eleven other water crossings, each re- quiring separate permits from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources; crossed three wetland areas requiring as many ease- ments from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser- vice; made eleven highway crossings, each requiring a permit from the respective coun- ty highway department— which was in addi- tion to two separate permits from the North Dakota Land Department, one labeled State Land Crossing, the other River Crossing; and crossed five different railroads requiring per- mits for each location. It can be agreed that such a corridor has to obtain easements across every privately owned parcel of land, so why should public land be different? The point to be made here is the large number of governmental agencies have replicated input into a single project. A review of Sections 7 Consultation Logs of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's six re- gional offices for the period of October 1977 through May 1978 reveals that between 30 and 35 different federal and state agencies contacted the Office of Endangered Species for advice on their responsibilities under the act. With such a galaxy of regulatory agencies afield, there are few, if any, projects that do not require a permit or license of some kind. A western cattleman will need a grazing per- mit to use public land, a farmer will need a point source discharge permit for return irri- gation flows, to build a dock or bulkhead on your waterfront property will require a per- mit, and, even if you wish to participate in the recovery of a Peregrine Falcon, thus en- hancing this endangered species, you must have a permit. Regulation reaches into the most remote corner of our society. The regulatory morass motivated President Carter in March 1978 to issue Executive Or- der 12044 "as a first step toward ensuring that regulations achieve their statutory goals in the most effective and balanced way." This now has been followed up by the Presi- dential appointment of a Regulatory Council to inform me, the public, and the Congress about the cinmilative impact of regulation on the economy. The Council will help ensure that regulations are well coordinated, do not conflict, and do not impose excess burdens on particular sectors of the economy. The first report of this Council is to be made public no later than February 1, 1979. At reoccurring intervals officials of the Office of Endangered Species have sought to clarify what is meant by critical habitat by saying that the act charges federal agencies— and only federal agencies— with carrying out pro- visions of Section 7. State and private actions not involving federal approval do not come imder the act. This is meaningless comfort when it would be almost impossible to identi- fy a private project that does not need some federal (or state) approval. Even if this were not so. Section 9 provides severe penalties for any person who "harasses, harms, pursues, hunts, shoots, wounds, kills, captures, col- lects, or attempts to engage in any such con- duct" an endangered or threatened animal no matter where found. Thus the act, for all in- tents and purposes, affects public works and private projects alike. The Permit: Often Elusive The permit or license is elusive because it 28 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 can be withdrawn by the issuing agency on the basis of new information not previously considered, and because a court of law can order the permit suspended or withdrawn pending the outcome of a public interest suit which may rest only on some omission in the Environmental Impact Study. It can be dis- ruptive because the regulation, or the factor requiring it, did not come into being until the project was partly completed. Advancing technology has made most proj- ects more complex to construct. Added safety and environment features, and the time-con- suming efforts to comply with over-numerous regulations, all combine to lengthen con- stRiction time. Thus, to bring a major coal mine to full capacity, or a new power plant on line, can take ten years. Each year that passes sees a 10 percent increase in construc- tion costs. With no assurance that a project can successfully negotiate the ever-changing maze of regulations, financing of projects that cannot be completed in a reasonably short time becomes quite a gamble. The "biological opinion" resulting from a Sections 7 Consultation with the Office of Endangered Species is an agency approval (if granted)— in practice it has the force of a per- mit. A few examples will show that these bio- logical opinions can exhibit every one of the above three deficiencies with respect to clearing the project for completion. Follow- ing completion of a broad Environmental Im- pact Study, the Bureau of Land Management received the following Section 7 biological opinion on a proposed phosphate mine on the Osceola National Forest in Northern Florida: It is my biological opinion, subject to the conditions identified herein, that the proposed project is not likely to jeopardize the continued existance of the endangered or threatened species listed above or result in the de- struction or adverse modification of their critical habi- tats. The conditions imposed are as follows: The Bureau of Land Management must reinitiate Sec- tion 7 Consultation should (1) new information reveal impacts of the above-listed species or their habitats which was not considered in this consultation, (2) the proposed leasing [be] subsecjuently modified, or (3) a new species [be] listed that may be affected by the pro- posed action. The above clearance named only species on the established list. It did not mention that standing in the wings waiting to go on stage was a proposed list of plants and animals al- most 10 times as long. Nor did it include Florida's official state list which names still other species. Lastly, on a project of this size, 52,000 acres, it should not be too difficult a task to come up with an undescribed species or one with very local distribution that has not yet been proposed for listing. A well-known example of the late surf- acing of an endangered species is provided by the Tellico Dam in Tennessee, where the small fish had not even been described as a distinct species of Darter until well after con- struction had begun. More recently the Office of Endangered Species established a 54-mile stretch of the Platte River bottom in Nebraska as critical habitat for whooping cranes during migra- tory stopovers. Upstream some 275 miles was a power plant already under construction by the Missouri Basin Power Project. Extraor- dinary steps had been taken at the planning stage of this facility to have a conservation- acceptable project. Now, despite their hold- ing all the required federal and state permits, their use of water from the Laramie River has been challenged in court because it might reduce by 4 percent the flow of water through the whooping crane's fall and spring stopover. This action threatens the $444,000,000 already invested in the project. Each lost day will cost $140,000 in interest on the money alone (or $50,000,000 a year). Here, as in several other notable cases, the Endangered Species Act is being used to ac- complish an entirely different objective. It is actually a matter of the continuing wrangle over water rights between the State of Ne- braska, who initiated the court suit, and the ■ State of Wyoming. Previously, the U.S. Su- preme Court had awarded the water in the Laramie River to Wyoming, so there ap- peared to be no problem about the Gray- rocks impoundment. What is in- comprehensible to me is that midway between Grayrocks and the whooping crane's critical habitat is the Kingsley Dam in Ne- braska that backs up Lake McConaughy, which is 20 times the size of the incompleted Grayrocks. The withdrawal of irrigation wa- ter at the King.sley Dam must have marked 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 29 influence on the regulated flow in the Platte River. The Informal Consultation The Endangered Species Act of 1978, Sec- tion 7(c)(a) directs— each Federal Agency shall . . . request of the Secretary information whether any species which is listed, or pro- posed to be listed, may be present in the area of such proposed action. If the Secretary advises . . . that such species may be present, such agency shall conduct a bio- logical assessment for the purpose of identifying any en- dangered species which is likely to be affected by (the project). It is analogous to being directed to a well for a drink, a well that hasn't been dug deep enough to strike more than a suggestion of water, then being drafted into the work force to dig the well deeper. Although the act sug- gests that this responsibility might be dis- charged in 180 days, a review of past direc- tives from the Office of Endangered Species shows that such studies can take from a few months to several years, depending on the complexity of the biological assessment. A number of federal agencies have elected to prepare in advance of requests for specific resource use, an Environmental Impact Study covering districts or broad subdivisions. For example, the BLM has programmed studies on 173,919,000 acres of public lands subject to grazing. The estimated budget to provide the 142 separate studies at current prices is $35,500,000, an average of $250,000 each. To date, 16 EIS have been completed, but the entire area will not have been covered until 1988. The proportion of this program that can be assigned to providing data on endan- gered species is usually quite minor. For ex- ample, a breakdown of an Environmental Impact Study for a proposed surface mining project in Wyoming, which cost a private company $500,000, shows the wild- life/vegetational fraction costing $190,000, with only $18,000 (or 3.6 percent) related to endangered species information. Another example: The Departments of Transportation in the six lake states routinely asked for advice if they proposed repairing or replacing a bridge. In fact, in the period of October 1977, through May 1978, 20.9 per- cent of the entries on the consultation logs in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Region No. 3, concerned bridges, and another 20.5 percent highway actions. Just as routinely they re- ceived the following informal "opinion": Survey for endangered species or their habitat in the project area, (or) If through your investigations you find an endangered species or their habitat in the project area you should initiate a formal con.sultation. In most instances involving bridges the in- terest was in one or more species of endan- gered freshwater mussels, which required the services of a qualified malacologist for under- water surveys and species identification. Aside from waiting for the proper season to do the work, these local studies could be completed rather quickly, as in the case of a contract to search 49,500 square feet of the Wabash River near Hutsonville, Illinois, at a cost of $2,500. The Corps of Engineers, responsible for maintaining channel navigation in the upper Mississippi River, finds these same endan- gered freshwater mussel surveys far more costly and time consuming. They have awarded five research contracts totaling $263,977, four of which are now completed. A final report. Freshwater Mussels of the Up- per Mississippi River, prepared for the corps by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- delphia, is a 400-page document. Please un- derstand that this required study involved only freshwater mussels. Who is to say what other species and subspecies of freshwater in- vertebrates, fish, amphibians, or aquatic plants will require similar treatment in the future? The magnitude of some of these studies to determine the impact of development proj- ects on the environment is sobering. The Corps of Engineers has come under criticism for its dredging activities along our coasts and navigable rivers. Congress authorized a five-year thorough study of this program that has now cost $30,000,000. A part of that study is an eight- volume (1,502 pages) set of reports covering colonial bird use and plant succession on dredged material islands. Con- tracted to seven different teams of qualified ornithologists, these studies found that "62 percent of all colonial species (more than 156,000 adult birds) along the Texas coast in 1977 nested on dredged material islands." In- cluded were the Least Tern, the Gull-billed Tern, the Roseate Spoonbill, the Reddish 30 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Egret, and the Brown Pelican. In Florida, "approximately 50 percent of the colonial nesting sea and wading birds nest on dredged material and many more species use the is- lands for feeding and roosting." What I gleaned from these studies was the exciting possibility of so locating and con- structing these dredge-spoil areas as to create superior nesting habitat with minimal pre- dation and disturbance pressure. But the de- cision between using the most cost-effective dredge disposal site and a wildlife-oriented one carries a price tag. For example, to avoid an endangered plant (Menzies Wallflower) the alternate to the most cost-effective dis- posal site for dredge spoil from Humboldt Harbor (California) is estimated to cost $150,000. Some of the requests from the Office of Endangered Species for these preconsultation biological assessments pose enormous com- mitment of time and money. Take the case of the Nellis Air Force Range in Nevada. BLM received the following biological opinion: A study should be conducted to: (1) Determine all candidate and proposed threatened or endangered plant species which occur on the Nellis Range. (2) Delineate the exact locations of such populations. Such a study should be for at least one full collecting season during an average moisture year and prior to any activities that might jeopardize the existance of the sub- ject species. The above instructions for conducting the study are botanically sound, by reason of the fact that seeds of many species lie dormant in the soils of the arid Southwest for years awaiting an infrequent rain. Then rapidly the full plant cycle is completed while moisture is still available. But how do you foretell an adequate moisture regime? How do you fit such an indefinite timetable for survey and site mapping of arid-land plants into the hard realistic schedules of construction if it is to be cost effective and available when needed? Summary: Under the 1978 version of the act, preconsultation biological assessments will be the responsibility of agencies seeking approval of programs authorized, funded, or conducted by them. The above examples il- lustrate the potential for delaying the start of the project and for adding (sometimes signifi- cantly) to the overall co.sts. It would seem that regulations have been imposed to pro- tect animals and plants against extinction be- fore there is any very precise knowledge of the tens of thousands of little-known or in- conspicuous species of nongame animals, par- ticularly invertebrates, and even less of plant species we have not chosen to propagate or value for their form or floral display. Withdrawal of Resources There is no way to avoid the commitment of natural resource if an endangered species habitat is to be protected. Some of these re- sources we can easily share, and others are not in excess of our economic needs. This is not to say that resources reserved to endan- gered species are irretrievably lost— but for current use they are not available, and this can seriously impact local industries depen- dent upon them for ongoing supplies. For example, the U.S. Forest Service has presently located some 2,000 nesting colonies of Red-cockaded Woodpeckers in south- eastern national forests. It has been deter- mined that each colony nesting site averages 10 acres. One fourth of the colonies require an additional 25-acre recruitment area. This is a total of 70,000 acres in merchantable timber currently removed. The eventual goal is to have four such colonies per 1,000 acres, which would entail setting aside 140 acres/ 1,000 acres in suitable timber. There is an estimated 6,000,000 acres of pine types in the Red-cockaded Woodpecker's range on national forests. If the goal is eventually at- tained, it will mean that 840,000 acres of commercial timber is being devoted to the protection of one single endangered species. While there is no system-wide manage- ment plan, several regions of the national for- ests have adopted the practice of setting aside against any modification eight acres about each Bald Eagle nest tree, together with an additional buffer zone limiting activ- ities during the nesting season. In Alaska 2,760 Bald Eagle nests have been located and charted, thus automatically setting aside some 21,500 acres of merchantable timber. However, land use plans for national forests in southeast Alaska call for the reservation of approximately 50,680 acres of standard oper- able commercial timberlands along beach 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 31 areas, primarily for the protection of eagle habitat. The endangered Kirtland's Warbler nests in northern Michigan in an early successional stage following fire. Here Jack Pine boughs screen a ground nest in a more or less con- tiguous low blueberry ground cover. The re- covery plan calls for managing some 61,485 acres of Jack Pine on the Huron National Forest, by controlled burning, to provide this habitat. Elsewhere, on the Six Rivers Nation- al Forest in California a proposed timber sale of approximately 9.25 MMBF of merchan- table timber was withdrawn to protect an en- dangered plant (Pine-foot). In New Mexico, the endangered Jemes Mountain Salamander requires deep shade and substantial amounts of moist, decomposing timber material on rocky north slopes. The management plan may withdraw as much as 2,500 acres to pro- tect this habitat, though admittedly the tim- ber is difficult to harvest. In Montana, habi- tat protection for the grizzly bear tends to limit the salvage of beetle-killed timber. In a number of cases, one of the reasons given for listing an animal or plant as endan- gered is overgrazing. However, thus far only one proposal to close an area to grazing has surfaced. This is the Beaver Dam Slope area in southeastern Nevada, for the purpose of protecting the Desert Tortoise. But with- drawal of public range can take a number of forms. For example, prairie dog colonies on the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands in South Dakota have increased from 114 in 1968 to 479 in 1975— and the area occupied from 3,000 to 18,000 acres. Because of the endan- gered Black Footed Ferret that uses the prairie dog as a principal prey, the simple so- lution of removing these rodents to the point where range forage conditions improve is not acceptable. So the management plan calls for partial reduction in prairie dog numbers, ac- companied by a reduction in livestock graz- ing that would have produced 319,000 povmds of beef. But of resources in the western United States that are less than adequate for man's needs, water stands first. The most produc- tive place to look for an endangered or threatened species is in an isolated spring or sink. Isolation created the adapting species and that same restricted habitat endangers them. These sites are very susceptible to withdrawal of water from underground aqui- fers for domestic use or irrigation. Thus, the Desert Pupfish prevailed in stopping a ran- cher from irrigating his alfalfa fields. In southwestern Texas three small fish in- habiting springs and headwaters of drainages to the Amistad Reservoir are proposed as en- dangered and/ or threatened, the major rea- son being "excessive removal of ground wa- ter." Water uses in an area starved for that commodity can be affected many miles dis- tant. Even cities are vulnerable to this type of resource withdrawal. For example, to insure adequate water for future needs, the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, acquired the water rights from the Little Snake River on the western slope, which they would bring through a tunnel under the Divide to Cheyenne. But below the water takeout points is the stream habitat of the Colorado Cutthroat Trout, considered for protective listing. To solve the impasse, Cheyenne agreed to release 5,000 acre feet of their an- ticipated 23,000 acre feet of water to main- tain the trout habitat. The value of the water to the city is much greater than the $110 per acre foot necessary to develop the water col- lection project ($550,000 for this fraction). The life's blood of the southwestern United States is the Colorado River drainage basin. It holds the key to every activity. Endan- gered species of fish have now been listed for different segments of this river system from Wyoming to Arizona. The impact of this pro- gram in so sensitive an area can be explosive. Costly Project Modifications The regional office of the U.S. Forest Ser- vice in California informed me in August 1978 that they had made 22 requests of the Endangered Species Office for formal Section 7 Consultations. At that time they had re- ceived 10 completed biological opinions, half of which recommended modification of a program. Similarly, the regional office of the Forest Service in Montana had received final biological opinions on five programs, 80 per- cent of this number recommending changes. Many of the project modifications were the product of interagency planning that min- 32 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 imized cost and disruption. But others add appreciably to project costs. The Florida Power and Light Company, serving the electric needs of southeastern Florida, is literally being painted into a cor- ner by a maze of conservation set-aside areas, including critical habitats for four endan- gered species. They sought permission to build a transmission line to cross about a mile of one comer of the Loxahatchee Wildlife Refuge. They offered to purchase another tract of land of equal value that would be suitable habitat and, in addition, provide $1 million for its development. They failed to get the easement because it was "in- compatible with the Everglade Kite Critical Habitat." The line has now been detoured around that comer of the refuge at an addi- tional cost for construction of $1,200,000. The public utility contends that the easement they sought contained neither Everglade Kites nor the Apple Snail on which they feed. Clear across the continent another public utility, Southern California Edison, expe- rienced increased project costs of a somewhat different nature. A 17-mile equipment haul route to the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station near San Clemente, California, from the off-loading dock was required. Due to terrain, land ownership, and load weight con- straints, the route was to follow along the coastal beach just above the high tide line. During 1976, a portion of the route became populated with a colony of Least Terns. Af- ter several meetings with the Least Tern Re- covery Team, it became obvious that a new haul route and/ or construction schedules and equipment delivery times would have to be changed. The studies and altered schedules to avoid equipment arrival during nesting peri- od (April-September) resulted in direct costs of approximately $800,000. In northern Colorado, the Peabody Coal Company was enlarging its mining operation, which is to serve as the sole fuel source for Colorado-Ute's Power Plant at Hayden. Peabody had surveyed and purchased a right- of-way for a haul road to deliver the coal when a local staff member of the Colorado Division of Wildlife called attention to a cul- tivated wheat field along the route that was used each spring by a small group of Greater Sandhill Cranes. These migratory stop-over sites are termed "dancing grounds" because certain prebreeding rituals take place in this period. Peabody had prepared an Environ- mental Impact Study on their program and circulated it to state agencies, but it evi- dently did not come to the attention of any- one knowledgeable about the cranes. The greater Sandhill Crane is on the Colorado state list as endangered, but not on the feder- al. This situation required Peabody to reroute their delivery road and purchase a new right- of-way. The Arkansas State Highway Department, although filing a formal request for a Section 7 Consultation on the proposed routing of a four-lane highway, decided independently on an alternate route to avoid the cave halaitat of the federally endangered Gray Bat and a state-listed cavefish and grotto salamander. The envisioned adverse affects were not the physical disruption of the right-of-way, but the off-chance that a chemical spill would occur on the completed highway that would enter the undergroimd aquifer that feeds a more distant cave. This alternate action lengthened the highway by a little over two miles, which will cost taxpayers an estimated $3,000,000. Addressing Problems, Not Solutions The Soil Conservation Service has had some rather difficult experiences with the en- dangered species legislation. A small water- shed program has broad participation of af- fected parties in project planning. The usual goal is to prevent the loss of topsoil in the upper basin and destructive flooding in the lower basin, and to improve permanent wa- ter sources, be it stream flow or small reser- voir. The Cypress Creek Watershed in Lauder- dale County, Alabama, and Wayne Coimty, Tennessee, was just such a project. But the biological assessment that SCS funded turned up an endangered small fish, the Slackwater Darter, one of 80 species and subspecies of darters in Tennessee. The biological opinion from the Office of Endangered Species point- ed out that the project would adversely affect the Slackwater Darter because of its very un- usual reproductive requirements. While typi- cal of a slow-flowing stream with silt and 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 33 gravel bottom, this Darter makes use of high (flood) water to swim off-stream into seepage areas in open pastures for breeding. OES ap- proved four water retarding structures on Little Cvpress where no darters were found, but blue-penciled for the time being 15 struc- t\ires on other branches of the system. This darter needs flooding, but the fields and small towns down valley don't. In Mississippi, after identification of the Bayou Darter in the Bayou Pierre Water- shed, over $100,000 was spent by SCS to identify the habitat and critical elements of that habitat. Planning and taking into ac- count habitat location and the critical ele- ments of the habitat resulted in selecting land treatment and 13 floodwater retarding struc- tures as the proper approach. An analysis of impacts on the scope and extent of habitat and the critical factors in the habitat in- dicated no significant impact on the Bayou Darter. But the Office of Endangered Species disagreed. High on their list of reasoning was the inability to predict induced land changes that might be accompanied by increased pes- ticide residues, siltation, etc. This would not appear to be an objection to the project per se, but to the opportunity it provided indi- viduals within the improved watershed to up- grade their economic pursuits which just might adversely affect the darter. Conclusion The impacts of the Endangered Species Act have so many facets and ramify into so many comers of our society that it has been impossible in a short paper to bring you very much of the information finding its way across my desk in the last three months. However, it should be abundantly clear that much of the burden of performing research and adjusting to endangered species require- ments is falling outside the coterie of govern- ment agencies, private organizations, and in- dividuals who are expressly committed to the management of wildlife and native plants. Imposing that obligation places a critical re- sponsibility on those wielding the legislation to fully determine that the programs are bio- logically sound and economically practical. As the list of endangered species grows, it will take the wisdom of Solomon to avoid fencing in the economy until it will no longer serve you. You have very little time to estab- lish a favorable rapport, for the program comes up for another congressional review in one and one-half years. You have this in your favor: there is almost no one who doesn't en- joy some aspect of the living world about us. Questions to Dr. Spencer Q. If I interpret your comments correctly and place them into a context of the relationship they might have to those of Dr. Clement, there is a real, imme- diate requirement for changing some of the cultural practices we presently have. Is this interpretation correct? A. I am sorry folks. I live in a pretty practical world and am not prepared to go into the theories and phi- losophies of management. So if I may, I am going to duck that question. Earlier this morning one of our speakers said that he was often asked, "What is the value of a given endangered species and how do you compare it with the costs that we are going to face in providing pri- ority-use habitats?" The House/Senate Conference Report (No. 95-1804, dated 15 October 1978) has this to say: ... to balance the benefits associated with the agency action against the benefits associated with alternative courses of action, they should not balance the benefits of the action against the value associated with the listed species. I take this to mean that there is to be no attempt to place a monetary value on a species threatened with extinction. In other words, the instruction is to com- pare the economic impact of the different alterna- tive actions, but not to place a value on wildlife for the purposes of comparative costs. Q. That is correct. It is an act of Congress, I think. A. It is in the Endangered Species Act Amendments of 1978. The Solicitor General's Office will provide de- cisions on these matters. Q. Several of your comments were directed toward the relative costs of changing a project or altering a proj- ect in order to be in accord with the Endangered Species Act. You seem to be saying by this that it costs a lot of money for other government agencies, private companies, and the like to accommodate their designs with the requirements of the Endan- gered Species Act. I won't argue with that. It's true. It seems that we need a priority system to go along with it. As an example, let me tell you a little story. I had to do an environmental impact statement for a power line. The question in my mind was, "Is this power line needed?" I never got a satisfactory an swer from the power company or anyone else that it was necessary. It seems to me that we need a prior- ity system whereby we can feed that kind of infor- mation into the decision-making process because it is possible that someone might plan something with- out a real need for it. A. I would suggest that this is not a normal procedure. People generally do not build what they do not need. It is normal not to encumber an expense un- 34 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 less you anticipate some beneficial return. Before being too hasty to ascribe a motive to a person, or- ganization, or project to which we might have some objection, I suggest we follow the motto that says, "Don't criticize your opponent until you have walked a mile in his moccasins." The other point I thought you were trying to make is that people here in the audience ought to be aware that there is a very bad economic penalty or economic cost, if you want to put it in those terms, with this particular piece of legislation and that if we fail to recognize those costs that are there, we may be in jeopardy of losing the program entirely. You have stated my opinion very well. We are proud of what we have been able to accomplish in wildlife conservation in this country. Until very recently, these wildlife programs have been totally self-sup- porting and have not dipped into the tax till to which the general public contributes. Now we have turned around and are progressively passing the costs along to companies, organizations, and the gen- eral public for projects in which they have little first-hand interest. It is up to us to be sure that the cooperation we ask of them is a wise investment for all parties. The new environmental laws, including the En- dangered Species Act, came into being during a pe- riod when we were economically well off. Now we are experiencing a period of inflation, high taxes, and a cost of living that is affecting every pock- etbook. It is time for us to be very, very careful we don't crowd this unfavorable economy. If we ask for too much, if we wield this powerful legislation with too much enthusiastic abandon, we stand to have Congress remove it from the books. Please remem- ber it comes up in Congress for reappropriation in 18 months. In the 39 years I worked for the federal government, 34 of those years with the Fish and Wildlife Service, every time the economy dipped our appropriations were among the first to be cut. I don't think times have changed. There are relatively few endangered and threat- ened species on the lists at the present time com- pared to literally thousands that only await the proper study to be added. We have established criti- cal habitat for only 33— a not too complicated pro- cedure when only one species in an area is consid- ered. But in the future, you can anticipate that critical habitats will involve acreages and overlaps that will noticeably fence in the economy. In my opinion, the 25 amendments to the Endan- gered Species Act in 1978 succeeded only in making the legislation more difficult to administer, and equally more difficult to comply with. It is now so complex that it is self-defeating. ENDANGERED ANIMALS IN UTAH AND ADJACENT AREAS Douglas Day' .Abstract.— This paper presents a brief background on Utah's experience with the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to date, the Division of Wildlife Resources' involvement with resident endangered wildlife forms, including the Utah prairie dog, peregrine falcon, bald eagle, woundfin, Colorado squawfish and humpback chub, and problems associated with the listing of native fauna. Also discussed is a proposal to vest the division with authority for endan- gered plants by legislative mandate. I appreciate that kind introduction— and it's true, I am a son-in-law of Dr. Clarence Cottam. I was debating whether to mention that or not, but it has come up. Let me just pay tribute to Dr. Cottam, as the personal relationship I had with him was something special, and I think that the reason I'm here today is because of the special interest he showed in me. I can remember looking for whooping cranes at the Arkansas Refuge. He wanted to make sure I got a firsthand impres- sion of those magnificent birds, and that im- pression has stayed with me throughout my life. I remember staying out at night with Dr. Cottam on the Welder Refuge, trying to call up the Texas red wolf. His keen interest in endangered species was inspiring. I'll never forget it. He has been a great influence in my life. Also, I know he provided some direction to BYU's biological endeavors. Talking about endangered species, I think I might be one. In the position that I'm in as director of Utah's Division of Wildlife Re- sources, I think I have a feeling for these crit- ters that we're talking about. I'm kind of caught between two worlds— the political world and the world that we have worked in so many years in the biological realm. To make those worlds see eye to eye is very dif- ficult. That's sometimes why I think directors are endangered— because they might get a little too enthusiastic about the biological part of it and forget the political part. It's a tightrope to walk. Sometimes we don't have the opportunity to say what we really feel. Someone gets to the public before we do and says this is what they think, and prudence re- quires that we wait for a better opportunity. Sooner or later it seems to come. I think the time might come, if we keep going in the di- rection we're going in disregarding environ- mental concerns, that someone might just happen to have an idea that the whole world should be declared critical habitat. If that happens, I don't think we'll have to worry about collecting permits. I'd like to make a couple of comments on a pending court case. The defendants are the secretary of the interior, the governor of Col- orado, the director of the Colorado Division of Wildlife, the governor of Utah, Utah's di- rector of the Department of Natural Re- sources, and I. This lawsuit is over threatened and endangered species. In that lawsuit it is mentioned that "The right to develop and beneficially consume the limited quantity of water . . . (from the Colorado River) is a ves- ted property right, the use of which is pro- tected to the citizens, present and fu- ture. . . ." Now, I would ask the question- does wildlife have any vested property rights? I submit that it hadn't, not until the Endangered Species Act of 1973. That's very important— to realize why we need to protect and hold on to the Endangered Species Act. In that lawsuit some of the claims are the de- fendants failed to properly, fairly, equitably, and impartially enforce the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. Continuing on, the lawsuit further states, "The factual basis upon which the determination was made that the Colorado Squawfish and the Humpback 'Division of Wildlife Resources, 1596 West North Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah 84116. 35 36 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Chub are or were 'threatened with extinc- tion,' and the continued designation under ESA as 'endangered' was and is not based upon sound and adequate biological data and knowledge of said species . . . and, further, amount to arbitrary and capricious acts on the part of the defendants. ..." Here is another item, "The defendants, and all of them, have determined without ade- quate biological data and knowledge that wa- ter impoundment development adversely af- fect such fish species. . . , and as a result of said erroneous conclusions, based upon little or no scientific evidence, defendants have continued to wrongfully impede plaintiff dis- tricts' efforts to construct their projects, in- cluding impoundments. . . ." And last, another excerpt I thought would be of interest to you, is "The fact that Colo- rado Squawfish, and the Humpback Chub, were allegedly 'threatened with extinction' and are now allegedly 'endangered' is the di- rect and proximate result of the stocking by all defendants of non-endemic, non-native or exotic fishes in the Colorado System." What that means is that the stripers are eating the squawfish. I suggested a proposition or a pro- posal that might be humorous in one way but sad in another, that being, if they really want to stop the stripers from eating the squawfish (there is no scientific evidence of this), why don't they build another dam on the Colo- rado River to keep stripers from running up- stream. I don't know what the outcome of all this will be. My time is rather limited, but I want to draw your attention to last Sunday's Parade magazine. I am pleased that we are getting this kind of coverage. What it says is the two things that are the greatest threat to wildlife today are (1) loss of habitat (and that's very obvious, because if endangered species had good habitat they wouldn't be in danger) and (2) commercialization of world wildlife. Con- sider these statistics from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Last year in the United States we imported about 100 million tropi- cal fish, 500,000 reptiles, 100,000 mammals, and uncounted thousands of birds. The im- ported traffic in manufactured wildlife goods— furs, coats, leather, trinkets, jewelry, and carvings— leaped from 1.7 million items in 1972 to 91 million in 1976, the last year for which figures are available. Between 1973 and 1976, skin and hide imports rose from 900,000 to 32.5 million. Part of the rea- son is the impact from TV of Barretta's bird, Fred. A few years ago you could buy a cock- atoo for $100, and now some of them are fetching $6,000 apiece. Let me go into some of our involvement in the State Wildlife Division with endangered species. I'll tell you about a few of the spe- cies we're working with and about some of the progress we are making. But first, I want to take just a minute and maybe leave you with another concept. I've worked closely with the Boy Scouts for a number of years, and I had the opportunity to take them to a power plant. One thing that impressed us was the control room. In that control room you could virtually feel the whole operation of the plant. It was right there; you knew what was happening, and when there was a problem somewhere a red light came on. The plant operator could tell where that problem was from the red light. I would submit to you that in the biologi- cal world we have our red lights. We don't pay much attention to them, or haven't done until lately. These red lights are our endan- gered species. I think that is a good concept. I noticed yesterday morning driving to the office a pickup truck that I was following was obviously losing its antifreeze, and I could predict what would happen; the red light came on and the truck was in trouble. He could go on a little while, but eventually it had to be taken care of or that truck was doomed. The operator obviously paid atten- tion to the warning light and pulled off the road. In the biological world we don't pay atten- tion to our red lights as we should. We're just beginning to do this. These are our endan- gered species. This much-used and publicized terminology connotes a wildlife form desper- ately trying not to join the passenger pigeon, heath hen, and others in the land of memory. Each time we lose a species one of our red lights goes out. This designation of endangered species has also been accused of holding up progress and projects, locking up land, and various other alleged abuses. The Endangered Species Acts of 1966 and 1969 were relatively innocuous 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 37 in that they recognized the status of certain species and hsted them, but it took the En- dangered Species Act of 1973 to estabhsh a national policy to come to grips with the is- sue and determine ways and means to at- tempt to reverse the trends of certain species toward extinction. To a state wildlife administrator, the 1973 Act with its attendant rule making and re- strictions has been the source of much soul searching. I believe most of us whole- heartedly agreed with the philosophy and the intent of Congress. We have vigorously ob- jected to the early federal agency approach that absolutely usurps state authority in en- dangered species management. Recent devel- opments have ameliorated the situation, and on the horizon I can see finally the devel- opment of a much closer state-federal work- ing relationship with the goal of doing all hu- manly possible to restore endangered species to a viable component of our environment. The sadness in the situation is that it has taken almost five years to get to this point. This is time that we can't afford to waste. However, in defense of the federal agency's past position, let me add that the act itself, until amended, left no room for legitimate compromise. This in itself has been a big stumbling block. I remember another Cottam that you are well acquainted with here at BYU, and that is Dr. Walter Cottam. He said, "Unless you learn somehow to compete with the dollar, you will lose the conservation battle." In my experience, and ever since I have been in- volved, it has been a compromise situation. I am afraid the direction we are going is com- promise to extinction unless we reverse that trend. We are just beginning to get some tools that give us a little bit of an edge in the compromise situation. Because of the devel- opmental demands in our environment, it is not easy to carry on this struggle we are in. Believe me, it is discouraging. I can remem- ber only one instance when a developer came on his own to a wildlife biologist for input into a development project. It is sad that we have endangered species acts and other legis- lation to require coordination and con- sultation between developers and biologists. The real plus for the act has been the awakening interest in the amount of knowl- edge about many species we never before considered as significant, or for that matter as ever existing. In retrospect, our formal train- ing in the field was deficient in many areas but suited the times. Unfortunately, industri- alization, social pressure, and human de- mands accelerated at a rate faster than the state of the art of wildlife management. Re- lated fields of plant and animal science have produced knowledgeable individuals who have "come out of the woodwork," so to speak, with indisputable evidence regarding certain species that state management agencies were never privy to, were unaware of, or disregarded. For many years we have been game orien- ted, not always by choice, but by the unre- lenting force of simple economics. Until 1975, in Utah, our entire program was fi- nanced by user fees in the form of hunting and fishing licenses, fines and forfeitures, matching federal monies also paid by hunters and fishermen, and miscellaneous sources. It is obvious our primary mission has been to provide for and produce those species sought after by those paying the bill. In 1975 the Utah Legislature provided general funds to iinplement a modest nongame section within the division and has continued that support, still modest in terms of total budget. There is a legitimate need to increase funding for non- game programs, to increase our capabilities to provide basic knowledge and solutions to current problems. Appropriate emphasis is being placed on endangered species within this nongame section. With this backgroimd, let me detail pro- grams related to endangered species in Utah. First, let me say that we have yet to enter into a formal cooperative agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under terms of the Endangered Species Act. Recent congres- sional action provides for new rule making allowing us to do this, and we expect to sign such an agreement. However, the lack of a formal agreement dampened neither our ded- ication nor enthusiasm to get on with the job that needed doing. In 1973, under a special cooperative agree- ment with the Denver Regional Office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, funds were provided to survey historical and potential habitat of the Utah prairie dog {Cynomys 38 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 parvidens). This is our start. As an endan- gered species, this animal has had an erratic history. It was first added to the hst in 1969, removed in 1970, and added again in June 1973. Since our initial effort in identifying habitat, the original agreement has been amended annually, providing funds each year to continue our trapping and transplanting programs. In spite of its endangered species status, based on overall population and status of colonies, those found in private agricul- tural lands have provided us an annual prob- lem of some magnitude. It is from these dam- age situations that we trap and attempt to establish new colonies in areas of historical occupancy on public lands. Trapping com- mences in the spring before the young are born, ceases until young are weaned, and re- sumes and continues until late summer. Our most recent technique attempts to livetrap family groups for relocation. The work is car- ried out using seasonal employees supervised by our regional office in Cedar City under guidelines from our nongame section. We have come under criticism from one animal protection organization for what ap- pears to them to be a low success rate of sur- vival and establishment from our transplant program. Also, that organization is critical of our numbers for the species as compared to the estimated population in 1973. All I can offer is that, because we are not sure of a percentage to project for a total population, we will continue to use our maximum counts as a minimum population figure. I am sure that our sincere efforts to alleviate agricul- tural damage has kept some landowners from taking matters into their own hands. Even if we are losing large numbers in an attempt to establish a new colony, it appears to us to be a wiser decision than to possibly lose the same number or more without having taken the risk. We are not happy with the odds ei- ther, but restoration of any species is fraught with failures, disappointments, and frustra- tions. We are only human in recognizing and being affected by them but feel that we are also professional in not giving up and in gen- uinely trying to reduce these failures, dis- appointments, and frustrations. We are con- fident that the Utah prairie dog will soon be in a secure enough position from the stand- point of new colonies on public lands that we can successfully petition for delisting. What we attempt to do is investigate the problem, do the research necessary, and give some management that will ensure an environment in which the species can live and reproduce and have some kind of continuance. It takes management. In May 1975, before authorized funding for our nongame program became effective, we concluded, in an agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management, to jointly fimd the divi- sion position of raptor biologist. Our share was fimded through monies received as con- tribution from private citizens. This arrange- ment continues to this day, except that our share has been funded by legislative appro- priation since 1 July 1976. Our work with raptors includes all species, with emphasis on those endangered, sensitive, or unique. The American peregrine falcon {Falco peregrinus anatum) is of primary con- cern in view of its current national status. Based on historic records, Utah had the high- est rate of occupancy by this subspecies of any western state with the possible exception of California. You are all aware of the dra- matic decline in the West and the extirpation of the falcon in the East and the possible causes. From the middle sixties to 1975 there were no known active peregrine eyries in Utah; at least none were revealed to us. In 1978, we documented occupancy at four sights, but fimding limitations allowed no data to be gathered through our efforts— that was because of a lack of personnel. We do what we can. Whether the peregrine is stag- ing a comeback is a matter of conjecture. We doubt it. Increased awareness of its plight is probably the reason for recent docimienta- tion, plus limited additional effort to seek out the presence of the species. Evidence avail- able indicates pesticide residues are still too high to cause much optimism at this point. We will continue to put as much effort to de- termining status as fimds and personnel will allow. This activity will increase when En- dangered Species Act funds become available to us. This year the bald eagle {Haliaeetus leu- cocephalus) was added to the list of U.S. threatened and endangered species. Pre- viously only those bald eagles nesting south 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 39 of the 40th parallel were listed. This action has caused us no little concern because we have no documentation of nesting bald eagles in Utah, but each winter we are visited by over 600 eagles produced from as far away as northern Saskatchewan. The population seems thriving and secure there, and we are at a loss to explain how their plight changes as they wing their way over a political boundary. I am reminded of a settler who was living up in that area along the United States-Canadian boundary at the time they surveyed our modern boundary lines. He found out through the survey that he was ac- tually in the United States. He said, "Thank God. I couldn't have stood another Canadian winter. " We protected the listing for several rea- sons, but the one of the greatest magnitude and potential problem is that of critical habi- tat designation if the action ever comes to pass. Every canyon used for night roosting, every tree used for day resting, every hunting area could come under the designation. What would happen to our waterfowl management areas upon which so many nonhunted species depend if federal funds were withheld for failure to limit hunting because of the pres- ence of bald eagles? Today there hasn't been a hint of such action, but stranger things have happened. Before the recent listing, we in- itiated a survey of bald eagle visitants, and for the past five years have documented number, preferred location of use, and gener- al arrival and departure dates. This year, in addition to our own winter census, we will participate in the national one-day bald eagle census in cooperation with the National Wildlife Federation. I want to talk for a minute about one other species, mention some fishes, and then wind it up. The desert tortoise {Gophenis agassizi) was mentioned earlier this morning. Recently the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has pro- posed, by Federal Register publication, listing of the desert tortoise as an endangered spe- cies along with designation of 38 square miles of the Beaver Dam slope in Washington County as critical habitat. We have been ac- tively involved in recent years in document- ing the current status of the tortoise and the condition of its habitat. While sympathetic to its plight, we believe this move to be pre- mature in that studies currently under way in Arizona immediately adjacent should be fin- ished and evaluated and the entire system looked at rather than drawing political boundaries to attempt management of a spe- cies. I will touch only briefly on the endangered fishes here in Utah. I am sure Dr. Deacon will provide more in-depth summary in his presentation. There are presently three spe- cies in Utah in this category. They are the Colorado squawfish {Ptychocheilus lucius) and humpback chub {Gila cijpha) in the mainstream Colorado and Green rivers in Utah and the woundfin {Plagoptenis argentis- simus) found in the Virgin River below La- Verkin Springs. There are three more species currently under consideration for either threatened or endangered status— the razor- back sucker {Xyrauchen texanus) and bony- tail chub {Gila elegans) in the mainstream Colorado system and the Virgin River round- tail chub {Gila robusta seminuda). Our past work with these has been very limited, pa- ricularly with the Virgin River species. Re- cently, we have been more involved and ex- pect to fulfill our role as fish and wildlife managers as funds are made available. It now appears our next step may be into the area of endangered plants. In a few min- utes you will hear more of the status of cer- tain plant species from persons more knowl- edgeable than I; however, the Utah Science Advisory Committee has prepared legislation for introduction at the general session of the legislature in January that will give our divi- sion jurisdiction over those plant species de- clared threatened or endangered under the act. It also provides for the establishment of a position of taxonomist and funding to carry out the necessary activities. If this comes to pass, we will be drawing heavily for some time on the expertise of several of the speak- ers at this symposium. Our involvement with endangered species to this point, though not deep, has been sub- stantial considering the minimal funding re- ceived imder the act for just one facet of the program. Recovery teams are in operation for all Utah species, and we have representa- tives for all but the bald eagle. Our participa- tion has been active and sincere. We take the task seriously and intend to continue to pro- 40 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 vide meaningful input for the sake of the spe- cies involved. We also intend to cooperate with other states, federal agencies, and all in- terests to ensure that endangered species are provided for, keeping in perspective the needs of all wildlife as well as those various interests of our human resource. I hope our efforts will be interpreted in this light. Questions to Mr. Day Q. We agree with your present analysis of the situation. If you find a better solution, please let us know. A. I think what we in wildlife management have to do is to make intelligent decisions concerning endan- gered species and keep the pendulum from swinging too far the other way. We don't want to lose this tool, as I mentioned before, and I think you can see what effect the politician has on the direction we go. Q. I'm not sure where these big birds move in from, but in the Uinta Basin there's quite a wintering popu- lation of bald eagles which comes in and feeds on the waterfowl of the Pacific flyway that goes through that area. There is an area there that came to be recognized as a roost area where the birds go back and rest in the evening and spend the night. Such areas have been given refuge status in Oregon. A. Well those things happen. We need to use prudence in recognizing these areas or things can get out of hand. Q. Do I sense an opposition to listing any critical habi- tat in Utah? A. From our division? We don't list it. We are not op- posed to critical habitat designations if needed. Q. Well, Dr. Murphy said the same thing there and I was wondering if . . . A. No, when you get down to specific cases, whatever is needed, whatever the facts require to ensure the .survival of that species at an intelligent level— that ought to be the way we are managing it. You can see what the reaction of the public and the politician is to situations where we go overboard. Dr. Murphy: There are several large and impor- tant roosts that would fit the category of the one he mentions in the Uinta Basin that I would be very happy to see listed as critical habitat, but it's just that the wintering population becomes very dis- bursed and small groups will be found in small areas all over the state. It becomes almost administratively impossible to keep up with that kind of a situation. Q. I would like to ask you a question that is perhaps out of your realm, and that is "what is the policy of the state with regard to endangered species, particularly plants on state land?" A. A lot of people have been asking me those kinds of questions lately. I guess first we'd have to know what the management implications are. You've got the other species I mentioned, the resources, the re- habilitation projects going on for game species, and that type of thing. I can only answer, just in a gener- al way, that we're interested. We want to see these identified and take intelligent mea.sures to protect habitat and species. Q. Specifically, what about the Cactus rideii on the Mancos Shale in the Citros Butte area of Wayne County which is being strip mined for coal and is in an area of critical habitat for that species? A. You remind me of a story that will maybe get me off the hook. This fellow was a well-known speaker. He gave this talk, and his chauffeur drove him around to all these places, and his chauffeur said one day, "Let me give this talk for you. I've heard it so many times I can do it as well as you can." So he said, "OK, I'll wear your chauffeur's uni- form and you give the talk." That happened. The audience applauded, and then it came time for the questions. That's the situa- tion I'm in. A question like this came up, and he said, "That's one of the simplest questions I've ever heard, and to show you how simple it is, I'm going to let my chauffeur answer it." The problem is that I didn't bring my chauffeur. We'll work with you. Let me just indicate that state lands are not our wildlife lands, but lands un- der the State Land Board. I'm not happy with the past management of state lands. Overgrazing has been a continual problem since early in Utah his- tory. We're stuck with the rehabilitation. I've seen that overgrazing. The most recent time was the bow himt this fall on the Manti Forest. Y'ou can look at the museum pictures of overgrazing and you can go out on Fred's Flat today and identify those same pic- tures without a camera. If you don't learn from his- tory, you're bound to make the same mistakes. ENDANGERED AND THREATENED FISHES OF THE WEST James E. Deacon' ,\bstract.— The endangered and threatened fish fauna of the United States exhibits problems resulting primarily from habitat modification by man. The evolutionary history of the fauna has left it especially sensitive to biotic interactions. In addition, many forms are of such restricted distribution that the entire taxon can be destroyed by very minor perturbations. The effects of habitat modification on woundfin and roundtai! chub in the Virgin River of Utah, Arizona, and Nevada are discussed. Parasitism by Lernea on White River springfish is shown to coincide with population decline in some, but not all, cases. Population declines of Pahnunp killifish are related to biotic inter- actions with both goldfish and mosquitofish. Population size of Devils Hole pupfish are shown to be quite responsive to small changes in habitat availability. Fishes of the West are affected by the same general kinds of ecological problems that are causing extinctions throughout the world. The interplay of economics with perceived value in society has led us into the numerous ecological problems facing us today. There is some evidence to suggest that society is making some preliminary ef- fort to slow the rate of extermination. Perhaps this is happening because the conclusions of ecologists, philosophers, and theologians regarding the relationship of man and environment are to sopie extent being translated into legisla- tion as well as into conventional wisdom. The fish fauna of the western United States has frequently been characterized as one hav- ing a relatively low diversity and containing an unusually high percentage of endemic taxa exhibiting limited distributions (Miller 1959, Smith 1978). These appear also to be the primary features contributing to the fact that much of the fauna is threatened to some degree. Recently, the Endangered Species Com- mittee of the American Fisheries Society compiled a listing of threatened fishes of North America (Deacon et al. 1979). The fishes on that list from the western United States are presented here as a data base for the general discussion (Tables 5 and 6). The predominant threats to all taxa listed were generalized into five broad categories and each taxon was assigned one or more of these categories. Threat categories were as follows: (1) The present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of the habitat or range. (2) Ovenitilization for commercial, sporting, .scientific, or educational purposes. (3) Disease or parasitism. (4) Other natural or manmade factors affecting continued exist- ence (hybridization, introduction of exotic or translocated species, predation, competition). (5) Restricted range of the taxon. A com- parison of threats to western fishes north of Mexico with those to eastern fishes is of gen- eral interest and illustrates significant differ- ences between the two faunas (Table 1). Habitat modification (Category 1) is clear- ly the most prevalent threat to native fishes throughout the world, and this is certainly tRie in North America. There are a few spe- cies in the West, however, that are not now so threatened. No eastern species, however, has escaped problems raised by physical al- teration of the habitat. No western species has been or is threat- ened by overexploitation (Category 2), but about 7 percent of the eastern fishes on the list are or were so threatened. Six species of ciscoes occurring in the Great Lakes were subjected to overfishing by commercial fish- ermen, changes resulting from the in- troduction of the sea lamprey, and general environmental degradation (Scott and Cross- man 1973). In addition, the Atlantic whitefish has been subjected to overfishing as well as habitat alteration. They represent the only fish taxa in the United States or Canada to be on the American Fisheries Society list of threatened species, in part, because of over- exploitation. Di.sease and parasiti.sm (Category 3) have 'Department of Biological Sciences, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154. 41 42 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 apparently not been involved in threats to any eastern species on the list but have been factors for about 4 percent of the western fishes. It is probable that this difference re- sults from the fact that information regarding incidence of disease and parasitism in native fishes is relatively sparse. In addition, though the initial major decline in abundance and distribution of eastern fishes probably oc- curred prior to 1850 (Trautman 1957), in the West the similar event occurred subsequent to 1850 (Miller 1961). Because increased in- cidence of disease and/ or parasitism as an important factor in a population decline be- comes most apparent during the major de- cline, it must be detected at that time to be recognized. The generally earlier decline of eastern fishes during a time when increased incidence of disease or parasitism would have been less likely to have either been detected or associated with the decline probably ex- plains its absence from association with the eastern faima. This factor doubtless has been a more important contributor to decline of both eastern and western fish populations than is apparent. It has specifically been identified by Wilson et al. (1966) and Seetha- ler (1978) as a factor in the decline of west- em fishes. Biological interactions of various kinds (Category 4) contribute to the problems faced by 54 percent of the threatened west- ern fauna but only 9 percent of the threat- ened eastern fauna. The marked differences in Category 4 point to distinctions of the western fish faima that have been repeatedly discussed. Physical barriers to dispersal have resulted in relatively low colonization rates throughout the West, with the consequence that western fish faunas are not especially speciose (Smith 1978). Because their evolu- tionary experiences have been with relatively depauperate faimas, western fishes have rela- tively low tolerances to biological inter- actions (Smith 1978, Deacon and Minckley 1974, Hubbs et al. 1974). A restricted range (occurring in only a single spring, a single group of springs, or a short stretch of stream [Category 5]) is a fac- tor involved in giving a threatened status to 21 percent of the western fishes listed, but only about 7 percent of the eastern fishes. Category 5 illustrates the fact that one group of western fishes appears to have a high de- gree of "extinction resistance" (Smith 1978). The consequence is that many western taxa exist as relict populations in single habitats. They found their way onto the AFS list of threatened fishes because of that fact. They, like many western fishes, generally have high tolerances to physical extremes but low toler- ances to biological interactions (Deacon and Minckley 1974). Physical Modification of Habitats While western fishes have in general de- veloped considerable resistance to the phys- ical extremes imposed upon them by climatic factors, they have also been most strongly af- fected by general and specific alterations of physical habitats imposed upon them by man. Miller (1961), Hastings and Turner (1965), and Cottam (1961) have dramatically shown the impact of slight climatic shifts su- perimposed on removal of vegetative cover by overgrazing between about 1880 and 1900. The arroyo cutting, siltation, and de- watering that occurred during this period were probably the most detrimental 20 years Table 1. Comparison of general kinds of threats to the threatened freshwater fish fauna of western and eastern North America, north of Mexico. General threat category Western Fishes Eastern 1 s-ishes Number Percent Number Percent of taxa of fauna of taxa of fauna (N = 112) affected {N = 90) affected 109 97.3 90 100 0 0 6 6.7 5 4.4 0 0 60 54 8 8.9 24 21 6 6.7 1. Habitat modification 2. Overexploitation 3. Parasitism and disease 4. Biotic interactions 5. Restricted range 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 43 of all time to fishes and aquatic habitats in the western United States. This period was followed closely by a very active period of dam building, with concomitant increases in irrigated agriculture, especially since about 1930, when large reclamation projects began providing water to irrigate what is now some 10 million acres of land in the West. The de- cline in abundance of the native fishes of the mainstream Colorado River is associated closely with construction of these mainstream dams (Minckley and Deacon 1968, Holden and Stalnaker 1975 a, b, Seethaler 1978). De- clines in fishes of tributary streams are also occurring and are similarly associated with water manipulations of various kinds that re- sult in dewatering portions of fish habitats. Recently, McNatt (1978) has described the process along the San Pedro River of Ari- zona. I present some documentation here for similar problems along the Virgin River of Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. The Virgin River drains southwestern Utah and flows through the northwestern comer of Arizona before joining the Colorado River in Lake Mead, Nevada. A salt spring, LaVerkin Springs, enters the river 180 km upstream from its confluence with Lake Mead, forming the upstream limit of distribution for both the Virgin River roundtail chub, Gila robusta seminuda, and the woundfin, Plagopterus ar- gentissimus. Both are here listed as endan- gered and both are presently restricted to the mainstream of the Virgin River below LaVer- kin Spring. In addition, the Virgin spinedace, a threatened species, occurs both below and above the springs. Irrigation diversions have been established along the river since the 1860s. Since at least the early 1900s, the Hurricane Diversion, Washington Diversion, and Mesquite Diver- sions (Fig. 1) have been capable of diverting essentially the total summer flow of the river at each of these three diversion points. La- Santa Clara River Boulder Dam Wash Mesquite Diversions Washington Diversion UTAH LaVerkin Creek Hurricane Diversion Lake Mead Fig. 1. Mainstream Virgin River below Hurricane diversion showing total remaining potential habitat for the en- dangered woundfin and roundtail chub, and significant modifications currently restricting their range. 44 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Verkin Springs, entering just below the Hur- ricane Diversion, plus inflow from LaVerkin and Ash Creeks, maintain permanent stream flow downstream to Washington Diversion (Fig. 1). Littlefield Springs, entering at the lower end of the narrows, maintain per- manent streamflow downstream to the Mes- quite Diversion (Fig. 1). When the total streamflow is actually used at the above di- version points, only about 52.5 km (or 29 per- cent) of the remaining 180 km of potential habitat for the two endangered species re- stricted to the mainstream is actually con- stantly available to them. The narrows (Fig. 1) divides the main- stream into an upper and a lower component that appears to effectively isolate the con- tained fish populations. Elevation and cli- mate in the two regions differ significantly. The difference was reflected by the nearly one-month earlier spawning of the woundfin population in the lower river in the spring of 1977 (Fig. 7). The question of requirements of these fish- es in their remaining habitats has been the subject of studies conducted at various levels of intensity since 1961 (Cross 1975, 78, Wil- liams 1977, Schumann 1978, Peters 1970, Lockhart 1979, Vaughn Hansen Associates 1977). The drought of 1977 resulted in some of the lowest flows on record in the Virgin River, a circumstance which allowed signifi- cant insights into the probable effects of wa- ter development projects which would tend to reduce or alter flows in the river. The more normal flows of 1978 provided a useful comparison to the low-flow conditions of 1977. Length-frequency analysis was used as a convenient means of examining the popu- lation structure of the fishes in the Virgin River. Samples were taken by repetitively seining an area until the number of fish col- lected amoimted to less than 10 percent of the highest number collected. In this way we insured a good representative sample of all fish occurring in the sampled area. Figure 2 demonstrates that samples taken in August 1977 and more extensive sampling from No- vember 1977 provide essentially the same picture of population structure for woundfin. This suggests that sampling done in both Au- 30. 25. 20. 15- 10. 23Aug. 1977 (N= 70) 25-26 Nov. 1977 (N= 370) 18 20 /\ry^^ 30 40 50 90 SIZE Fig. 2. Length frequency of woundfin in Virgin River above the narrows during fall 197 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 45 gust and November was extensive enough to provide a good representation of population structure in woundfin. The major fact re- vealed is that in 1977 young-of-the-year com- prised a very small (nearly inconsequential) proportion of the woundfin population above the narrows. By contrast, a comparison of population structure in woundfin above the narrows in 1977 and 1978 (Fig. 3) indicates that young-of-the-year dominated the popu- lation in 1978. When sampling is extensive enough, and stunting can be discoimted as a significant factor, much of the information gleaned from an examination of length frequency can be summarized by calculation of a mean length for the population. In this case, for both woundfin and roundtail chub, small mean length indicates relatively high reproductive success and vice versa. Figure 4 and Table 2 present data available on mean length of woundfin above the narrows in 1973, 1977, and 1978, together with a hydrograph of mean monthly flows. They show that in 1973 and 1978, with high winter and spring flows, reproductive success was high, but in 1977, with low flows, reproductive success was low. A similar situation appears to have existed for the roundtail chub, Gila robusta semi- niida (Fig. 5, Table 2), except that the species was so rare in 1977 that very few were cap- tured in spite of extensive sampling efforts. This, of course, indicates that not only were environmental conditions in Virgin River during 1977 inimical to successful spawning in this species, they also apparently reduced the survival of adults. Figure 5 does show that the species spawned successfully in at least one location on the upper mainstream of the Virgin River in 1978. Relatively high population density or evidence of a successful hatch was not found at any other location sampled in the upper or lower Virgin River 30. O-O FALL 1977 (N=370) ^-* FALL 1978 (N = I53) 25- POPULATION 1 o / ^ 10. / 5. / ^ <^x^/ ,> I- 60"* 50 [ 40 1973 1977 1978 Fig. 4. Mean monthly flow at Hurricane Gage and mean size of woundfin in upper Virgin River 1973, 1977, 1978. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 47 woundfin fry at various locations along the Virgin River during summer 1977. Collec- tions were made at one- to two-week inter- vals until fry were taken at each location in- dicated. The uppermost location, indicated by 23 July in Figure 8 was actually below the Hurricane Diversion but above LaVerkin Creek. It is apparent that hatching occurred earlier in the lower river than in the upper river. Furthermore, in the lower river hatch- ing appears to have been delayed by about two weeks at the lowermost station where habitat modification is most obvious. The earlier appearance of young woundfin in the Arizona segment of the lower river was followed by relatively good survival in 1977 (Fig. 7). By contrast, the later appear- ance of young woundfin in the upper river was followed by very poor survival in 1977 (Fig. 3). With higher' flows in 1978, both up- stream and downstream populations of woundfin showed good reproduction, and by fall 1978 the mean size was nearly identical in the two populations (Fig. 6). Comparisons of hydrographs of Virgin Riv- er flows for 1973, 1977, and 1978 show that the major differences in flow occurred during winter and spring. Summer flows suggest a relatively greater degree of similarity for all three years (Vaughn Hansen Associates 1977). If winter and spring flows significantly in- fluence reproductive success of the endan- gered fishes of the Virgin River, the effect should be discernable in the population struc- ture during the following fall. Figure 9 pres- ents data comparing mean size of woundfin in the fall in both the upstream and down- stream populations against mean flows of the river during the spring. Of particular signifi- cance is the fact that when stream flow is low, mean size is high and vice versa. Inter- estingly, Figure 9 also suggests that when mean spring flows are above 700 cfs, repro- ductive success may be slightly poorer than when mean spring flows are between 400 and 600 cfs. Data are not available for times when mean spring flows fall between 100 and 400 cfs, but at about 100 cfs it is clear 25- 9/28/78 (N=I02) 11/25/77 (N= 3) 2^_^ — I— 150 — r- 180 210 240 270 300 SIZE Fig. 5. Length frequency of roundtail chub in Virgin River above the narrows. The o's indicate size of the only three individuals taken in extensive sampling on 25 November 1977. 48 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 that reproductive success falls off dramatical- ly. Essentially, the same relationships exist if mean flows from January to June, inclusive, are compared. This examination suggests that reproductive success of woundfin (and round- tail chub) in their only remaining habitat is extremely poor when mean winter and spring flows fall to about 100 cfs. The drought of 1977, resulting in some of the lowest flows on record in the Virgin Riv- er, has permitted a significant insight into the habitat requirements of the endangered na- tive fishes of the river. It is apparent that current utilization practices of the water re- sources permit survival of the native fishes in about 29 percent of their remaining potential habitat. Intermittent flows coupled with higher summer temperatures throughout the remainder of the potential range (Schumann 1978, Lockhart 1979) make it unreliable as a fish habitat. Within the remaining 29 percent of the potential habitat, reproduction occurs during years of normal flow, but is extremely poor to absent during years of low flow. This circumstance suggests that at present the fishes are living in a habitat which has ex- tremely little potential for further devel- opment or alteration without adverse im- pacts on the endangered species present. Continued monitoring of reproductive suc- cess and population structure under varying conditions of stream flow will permit refine- ment of flow requirements. It is apparent that the roundtail chub is in an even more precarious position than is the woundfin and that both species require higher flows in spring and winter than they do in summer. Obviously, problems associated with the 80. 70 60 50 40 o upper river D lower river "T 1 1 1 1 • I FALL SPRING FALL WINTER SPRING FALL WINTER '73 '77 '77 '77 '78 '78 '78 Fig. 6. Comparison of mean size of woundfin in the upper and lower mainstream Virgin River 1973, 1977, 1978. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 49 effects of habitat modifications are complex, often having been developing for more than a century, and always difficult to quantify or even specifically identify. The problems identified and briefly examined here for the Virgin River have numerous counterparts throughout the West, as is obvious from the fact that 97 percent of the western fishes list- ed herein are on this list in part because of the present or threatened destruction, modifi- cation, or curtailment of their habitat or range. Disease and Parasitism Wilson et al. (1966) and Seethaler (1978) have suggested that parasitism may place sig- nificant stress on western fishes being sub- jected to other alterations in their environ- ments. Examination of museum specimens of Crenichthys boileiji collected since 1938, sup- plemented by examination of both museum specimens and individuals taken in the field in 1965 and 1966, yields interesting insights into responses to stress. Crenichthys baileyi occurs in warm springs along the course of the Pluvial White River of eastern Nevada. During the early 1960s various exotic or non- native species were established in some Cre- nichthys habitats (Deacon et al. 1964, Hubbs and Deacon 1964). Figure 10 and Table 3 show the incidence of parasitism by Lernea on Crenichthys bail- eyi populations living in Crystal Spring and in the warm headwaters springs of the Moapa River from 1938 to 1966. All avail- able data are presented in Table 3. Only data resulting from an examination of 20 or more individuals are plotted in Figures 10 and 11. During this period no nonnative fish were es- tablished in Crystal Spring. The poulation re- mained abundant and virtually free of para- sitism by Lernea. In the headwaters of Moapa River, the 30 25 20 15 10 5 • — • 26 Nov. ■77(N=383) O — o 28 Sept. '78(N=427) 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Fig. 7. Length frequency of woundfin in the lower Virgin River, fall 1977 and fall 1978. 50 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 23July Lake Mead Fig. 8. Dates of the first appearance of woundfin fry at various locations along the mainstream Virgin River dur- ing summer 1977. Collections were made at all locations indicated at one- to two-week intervals until fry were taken. shortfin molly {Poecilia mexicana) was in- troduced in the spring of 1963 (local testi- mony). No mollies were taken in collections made in March 1963, but they were present in collections made on 12 October 1963 (Deacon et al. 1964). In addition, the mosqui- tofish {Gambusia affinis) had been present in the area since before 1938 (Miller and Alcorn 1946). While collections of C. baileyi made during 1963 showed an increased incidence of parasitism by Lernea, the fish population remained abundant and the incidence of par- asitism declined (Fig. 10). In addition, there was a 5 percent incidence of parasitism in 1959 prior to introduction of mollies. Per- haps the several spring sources in the head- Table 3. Incidence of parasitism by Lernea on Crenichthys haileiji. N one or more Learnea attached. number examined. % perc ent with Location 1938 N % 1940 N % 1941 N 1947 N 1948 N 1949 N 1950 N Headwaters of Moapa River 250 0 7 0 .\sh Spring 5 0 8 0 Crystal Spring Hiko Spring 1576 0 6 0 Mormon Spring Preston Town Spring Preston Big Spring 0 1.58 0 11 0 11 0 106 0 64 0 20 0 64 0 83 0 54 0 52 0 58 17 0 0 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 51 70. • • above narrows 0 below narrows 60. 50- O • o • o 40 1 1 1 — 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 MEAN SPRING FLDW (CFS) Fig. 9. Mean spring flows in Virgin River related to mean size of woundfin in the following fall. Data are from 1973, 1977, 1978. Mean spring flow is the average of the monthly means for April, May, and June. waters were invaded by mollies at different times; in any case, the Crenichthys popu- lation did not appear to either sustain or re- flect any permanent damage from parasitism. Other populations for which historical data are not so extensive but which, through 1966, were not subjected to stress from nonnative fishes occur at Mormon Spring and Preston Big Spring (Table 3). In addition, while gup- pies Poecilia reticulata have been in Preston Town Spring since sometime before 1961 (Deacon et al. 1964), we have seen no in- dication of parasitism by Lernea (Table 3). Of course, the population was not examined im- mediately after introduction of Poecilia. Figure 11 illustrates changes in incidence of parasitism by Lernea for populations which became rare or extinct. In Ash Spring, mosquitofish were not present in 1946 (Miller and Alcorn 1946) but were present in 1959 (Miller and Hubbs 1960). In March 1963, Poecilia was not present, but P. latipinna, P. mexicana, and Cichlasoma nigrofasciatum were present and breeding on 3 June 1964. They have since remained abundant in Ash Spring and its warm outflow stream. In- cidence of parasitism by Lernea on C. baileyi was significant for the first timme in 1964 and remained so in 1965. The C. baileyi pop- ulation in this limnocrene declined in abun- dance and remains extremely rare today. The increase in parasitism closely followed in- troduction of the exotics and was followed by a dramatic decline in abundance of the na- Table 3 continued. 1951 1954 N % N 1959 N 1960 N % 1961 N 1962 N 1963 N % 1964 N % 1965 N % 110 19 0 920 5.1 11 9 11 01 0 0 4 82 0 0 16 25 25 0 17 0 68 15 0 1259 0 253 0 90 10 224 9 5 0 2828 .04 356 0 69 0 313 20 27 59 159 0 1051 0 188 0 5 0 25 0 20 0 704 0 440 0 52 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 tive fish population. At Hiko Spring, no parasitism was evident until 1965 (Fig. 11). Shortfin mollies (P. mexi- cana), mosquitofish, and largemouth bass were all absent from collections made at Hiko Springs in June 1964. In January 1965 a few mosquitofish were seen and one was col- lected. In February 1965 both shortfin mol- lies and largemouth bass were seen in the limnocrene, and in March mollies began to appear in the monthly collections. Both mol- lies and mosquitofish increased in abundance through 1965. Lernea first appeared on Cre- nichthys in March 1965. Incidence of para- sitism increased to February 1966, at which time examination of the population was dis- continued because numbers had declined too low to permit continuation of the study. The population was extinct before June 1967. BioTic Interactions Interactions of native western fishes with introduced species have resulted in extensive hybridization, especially in trout, plus vari- ous kinds of competitive and predatory con- sequences. One example which is especially interesting, because it was replicated, oc- curred in Manse Spring, Pahrump Valley, Nye Co., Nevada. The endemic, and cur- rently endangered, Pahrump killifish (Emp- etrichthys latos latos) was restricted to the single limnocrene which was approximately triangular with maximum dimensions of about 25 X 15 m. In November 1961 six goldfish were introduced into the spring by one of the farmhands. They had reproduced by July 1962 and during that summer the children on the farm removed most of the 30-, 25- 20. E o o CL 10. ■HaODD •—^ headwaters of Moapa River Crystal Springs Exotic Fish Introduced — I 1 1 1 1 1 1 — 1940 1945 1950 1955 I960 1965 1970 Fig. 10. Incidence of parasitism by Lernea on CrenichtJujs bailey i populations which remained abundant. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 53 submerged aquatic vegetation from the pond to make a better swimming pool (Deacon et al. 1964). The killifish population crashed during the winter of 1962-63 to almost cer- tainly fewer than 50 individuals (Fig. 12). The population had recovered somewhat by winter 1963 but appeared to be less abundant through early 1965 than was the case prior to introduction of goldfish. In July 1967, Professors Carl L. Hubbs and R. R. Miller and I, in cooperation with our families and several students from UNLV and ASU, attempted to remove all goldfish from Manse Spring by trapping, seining, using anesthetic, and, finally, dynamiting. All kill- ifish captured were held in cages in a nearby small spring and all goldfish were destroyed. A total of 1239 killifish were captured and returned. At least two adult goldfish eluded us and spawned by the end of the summer. The killifish population crashed as it had in 1963, reaching a low point of probably fewer 60 ^ if) 25 20- 10- •— • Ash Spring Q-oHiko Spring ^ Exotic Fish Introduced 1940 1945 1950 1970 Fig. 11. Incidence of parasitism by Lernea on Crenichthys baileyi populations which became rare or extinct. 54 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 than 50 individuals in July 1968. This low population size persisted through January 1969 (Fig. 12), but by August 1971, when a transplant was made into Corn Creek Spring, the population had recovered significantly. In August 1975, Manse Spring failed as a re- sult of excessive pumping of groundwater in the area (Soltz and Naiman 1978). Prior to making the killifish transplant into Corn Creek Spring the population of in- troduced largemouth bass and mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) was removed. A few mos- quitofish escaped the final poisoning efforts in Corn Creek Spring, but by November 1973 the original stocking of 29 killifish had built a population of about 1300. In addition, mosquitofish had become extremely abun- dant. By November 1974 approximately 250 killifish were estimated to occur in Corn Creek Spring. The population had not in- creased by July 1975. In April 1976, 165 kill- ifish were removed from the spring and it was poisoned in a second effort to remove ented by Soltz and Naiman (1978). Deacon mosquitofish. The effort was successful and killifish had built an estimated population of 2000 fish by November 1976 and 2500 by October 1977. These data show that on two occasions in Manse Spring a population increase of gold- fish was accompanied by a marked popu- lation decline of Pahnimp killfish, and on one occasion in Corn Creek Spring a population increase of mosquitofish was accompanied by a killifish population decline. A cause-effect relationship is strongly suggested, perhaps re- lating to competitive interactions of the young or predation. Restricted Range While many western fishes have extremely restricted ranges, none is so restricted or iso- lated as the Devils Hole pupfish, Cyprinodon diabolis. A discussion of the biology of this species and description of its habitat are pres- a TOTAL CAPTURE 0 1200 . O MARK AND RECAPTURE A 6oldfls^ Reettoblilhod 1100. • CATCH PER TRAP HOUR / 1000 . / 900 . / 800. / 700. / / 600. / / 1 500 . ^^+-J^ \ 1 400 . Goldfith \ / / 300 . INTRODUCTION 1/ % / 200 - l\ Y 1^ / 100 . [r \ / 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 Fig. 12. Changes in population size of Pahnimp killifish 1961-1968. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 55 and Deacon (1979) provide a detailed de- scription of fluctuations in population size and probable causes for these fluctuations through December 1976. Data on fluctua- tions in population size presented here ex- tend through December 1978 (Fig. 13, Table 4). Figure 13 illustrates the direct and marked influence of relatively small changes in water level in Devils Hole on minimum population size of Cijprinodon diabolis. The water levels indicated in Figure 13 refer to a reference point established by USGS above the maximum water level. Therefore, depth of water in the habitat increases as the dis- tance below the reference point (in feet) de- creases. In addition, the water level shown is actually the minimum level permitted by the courts during the time indicated. The first level indicated (3.9) represents the lowest wa- ter level reached prior to intervention of the courts. Water levels normally fluctuated somewhat above the level indicated, but al- most never below that level. Generally, wa- ter levels were highest in winter and very near the permissible minimum during the summer irrigation season. This, of course, re- flects the fact that the water level in Devils Hole is directly and rapidly influenced by pumping of groundwater nearby. The somewhat erratic population fluctua- tions in 1972 and 1973 reflect responses to temporary management attempts as well as to scouring floods v/hich occurred during this period (Deacon and Deacon 1979). Once 550 500 450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 1972 73 74 75 76 77 78 Fig. 13. Devils Hole pupfish population size compared to minimum water levels 1972-1978. 56 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 some stability was achieved in water levels, it became possible to attempt management of water level to achieve a desired minimum an- nual population size. The desired minimum population size was established at 200 in an effort to insure that the population would not fall so low as to tend to accelerate toward ex- tinction. The present court-mandated level of 2.7 appears to be just maintaining minimum population size (Fig. 13, Table 4). This example illustrates the direct and rap- id impact on restricted native fishes which can result from even modest developments nearby. Often, as was true in this case, the developer may be almost entirely unaware of the consequences of his activities. For fishes living in restricted environments, this lack of awareness can mean extinction. Discussion It is apparent that the full variety of rea- sons for becoming threatened are exemplified among the endangered or threatened fishes of the West. The legitimate question arising from this and every consideration of endan- gered species is "Why bother? What good are they?" The answers to those questions, I believe, must include at least two parts: (1) because it is to our own self-interest to do so, and (2) because our society's values, as ex- pressed through federal law, require us to "bother." The second answer has been and will continue to be debated and perhaps modified. The first is really the core of the endangered species debate. The argument, simplified, I believe, involves at least the fol- lowing considerations. Because populations are dependent upon and interact within eco- systems, extinction is an indication of a signif- icant change in the ecosystem— in general, a reduced capability to support life or at least to support diversity. The fact that an endan- gered species is involved may, therefore, be an indication that the long-term carrying ca- pacity of an ecosystem may be exceeded (the Table 4. Estimated population size of the Devils Hole pupfish [Cijprinodon diabolis) in Devils Hole, Nye County, Nevada, 1972-1978. Estimates are the maximimi number of fish actually coimted visually during standardized at- tempts at counting the entire population. Data prior to 4 June 1974 were taken by Dr. R. R. Miller and subsequently by J. E. Deacon. Population Population Population Date estimate Date estimate Date estimate 1972 1975 1977 6 April 127 22 Jan 208 20 Jan 324 2 June 248 20 Feb 159 24 Feb 276 28 July 286 18 Mar 148 24 Mar 198 27 Sept 191 10 Apr 158 5 May 210 14 Nov 199 19 May 201 6 June 221 16 June 262 27 June 359 1973 30 Jvily 278 11 July 330 10 Jan 252 20 Aug 294 15 Aug 553 20 Feb 191 30 Sept 260 26 Sept 490 28 Mar 208 21 Oct 279 28 Nov 381 12 June 184 25 Nov 261 .30 Aug 253 16 Dec 246 1978 6 Nov 244 16 Jan 296 1976 2 Mar 225 1974 17 Feb 228 16 Mar 219 5 Feb 163 3 Mar 180 24 Apr 223 29 Apr 143 30 Mar 181 19 May 242 5 June 2.39 27 Apr 195 19 June 274 11 Julv 250 18 May 203 20 Julv 326 22 Aug 286 22 June .316 11 Aug 388 15 Sept .302 2 Aug .345 13 Sept 358 9 Oct 277 24 Sept 410 18 Oct 441 19 Nov 250 18 Oct 385 11 Dec 361 18 Dec 238 3 Dec 334 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 57 argument of the canary in the coal mine). Thus, it follows that if we are concerned about the ability of our children to fimction in the ecosystem in a manner at all com- parable with our present functioning, it may be important to maximize the survival of spe- cies other than Homo sapiens who are also dependent on that ecosystem. Another major line of argument is the di- versity-stability one (i.e., there appears to be a tendency for more diverse ecosystems to be more stable). Because more stable ecosystems tend to permit coping with times of poor productivity, it seems that enlightened self- interest would dictate that we make efforts to promote stability. Another cogent part of this argument is the inverse relationship be- tween diversity and energy flow (in molecu- lar systems, ecological systems, and in organi- zation of cities) described by Watt (1972, 1973). He pointed out that the principle ap- pears to be true in societal organization to the extent that in the U.S. we find fewer book titles per capita than less industrialized societies, as well as declining numbers of au- tomobile and airplane manufacturers, in- creasingly standardized foods in super- markets and restaurants, symphony orchestras almost restricting performances to the work of eight men, difficulties with pub- lishing innovative books or trying out in- novative ideas, and declining numbers of spe- cies (Watt 1972, 1973). In some ill-defined way this general reduction in environmental diversity seems to result in a search for re- placement of the satisfaction or sensory stim- ulation which it provided. Thus, we have sig- nificant and expanding elements in our society attempting to satisfy their senses through membership in cults, sexual experi- mentation, use of drugs and alcohol, etc. Basically, it seems that as we manufacture a more "efficient" society we increase its energy flow while reducing its diversity. This seems to result in a search for diversity by the members of society. Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration that environmental stimulation derived from experiences with or in nature is essential to modern man's feeling of well-being comes from the successes real- ized in the treatment of "hopeless" mental cases (litis 1967). Dramatic improvements re- sulted from taking these people on camping trips. Many people obviously have expe- rienced the tremendous release of tension that can be felt when you "get away from it all," or, to put it another way, when you have an opportunity to become acquainted with the diversity and sensory stimulation available in nature. Finally, the availability of genetic diversity in plants and animals as a basis for producing new or better crops, med- icines, and pharmaceuticals (Reisner 1978) has been emphasized as one of the most com- pelling arguments for saving species. Thus, there are a number of biological rea- sons to justify saving endangered species. These usually have implications that extend to other areas of human endeavor. If man's uniqueness in fact is his knowledge of his world, if Homo sapiens is the knowing one, then each extinction diminishes man's capaci- ty of know— and to that extent man's human- ity. It seems to me that the Endangered Spe- cies Act represents a society saying "This is as far as we will go." The necessity of making such a statement will always be questioned, but it does represent an attempt at insuring that our children on into many generations will have available to them some of the hu- manizing experiences that were available to us. Perhaps we have taken the position that the extermination must stop because of our general awareness that there is no other choice. Human civilization has always had a very nomadic character about it. The domi- nant center of Western civilization has shifted from the fertile crescent of Mesopo- tamia to Egypt, Greece, Rome, Europe, Great Britain, and the United States as envi- ronmental overexploitation has forced (or permitted) these nomadic wanderings. With the entire planet occupied by civilized so- cieties, there is no way to continue the wan- derings of civilization. The last remnant of the tendency appears to be exportation of the environmental degradation required to sup- port the kind of society we have created. Thus, no longer does our civilization have its primary impact confined to national bound- aries. We find ourselves responsible for de- struction of tropical rain forests, whales, pup- fish, woundfin, and any number of other worldwide resources, both renewable and nonrenewable. A balance of payments deficit 58 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 is clearly one serious and unacceptable con- sequence, but it is completely overshadowed by the rapid diminution of the world's ability to support the biotic diversity so essential to man's physical and mental well-being. During this symposium Lovejoy (1979) has provided a frightening description of the aw- ful magnitude of the problem. Clements (1979) has clearly shown that it is our own so- ciety, not societies in the under-developed countries of the tropics, that must be held primarily responsible for such all-pervasive, worldwide environmental degradation. Per- haps an understanding of these important facts will hasten the hard decisions which must be made to apply the principles of the Endangered Species Act on a worldwide scale. Spencer (1979) provided extensive documentation to show that the very difficult and costly decisions essential to slowing the rate of environmental degradation in the United States are being made in some specif- ic cases. His presentation is perhaps the most encouraging evidence presented at the sym- posium to indicate that there are forces at work in our society which have a slim possi- bility of forcing the significant shifts in so- cietal values which Clements (1979) de- scribed as essential if we are to prevent the collapse of our system. The answers to "Why save species?" are many-faceted, almost always translate into "Why save ecosystems?" and clearly demand searching examination of human values. It seems particularly powerful, therefore, to find philosophers, theologians, and ecologists converging on essentially the same answers to these questions. Though ecologists tend to understandably emphasize species and eco- systems and theologians tend to emphasize individuals and anthropocentricity, pretty much the same conclusions emerge. The most succinct and, to the Christian world, prob- ably the most widely understandable con- clusion we can arrive at was expressed by Professor Hugh Nibley. In a 1978 essay exam- ining man's relationship with his environ- ment he said, "Man's dominion is a call to service, not a license to exterminate." Acknowledgments Numerous people have assisted in the de- velopment of data and ideas presented here- in. To all I express sincere gratitude. James D. Williams, Gail Kobetich, Thom Hardy, and the American Fisheries Society Endan- gered Species Committee were instrumental in development of Tables 5 and 6. Jerry Table 5. Described taxa of threatened freshwater fishes of western North America: 1979. Present ° Historical Common name Scientific name Status threat distribution Trouts, family Salmonidae Little Kern golden trout Sahno aqttabonita whitei Jordan T 1,4 CA Arizona trout •Srt/mo apache Miller 1972 T 1,4 AZ Lahontan cutthroat trout Salmo clarki henshawi Gill and Jordan T 1,4 CA,NV,UT,WA Colorado River cutthroat Sulmo clarki pleuriticus SC 1,4 CO,UT,WY trout Cope Paiute cutthroat trout Salmo clarki seleniris Snyder T 1 CA Greenback cutthroat Sahno chirki stomias Cope T 1,4 CO trout Utah cutthroat trout Sahno clarki titali Suckley T 1,4 UT,WY,NV Rio Grande cutthroat Salmo clarki virginalis SC 1,4 CO,NM trout (Girard) Gila trout Salmo gilae Miller T 1 NM,AZ Sunapee trout Salvelinus alpiniis atircolus Bean T 4 ME,NH,ID Montana Arctic grayling Thymalhis arcticus T 1 MT (stream form) montanus (Pallas) Mudminnows, family Umbridae Olympic mudminnow Sovumhra hubhsi Schultz SC 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 59 Minnows, family Cyprinidae Mexican stoneroller Devils River minnow Desert dace Alvord chvib Fish Creek Springs Tiii chub Independence Valley Tui chub Mohave Tui chub Newark Valley Tui chub Oregon Lakes Tui chub Lahontan Tui chub Owens Tui chub Thicktail chub Humpback chub Bonytail Gila chub Chihuahua chub Yaqui chub Gila roundtail chub Pahranagat roundtail chub Virgin River roundtail chub Oregon chub Least chub White River spinedace Virgin spinedace Big Spring spinedace Little Colorado spinedace Spikedace Moapa dace Yaqui Beautiful shiner Rio Grande shiner Proserpine shiner Bluntnose shiner Woundfin Splittail Colorado squawfish Relict dace Campostoma ornatum SC Girard Dionda diaboli Hubbs and T Brown Eremichthys dcros Hubbs T and Miller Gila ahordensis Hubbs and SC Miller 1972 Gila bicolor euchila E Hubbs and Miller 1972 Gila bicolor isolata Hubbs T and Miller 1972 Gila bicolor mohavensis E (Snyder) Gila bicolor newarkensis SC Hubbs and Miller 1972 Gila bicolor oregonensis SC (Snyder) Gila bicolor obesa (Girard) SC Gila bicolor snyderi Miller E 1973 Gila crassicauda (Baird and E Girard) Gila cypha Miller E Gila elegans Baird and E Girard Gila intermedia (Girard) SC Gila nigrescens (Girard) E Gila purpurea (Girard) E Cw7fl robusta graluimi Baird T and Girard Gila robusta jordani Tanner E Gila robusta semintida E Cope Hybopsis crameri Snyder SC lotichthys phlegethontis T (Cope) Lcpidomeda albivallis T Miller and Hubbs Lepidomeda inollispinis T inollispinis Miller and Hubbs Lepidomeda mollispinis E pratensis Miller and Hubbs Lepidomeda vittata Cope Meda fulgida Girard Moapa coriacea Hubbs and Miller Notropis formosus mearnsi Snyder Notropis jemezanus (Cope) Notropis porserpinus (Girard) Notropis simiis (Cope) Plagopteriis argentissim us Cope Pogonichtlnjs SC macrolepidotus (Ayres) Ptychocheilus luciiis Girard E Rclictus solitarius Hubbs SC and Miller 1972 1,3 1 L5 1 1,4,5 1,4,5 1,4 1,5 1 1 1,4,5 1,4,5 AZ,TX,(Mexico) TX NV NV.OR NV NV CA NV OR NV CA CA AZ,CO,UT,WY AZ,CA,CO,NV,UT,WY AZ,NM NM,Mexico(Ch) AZ,Mexico (So) AZ,NM NV AZ,NV,UT OR UT NV Az,[/r ,vv SC T E 1,4 1,3,4,5 AZ AZ,NM NV SC AZ (Mexico) SC T L4 NM TX E E 1,4 NM,TX AZ,NV,UT 1,3,4 1 CA AZ,CO,UT,CA,NM,NV,WY NV 60 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Independence Valley Rhinichthijs osculus E 1,4,5 NV speckled dace lethoponis Hubbs and Miller 1972 Ash Meadows speckled Rhinichthijs oscidus E 1,4 NV dace nevadensis Gilbert Clover Valley speckled Rhiniclitliijs oscidus E 1,4,5 NV dace oligoponis Hubbs and Miller 1972 Kendall Warm Springs Rhinichythijs oscidus SC 5 WY dace thermalis Hubbs and Kuehne Moapa speckled dace Rhinichthijs oscidus moapae Williams 1978 T 1,3,4 NV Loach minnow Tiaroga cobitis Girard SC 1,4 AZ, Suckers, family Catostomidae Yaqui sucker White River desert sucker Webug sucker Zuni bluehead sucker Lost River sucker Modoc sucker Warner sucker Shortnose sucker Cui-ui June sucker Razorback sucker Catostonius bernardini Girard Catostomus clarki intermedins (Tanner) Catostomus fecundus Cope and Yarrow Castostomus dicobohis ijarrowi Cope Catostomus luxatus (Cope) Castostomus microps Rutter Catostomus warneiensis Snyder Chasmistes brevirostris Cope Chasmistes ciijus Cope Chasmistes liorus Jordan Xyraiichen texanus (Abbott) Freshwater catfishes, family Ictaluridae Yaqui catfish Ictahtrus pricei (Rutter) Widemouth blindcat Satan eurijstomus Hubbs and Bailey Toothless blindcat Trogloglanis pattersoni Eigenmann SC T SC T SC E E T E SC T SC T T Killifishes, family Cyprinodont Railroad Valley springfish Leon Springs pupfish Devils Hole pupfish Comanche Springs pupfish Gila desert pupfish Valley Amargosa pupfish Ash Meadows Amargosa pupfish Warm Springs Amargosa pupfish Owens pupfish White Sands pupfish idae Crenichthijs nevadae Hubbs Cyprinodon hovinus Baird and Girard Cyprinidon diabolis Wales Cyprinodon elegans Baird and Girard Cyprinodon macidarius macularitis Baird and Girard Cyprinodon nevadensis amargosae Miller Cyprinodon nevadensis mioncclcs Miller Cyprinodon nevadensis pectorahs Miller Cyprinodon radiosus Miller Cyprinodon tularosa Miller and Echelle 1975 1 1 1,4 1 c^jiu 1,4 1,4 1,4 1,4 1 1,4 1,4 1 1 1 SC 1 T 1,4,5 E 1,5 E 1 T 1,4 SC 1,4 T 1.4 E 1,4,5 E 1,4 SC 1,4,5 AZ (Mexico) NV UT NM CA,OR CA OR CA,OR NV UT AZ,CA,CO,NV,UT,WY AZ (Mexico) TX TX NV TX NV TX AZ, Mexico CA NV NV CA NM 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 61 Pahrunip killifish Empetrichthijs latos lotos E Miller 1,4,5 NV Livebearers, faniilv Poecilidae Amistad gambusia Gambusia ajnistadensis Peden 1973 E 1,5 TX Big Bend gambusia Gambusia gaigei Hubbs E 1,5 TX San Marcos gambusia Gambusia georgei Hubbs and Peden E 1,4,5 TX Clear Creek gambusia Gambusia heterochir Hubbs T 4 TX Pecos gambusia Gambusia nobilis (Baird and Girard) SC 1,4 TX,NM Gila topminnow Poeciliopsis occidentalis (Baird and Girard) E 1 AZ,NM Sticklebacks, family Gasterosteidae Unarmored threespine Gasterosteus aculeatus stickleback williamsoni Girard CA Sunfishes, family Centrarchidae Guadalupe bass Micropterus treculi (Vaillant and Bocourt) Perches, family Percidae SC TX Fountain darter Etheostoma fonticola (Jordan and Gilbert) E 1,5 TX Gobies, family Gobiidae O'opu nakea Awaous stamineus (Eydoux and Souleyet) SC 1,4 HI Tidewater goby Eucijclogobius newbernji (Girard) SC 1 CA O'opu alamo'o Lentipes concolor (Gill) T 1 HI O'opu nopili Sicydium stimpsoni Gill SC 1,4 HI Sculpins, family Cottidae Rougfi sculpin Cottus asperrimus Butter SC 1 CA Utah Lake sculpin Cottus echinatus Bailey and Bond E 1,4 UT Shoshone sculpin Cottus greenei (Gilbert and Culver) SC I ID °1— Present or threatened destruction of habitat 2— Overutihzation 3— Disease 4— Hybridization, competition, exotic or translocated 5— Restricted natural range Lockhart provided data on woundfin from 1973. Brian Wilson assisted greatly with de- velopment of data on parasitism, which could not have been accumulated without accessi- bility to fish collections at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology (R. R. Miller), the University of Nevada— Reno (Ira LaRi- vers), and BYU (Dave White). Encour- agement and approval of permits necessary to the work has been provided by the Ne- vada, Utah, and Arizona Game and Fish de- partments. Stimulating discussions and searching examination of values have been provided by my family (Maxine, Dave, and Jack and Cindy Williams) and by classes at UNLV. Financial assistance for various as- pects of work reported herein has been pro- vided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, National Science Foundation, Sport Fishing Institute, U.S. Bu- reau of Reclamation, University of Nevada- Las Vegas, and the City of St. George, Utah, through Vaughn Hansen Associates. 62 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Questions for Dr. Deacon Once a species is on its way to recovery, how does one determine what the population level or popu- lation density would be for the species to be consid- ered no longer in danger? That is an extremely knotty problem. In the case of the Devils Hole pupfish we were primarily con- cerned with maintaining a large enough population to prevent population instabilities that might tend to accelerate the process of extinction. It is generally understood that populations have a minimum size below which they are unlikely to maintain viability. Bob Miller at the University of Michigan did some experimental rearing of other species of pupfish in the 1940s and also performed a number of trans- plants into springs devoid of fish. His work indicated that experimental populations started with small numbers of individuals tended to decline in abun- dance after a few generations, sometimes to extinc- tion. His numerous transplants of pupfish into other natural waters were never successful if fewer than 200 individuals were transplanted, and in only two instances were they successful when more than 200 individuals were transplanted. During the middle 1960s a graduate student of mine, Carol James (now Ivy), did some work on the Devils Hole pupfish which, in retrospect, indicated that its population had probably never fallen below 200 individuals. Fi- nally a transplant of 24 Devils Hole pupfish into an artificial pond below Hoover Dam resulted in a pop- ulation maximum of about 200 individuals, followed by a decline to about 50 individuals. This pattern suggested loss of viability may be occurring in the transplanted population of Devils Hole pupfish. This line of argimient was successful in establishing the fact that it would be unacceptably dangerous to per- mit the population of Devils Hole pupfish to fall be- low 200 individuals. Once that point was established it was not difficult to show, with four or five years of monthly data on estimated population size, that a water level of 2.7 was necessary to sustain a popu- lation of no fewer than 200 individuals. These eco- logical relationships are being reported in the sym- posium volume on research in the national parks to be published in 1979. Q. At what level do you consider the population to not be threatened? Table 6. Undescribed taxa of threatened freshwater fishes of western North America: 1979. Present ° Historical Common name Scientific name Status threat distribution Trouts, family Salmonidae Alvord cutthroat trout Salmo clarki ssp. SC 1 OR Humboldt cutthroat trout Salmo clarki ssp. SC 1 NV Redband trout Salmo sp. SC 1,4 ca,or,id,nv Minnows, family Cyprinidae Catlow Tui chub Gila bicolor ssp. SC 1 OR Sheldon Tui chub Gila bicolor ssp. SC 5 NV Cowhead Lake Tui chub Gila bicolor ssp. SC 1 ca Hutton Spring Tui chub Gila bicolor ssp. T 1 OR Borax Lake chub Gila sp. T 1,5 OR Foskett Spring speckled Rhinichthys osctitus ssp. T 1,5 OR dace Killifishes, family Cyprinodontidae Preston White River Crenichthijs baileyi ssp. springfish Southern White River springfish Warm Springs White River springfish Devils River Conchos pupfish LeConte desert pupfish Quitobaquito desert pupfish Crenichthijs baileyi ssp. Crenichtliys baileyi ssp. Cyprinodon eximius ssp. Cyprinodon macidariiis ssp. Cyprinodon macularius ssp. T 4,5 NV T 1,3,4 NV SC 1,4,5 NV T 1 TX E 1,4 CA SC 1,5 AZ Sculpins, family Cottidae Malheur mottled sculpin Cottus bairdi ssp. SC OR • 1— Present or threatened destruction of habitat 2— Overutilization 3— Disease 4— Hybridization, competition, exotic or translocated 5— Restricted natural range 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 63 A. I consider 200 piipfish to be one which puts the spe- cies in approximately the position it was prior to the appearance of man— not completely in that position, but approximately. Now it's as threatened as it al- ways was because of its restricted habitat, but it is no more threatened because of man's activities. Q. Would cleaning up the waters here in the West af- fect the species population? A. In those areas where pollution is a problem it cer- tainly would. Almost anything that's proposed which will modify habitats must be examined with respect to the possibilities of adversely affecting species, whether or not they are endangered. It doesn't nec- essarily mean that, for instance, salinity control pro- jects will affect the woundfin minnow. In fact, some of my work has demonstrated that there is probably a good opportunity to design salinity control projects that will be unlikely to affect the mainstream fishes of the Virgin River. That conclusion is expandable to many other instances in the Southwest. The impor- tant thing is to design projects that are compatible with the habitat requirements of the species im- pacted. In other words, cleaning up the waters of the West could affect species in a number of ways, both adversely and favorably. Q. I'm not convinced that what you have said about the proposal to not go ahead with the power plant in Dixie is reasonable. The suggestion was that they di- vert some of the water from the Virgin River into a reservoir in Warner Valley and with that carry on with their electrical work. Now, of course, it would be a coal plant and this would be cooling water for the hydro plant. What is the problem? How is it go- ing to endanger that fish? A. The question is how is the Warner Valley Project likely to add to the threats to the woundfin minnow and roundtail chub in the mainstream Virgin River. Thanks very much for asking it, Vasco (Tanner). This obviously is not a simple problem. The basic answer I see is that the Warner Valley Project as projected will alter the flows of the mainstream Virgin River. The hydrologists point out that most of the water will be taken during the winter and spring. Data I presented here today indicate that during the low- flow winter, spring, and summer of 1977, woundfin and roimdtail chub reproduction was extremely low. To the extent that the Warner Valley Project in- creases the frequency with which flows similar to 1977 occur, that project will adversely impact the endangered fishes living there. Essentially, the prob- lem is that the data so far demonstrate that 1977, which was a low-flow year, resulted in conditions in- compatible with very much reproduction of those two species. If you cut off that reproduction, you're likely to cause an extinction. Certainly every time you modify the flow regime of the Virgin River such that the native fish populations living there miss a year of reproduction, you're very demonstratively af- fecting the capability of those species to maintain themselves in the river. My conclusions here are really based on the fact that we have demonstrated very poor reproduction during a time which repre- sents the kind of postproject flows we could expect. Q. Of course I've seen that river fluctuate from great to almost nothing, so naturally I don't see that there is any justification for not going ahead with it. They're going to get water from Warner Valley as well as just divert a little from the Virgin River into the res- ervoir. A. The crux of the matter, I think, is what flows are necessary to permit reproduction of the woundfin minnow. The data I presented suggest that flows in the neighborhood of 1(X) cubic feet per second are necessary to permit reproduction of woundfin and roundtail chub. In fact, there is some suggestion that winter flows must be somewhat higher. If the Warn- er Valley project doesn't reduce winter and spring flows below about 110 cubic feet per second, then I would say that there is likely to be no adverse im- pact. On the other hand, if it does, and it was dem- onstrated by the hydrological study that it would, then it does represent an impact. I'm not saying you shouldn't have the project. AH I am saying is, if you reduce flows, you're going to impact the minnow and the chub. Q. Just a comment more than a question. I understand the Warner Project during 1977 would not have been allowed to divert because the water was so low that project requirements would not have permited diversion. The 1977 situation would not be repeated unless there was another low-water year. A. If that's the case, then I fail to see the basis for the rather marked objections that have been raised to the conclusions I have reached. Literature Cited Clement, D. A. 1979. Rare species and culture. Great Basin Nat. Mem. 3:11-16. CoTTAM, W. P. 1961. Our renewable wild lands— a chal- lenge. Univ. Utah Press, Salt Lake. Cross, J. N. 1975. Ecological distribution of the fishes of the Virgin River (Utah, Arizona, Nevada). Un- published thesis. Univ. Nevada, Las Vegas. 1978. Status and ecology of the Virgin River Roundtail Chub, Gila robusta seminuda (Os- teichthyes:Cyprinidae). S.W. Nat. 23(3): 519-528. Deacon, J. E., and M. S. Deacon. 1979. Research on endangered fi.shes in the national parks with spe- cial emphasis on the Devils Hole pupfish. Proc. First Conf. on Scientific Research in the National Parks. Vol. 1:9-20. Deacon, J. E., C. Hubbs, and B. J. Zahuranec. 1964. Some effects of introduced fishes on the native fish fauna of southern Nevada. Copeia. 1964(2):384-388. Deacon, J. E., G. Kobetich, J. D. Williams, and S. Contreras. 1979. Fishes of North America, en- dangered, threatened or of special concern: 1979. Fi.sheries 4(2):29^4. Deac;on, J. E., and W. L. Minckley. 1974. Desert fish- es, pp. 385-487. In: Desert Biology, Vol. 2, Aca- demic Press, N.Y. Hastings, J. R., and R. Turner. 1965. The changing mile. Univ. Arizona Press, Tucson. Hubbs, C, and J. E. Deacon. 1964. Additional in- troductions of tropical fishes into southern Ne- vada. S.W. Nat. 9(4):249-251. 64 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 HuBBs, C. L., R. R. Miller, and L. Hubbs. 1974. Hydro- graphic history and relict fishes of the north-cen- tral Great Basin. Mem. California Acad. Sci. 7:1-259. HoLDEN, P. B., AND C. B. Stalnaker. 1975a. Distribu- tion of fishes in the Dolores and Yainpa river sys- tems of the upper Colorado Basin. S.W. Nat. 19(4):403-412. 1975b. Distribution and abundance of main- stream fishes of the middle and upper Colorado River basins, 1967-1973. Trans. Amer. Fish. Soc. 104(2):217-231. Iltis, H. H. 1967. To the taxonomist and ecologist whose fight is the preservation of nature. Bio- science 17(12):886-890. LocKHART, J. N. 1979. Ecology of the woundfin minnow, Plagopterits argentissimiis Cope. Unpublished thesis. Univ. Nevada, Las Vegas. LovEjOY, T. E. 1979. The epoch of biotic impover- ishment. Great Basin Nat. Mem. 3:5-10. McNatt, R. 1979. Fish habitat loss in the San Pedro River, Arizona. Proc. Desert Fish. Coun. In press. Miller, R. R. 1959. Origin and affinities of the fresh- water fish fauna of western North America. In: C. L. Hubbs, ed., Zoogeography. Amer. Ass. Adv. Sci., Washington, D.C., Publ. No. 51, pp. 187-222. 1961. Man and the changing fish fauna of the American Southwest. Pap. Michigan Acad. Sci., Arts and Lett. 46:365-404. Miller, R. R., and J. R. Alcorn. 1946. The introduced fishes of Nevada, with a history of their in- troduction. Trans. Am. Fish. Soc. 73:173-193. Miller, R. R., and C. L. Hubbs. 1960. The spiny-rayed cyprinid fishes (Plagopterini) of the Colorado River system. Misc. Publ. Mus. Zool. Univ. Mich- igan 115:1-39. Minckley, W. L., and J. E. Deacon. 1968. South- western fishes and the enigma of "endangered species." Science. 159(3822):1424-1432. NiBLEY, H. W. 1978. Nibley on the timely and the time- less. Vol. 1 Religious Studies Monograph Series. Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young Univ., Provo. Peters, E. J. 1970. Changes with growth in selected body proportions of the woundfin minnow (Pla- gopterus argentissimiis) Cope: Cyprinidae. Un- published thesis, Brigham Young Univ. Reisner, M. 1978. What are species good for? Frontiers 42(4):24-27. Schumann, P. B. 1978. Responses to temperature and dissolved oxygen in the roundtail chub, Gila ro- busta Baird and Girard. Unpublished thesis, Univ. Nevada, Las Vegas. Seethaler, K. 1978. Life history and ecology of the Col- orado squawfish (Ptychocheilus luciiis) in the up- per Colorado River Basin. Unpublished thesis, Utah State Univ. Smith, G. R. 1978. Biogeography of intermountain fish- es. Great Basin Nat. Mem. 2:17-42. SoLTZ, D. L., and R. J. Naiman. 1978. The natural his- tory of native fishes in the Death Valley system. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Science Series .30:1-76. Spencer, D. A. 1979. The law and its economic impact. Great Basin Nat. Mem. 3:25-34. Trautman, M. B. 1957. The fishes of Ohio. Ohio State Univ. Press, Columbus, Ohio. Vaughn Hansen Assoc. 1977. Impact of the Warner Valley water project on endangered fish of the Virgin River. Vaughn Hansen Assoc, Salt Lake City. Watt, K. E. F. 1972. Man's efficient rush toward deadly dullness. Nat. Hist. 81(2):74-82. 1973. A movable (disappearing) feast. Saturday Review of the Sciences. l(l):56-57. Williams, J. E. 1977. Adaptive responses of woundfin, Plagopterus argentissimiis, and red shiner, Not- ropis lutrensis, to a salt spring and their probable effects on competition. Unpublished thesis, Univ. Nevada, Las Vegas. Wilson, B. L., J. E. Deacon, and W. G. Bradley. 1966. Parasitism in the fishes of the Moapa River, Clark County, Nevada. Trans. Calif.-Nev. Sec. Wildl. Soc. pp. 12-23. RARE AQUATIC INSECTS, OR HOW VALUABLE ARE BUGS? Richard W. Bauinann' Abstract.— Insects are an important element in the analysis of aquatic ecosystems, (1) because the limited dis- persal abilities of many aquatic species means that they must make a living under existing conditions, and (2) be- cause they are often sensitive to slight changes in water and stream quality, thus making excellent indicators of the physical and chemical conditions in a system. Examples of rare, ecologically sensitive species are presented from the Plecoptera, Ephemeroptera, and Trichoptera. Detailed studies of rare aquatic insect species should produce impor- tant information on critical habitats that will be useful in the protection of endangered and threatened species in other groups of animals and plants. I use the term rare instead of endangered or threatened, because no aquatic insects are presently on the United States hst of endan- gered fauna. The term is still relative, though, because my experience indicates that nearly every species can be plentiful if sought at the right place at the right time. Aquatic insects are useful to anyone study- ing aquatic habitats because they usually meet two criteria that are essential in assess- ing aquatic systems. First, they often have very limited dispersal abilities, which means that they must stay and make a living under existing conditions. Second, they are often sensitive to slight changes in water quality, so their presence or absence tells something about the physical and chemical conditions in the system. Because the conditions present in a given habitat determine which species can live there, these organisms become living in- dicators of water quality in aquatic ecosys- tems. If these organisms are invertebrates which exist at low levels in the food web, this is an advantage. Invertebrates are easier to study than are larger animals, because they are more abundant and usually do not carry the emotional stigma associated with large vertebrates. They can also indicate adverse habitat problems sooner, so that adjustments can be made in water or stream quality be- fore the top carnivores are severely affected. During my studies of aquatic insects in western North America, I have found that the distribution patterns of certain species fit nicely with a model of island biogeography. Many stoneflies (Plecoptera) are mostly re- stricted to pristine habitats characterized by cold, clean continuously flowing streams at high elevations or in special spring-fed habi- tats. It thus follows that if the particular hab- itat in which they occur is threatened, then they almost automatically become rare and may become extinct. Such species popu- lations are often considered relicts of faunas that were once more prevalent when more ideal conditions occurred. Studies on the stonefly genus Amphine- mura (Baumann and Gaufin 1972, Bauman 1976) showed that it was a Palearctic genus that had extended into the Neotropical Realm and was still present in western North America in limited relictual populations. Al- though four species showed fairly wide distri- bution patterns in the United States and Mex- ico, three species were restricted to a single mountain range. Amphinemura apache oc- curred in the Chiricahua Mountains of Ari- zona, A. reinerti, was limited to Sierra Potosi, Mexico, and A. piiehhi was found in a moun- tain drainage near Veracruz, Mexico. These A7nphinemiira species are poor fliers and almost need a water connection for dis- persal. They live only in small streams that flow all year around and are of high quality. Their distribution patterns closely follow the spruce-fir and high pine forests in the south- western United States and Mexico. They are 'Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum and Department of Zoology, Brigham Young University, Prove, Utah 84602. 65 66 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 thus good indicators of a special aquatic habi- tat in western North America. Another example of restricted distribution in the stoneflies is Capnia lacustra Jewett, which only occurs in Lake Tahoe. It carries on its entire life cycle under water at depths of 100-400 feet (Jewett 1963, 1965). Only one other similar stonefly is known, and that is the genus Baikaloperia (Zapekina-Dulkeit and Zhiltzova 1973), in Lake Baikal, Siberia. It is also wingless and possesses similar mor- phological and ecological traits. It is not sur- prising that these two deep, ancient lakes contain similar rare species which evolved under specialized conditions and will be lost if their habitat is destroyed. Much attention has been given to several fish species that occur in the Colorado River drainage such as the Humpback Chub, Ra- zorback Sucker, and Colorado River Squaw- fish. These fish developed through time in another type of specialized habitat that ex- cluded the salmonids and allowed other taxa to radiate into the open niches. Invertebrate species have also developed imder similar conditions and several forms also occur in the Colorado River drainage. Edmunds (1976) lists several mayfly species which are rare and restricted to the Colorado River drainage and similar large warm rivers in western North America. The following are a few examples of rare mayfly species and an indication of where they occur in the United States: Analetris eximia. Green River; Lachlonia saskotchewa- nensis. Green, Colorado, and White Rivers; Anepeorus rusticus. Green River; Home- oneuria sp. Escalante and Colorado Rivers. These invertebrate species provide additional evidence that our large, warm, western rivers contain animal species that have adapted to special conditions critical for their survival. Caddisflies or the Trichoptera are inter- esting insects that occur in a wide variety of aquatic habitats. Most are good fliers and dis- tribute freely, but many species are restricted to a certain habitat because of the larval re- quirements. Wiggins (1977) published an outstanding work that makes it possible for any trained biologist to classify caddisfly larvae to genus. Thus it provides another tool for evaluating habitats using aquatic insects. A few inter- esting examples and their special habitat re- quirements are: Goriella baiimanni, organic ooze in spring seeps; Psychronia costalis, small meadow streams above 8,000 feet; Des- mona bethida, small spring streams. The number of rare aquatic insects is quite large because of the number of different aquatic habitats available and the ability of insects to fit into relatively small niches with- in those habitats. This is actually a positive value, however, because it allows the re- searcher to more closely understand the eco- system since it can be divided into smaller parts. Two final examples of rare insects that have very specific habitat requirements are the met-winged midges and the water penny beetles. Net-winged midges are flies which have become adapted to living in torrenticolus habitats. The larvae are greatly modified into chitonlike organisms that attach themselves to the substrate by sucking discs. They live only in clean, cold, well-aerated waters which have a stable, smooth-grained sub- strate. Thus they can be excellent indicators of these habitat conditions that occur at falls and quick-flowing mountain torrents. Hogue (1973) lists several Blephariceridae species that are presently known only from a single locality or mountain range. This is not simply an artifact of incomplete collecting, but a re- sult of poor adult dispersal ability plus the very specialized habitat requirements of the larvae noted earlier. Water penny beetles have an adult stage tliat looks like a terrestrial beetle but a larval stage that is highly modifed for life on the bottom of streams. The larva is greatly flat- tened so that the head and appendages are completely hidden under the thoracic and abdominal sclerites. The single eastern spe- cies Psephenus herricki is rather widely dis- tributed, but the five known western species have very restricted distributions (Brown and Murvosh 1974). Two species, P. montanus (White Mountains, Arizona) and P. arizo- nensis (Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona) have very limited areas of occurrence. An inter- esting note is that this type of limited distri- bution pattern is also exhibited by several species in the Plecoptera, Trichoptera, and Ephemeroptera. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 67 Many more examples of "rare" aquatic in- sects could be given which probably fit into the endangered or threatened categories as presently understood. They are exciting to me for pure scientific studies of zoogeo- graphy and phylogeny. However, I feel that the real value is not simply to say "I found another rare creature," but instead to make us more sensitive about the critical habitat conditions which produced these rare species. Insects tend to be more abundant and are tlius easier to study without affecting popu- lation dynamics. They are also usually more economical and easier to sample because tliey are less mobile and can be effectively studied by fewer people with less sophis- ticated equipment. On the other hand, politicians and business people may question the value of an insect. Who cares about bugs? How much is a bug really worth? This problem can be illustrated by an in- cident with which I was involved while at the Smithsonian Institution. Soon after my arrival in Washington, D.C., I was asked to look through the aquatic insects for which I was responsible as curator and add^any spe- cies to a list of organisms that could be con- sidered both rare and restricted to the Chesa- peake Bay area. In Ross and Ricker (1971) I foimd a stonefly species, AUocapnio zekia, that was known only from the Zekiah Swamp, La Plata, Charles County, Maryland. I added it to the list and forgot about it. About three years later, I received a tele- phone call from a man who wanted to know all about the "Zekiah Stonefly." At first I did not know what he was talking about, but when he mentioned the Chesapeake Bay spe- cies list, I remembered. I did some quick re- search and indicated that the species was based on a single, male holotype and might possibly be a synonym of a widespread east- ern species. He nearly exploded when I re- ported this to him, because, he said, that "Ze- kiah Stonefly" was holding up the construction of a water plant in a nearby community and was costing a lot of people a lot of time and money. In summary, it is important to understand our special environmental problems here in North America. If this can be better facil- itated by using aquatic insects, then we should place renewed emphasis on studies of them. We must, however, be aware of the fact that people in general do not imderstand the scientific value of insects and might react poorly to "bugs" being used to justify the preservation and conservation of special eco- systems. However, scientific investigations of high quality must utilize all possible avenues of investigation if problems are to be solved with a minimum expenditure of time, effort, and resources. It is also important that we do not attempt to overstate the value of "rare" species as habitat indicators. Some states, for example, have placed entire orders such as the Plecop- tera (stoneflies) and Ephemeroptera (may- flies) on lists or proclamations and have di- luted their value. When this is done it becomes difficult to study these organisms, because of the problem involved in obtaining permits and permission to collect specimens. Collecting alone will probably never se- riously harm an aquatic insect population, as has occurred with many butterfly species, but habitat manipulation will. Literature Cited Baumann, R. W. 1976. Amphinemuia reinerti, a new stonefly from northern Mexico (Plecoptera: Neniouridae). Southwest. Natur. 20:517-521. Baumann, R. W., and a. R. Gaufin. 1972. The Am- phinemiira ventista complex of western North America (Plecoptera: Neniouridae). Natur. Hist. Mus. Los Angeles Co. Contr. Sci. 226:1-16. Brown, H. P., and C. M. Murvosh. 1974. A revision of the genus Psephenus (Water-Penny Beetles) of the United States and Canada (Coleoptera, Dryo- poidea, Psephenidae). Trans. Amer. Entomol. Soc. 100: 289-340. Edmunds, G. F., Jr., S. L. Jensen, and L. Berner. 1976. The mayflies of North and Central America. Univ. Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. HoGUE, C. L. 197.3. The net-winged midges or Blepha- riceridae of California. Bull. Calif. Insect Sur. 15: 1-83. Jewett, S. G., Jr. 1963. A stonefly aquatic in the adult stage. Science 139: 484-485. 1965. Four new stoneflies from California and Oregon. Pan-Pacific Entomol. 41: 5-9. Ross, H. H., and W. E. Ricker. 1971. The clas.sification, evolution, and dispersal of the winter stonefly genus A//oca^ni«. Illinois Biol. Monog. 45: 1-166. Wi(;r,iNS, G. B. 1977. Larvae of the North American caddisfly genera (Trichoptera). Univ. Toronto Press, Toronto, 4 dp. Zapekina-Dulkeit, J. I., and L. A. Zhiltzova. 1973. A new genus of stoneflies (Plecoptera) from Lake Baikal. Entomol. Obozv. 52: 340-345. ENDANGERED AND THREATENED PLANTS OF UTAH: A CASE STUDY Stanley L. Welsh' ,\bstract.— Endangered and threatened plants of Utah are evaluated as to their distribution in phytogeographic subdivisions, substrates, plant communities, elevations, and geological strata. The phytogeographic subunits were partitioned and comparisons made of distribution as outlined for the parameters cited above. A predictive model is suggested based on the nonrandom distribution of endemic plant species. The Endangered Species Act of 1973, Pub- lic Law 93-205 (as ammended 1978), was an outgrowth of decades of concern regarding the future of that portion of our heritage of hving things, which, by the nature of their distributional patterns, could most easily be eradicated as man pressed to exploit the re- sources of the earth, both finite and renew- able. The act dictated an orderly process for development of lists of endangered and tlireatened species, defined terminology, and provided for development of criteria for de- termining candidate species. Plants are the mantle of the land, nour- ishers of life's feast, holders of soil, suppliers of construction materials, of medicines, and of other substances too numerable to men- tion. They provide the basis of all life on earth, save some few living things which are capable of chemosynthetic utilization of energy. This fact and the list of materials that flows from plants need not be mentioned. Yet, the spread of mankind over the face of the earth, his development of agriculture, and, more especially perhaps, his devel- opment and spread of an industrial society with its great demands on space and mate- rials has resulted in a direct competition for the space that was, or is, occupied by the in- digenous flora of the earth. The clearing of agricultural land for plan- ting of crop plants, as selected from that in- digenous genetic stock available as portions of the total flora, was possibly the beginning of the role of mankind as a major agent for reduction of plant species. Even those from which the crop plants were developed were not spared from destruction or modification. Agriculture is, nevertheless, a more ef- ficient means for the production of biological materials that can be consumed by man and by his livestock than from the previously em- ployed methods of gathering and hunting. Industrialization merely speeded the pro- cess by which agricultural lands could be cleared of native plants and those lands then maintained in single crop cultures. With in- dustrialization came the explosion of de- mands for resources of many kinds: ferrous and nonferrous metals, chemical compounds of all kinds, sand and gravel, coal and oil, uranium, and other naturally occurring mate- rials. The mantle of the land gave way as each new source was discovered. Roads were cut through the vegetation. Quarries, open pit mines, portals, corridors, industrial plant sites, pipelines, villages, towns, cities, gar- bage dumps, litter, and other features of civ- ilization were placed atop the shrinking veg- etation. Into the vast array of plant species marched also an infinitesimally small cadre of 'Life Science Museum and Department of Botany and Range Science, Brigham Young University, Prove, Utah 84602. 70 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 persons determined to know about the plants themselves— to name them, to describe them, to plot where they grew, and to recognize that there is an intrinsic value in each plant species, no matter how insignificant it might be considered. Botanists they were called, whether by training or by inclination they ar- rived at a point where plants become their pursuit. At first, all botanists were tax- onomists. Later, not even all taxonomists were taxonomists. Late in the human story the taxonomists began to catalogue the vegetation of the earth. Systematic surveys of vegetation and collections of plant species began in earnest only in the eighteenth century, in North America not until the nineteenth century, and in Utah the main thrust did not come un- til the twentieth century. By the beginning of the third decade of the present century, the common plant species and their general areas of growth were well known. The work of the various government surveys and of pioneer botanists had pene- trated even to some of the most remote re- gions of western North America. Discovered were some of the most rare of species, but others remained undiscovered. Cognizant of the increasing demands of a growing population and an expanding civ- ilization, botanists, always too few for the task, were hard pressed to survey all of the remote regions in a systematic manner. Col- lections were taken in a haphazard way. A trip to the hot desert in springtime, another to the cool mountains in midsummer, and by autumn the enthusiasm for collecting was cut short, too often by the need for gainful em- ployment—because botanists could seldom be gainfully employed as botanists. As the search areas narrowed, and as col- lections were taken in a more systematic manner, the number of known narrowly re- stricted plants increased proportionally. A still finer search may yet yield many addi- tional narrowly adapted endemics. They are plants of all elevational ranges, but they are most common in highly specialized habitats, those which are likely to be occupied by oth- er narrowly restricted plants also. Often the species belong to difficult or to purportedly difficult taxonomic groups, such as Astragalus, Eriogonum, Erigeron, and oth- ers. Few people have taken the time to un- derstand these complex assemblages, or to even collect and attempt to identify them. Fortunately, monographers have examined many of the problem genera and have clari- fied the nature of taxonomic limits, often on the basis of very limited materials. Passages of the Endangered Species Act found botanists in most regions of the United States ill prepared to provide definitive infor- mation regarding candidate plant taxa, which had been included in the act mainly as an af- terthought. Despite the lack of specific infor- mation, the act called for the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., to report to Congress within one year on all of the "species of plants which are now or may become endangered or threatened" in the United States (Section 12, Public Law 23- 205). In December 1974, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, S. Dillon Ripley, submitted a "Report on Endangered and Threatened Plant Species of the United States" to Congress. That report formed the basis of the 1 July 1975 Federal Register (Vol. 40, No. 124: 27824-27924), which contained a review of the endangered and threatened plant species. The number of species assigned to those cate- gories for the twelve western states (exclusive of Hawaii) is presented in Table 1. That pre- Table 1. Number of species reviewed as endangered and threatened in 1975 and proposed as endangered in 1976, in twelve western states. Date 1975 1976 Status Status STATE E T E Alaska 9 21 6 Arizona 65 106 66 California 236 412 286 Colorado 23 17 32 Idaho 21 41 21 Montana 2 8 3 Nevada 43 84 50 New Mexico 15 26 20 Oregon 43 135 51 Utah 56 101 66 Washington 16 72 18 Wyoming 3 18 8 Total 582 Grant total = 1623 1041 627 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 71 liminary list of 1975 was based on the best in- formation available to scientists at the Smith- sonian Institution working in collaboration with those from the Department of the Inte- rior. The lists were reviewed by selected spe- cialists and botanists at a workshop held at the Smithsonian in September 1974. That the 1975 lists were preliminary is to be found in the differences in numbers of en- dangered species published in the Federal Register (Vol. 41, No. 117: 24524-24572) published on 16 June 1976 (Table. 1). Even in such states as California, with its formidable niunber of qualified professional taxonomists and amateurs, the number of endangered plant candidates increased significantly be- tween 1975 and 1976. No such comparable list is available for candidate threatened plants, but some of the increase in endan- gered species is represented in change of stat- us from threatened to endangered (Kartesz and Kartesz 1977). Impetus for acquisition of knowledge of rare plant species was generated by the lists of 1975 and 1976, and by the policy of active search for information required by govern- mental agencies, which was built into the act. Funds were forthcoming from various federal agencies to make determinations of range, habitat, condition, impacts, and potential im- pacts, and for other information on the candi- date species. Rule making was entered into by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, De- partment of the Interior, and, at present, some 20 species of plants have been deter- mined as endangered or threatened. Two of these. Astragalus perianus Barneby and Pha- celia argillacea Atwood, are from Utah (see Federal Registers Vol. 40, No. 81: 17910-17916, and Vols. 43, No. 189: 44810-44812, respectively). The former is listed as threatened, and the latter is listed as endangered. Impacts of the act have been widespread. It has been subjected to political and emo- tional, as well as to scientific, evaluations. The act has been modified to some extent as a result, but those evaluations are not the basis of this contribution. Rather, I intend to pursue the developmental basis of informa- tion dealing with endangered and threatened species, and to outline one basis of the nature of those critical plants. Biology of Endangered and Threatened Species The biology of endangered and threatened species in Utah is, with few exceptions, the biology of narrowly restricted endemics. Therein lies the basis for disparity between lists and category representations. The amount and quality of botanical knowledge of common species is seldom sufficient to al- low more than generalizations; that for rare species is likely to be lacking altogether. The task of surveying vast areas for narrowly re- stricting plants is a huge one, carried out in the past largely by individuals with much de- votion and little financing. Too, the fact that a plant is an endemic and is rare has often been considered as evi- dence of endangerment. Lists are replete with such examples, but studies have in- dicated that rare plants might not be endan- gered or threatened, and that plants thought to be rare were in fact relatively common and widely distributed. For a plant to be a candidate for inclusion on final lists of endan- gered and threatened plant species, it must have endangerment, both quality and quan- tity, clearly demonstrated. Contemporary studies are under way to aid the Department of the Interior with deci- sions necessary for final rule making. Studies of distribution, population numbers, degrees of endangerment, and many other facets are being undertaken, which will lead to devel- opment of information summaries of all spe- cies which have been reviewed, proposed, or recommended. Much information has already been gleaned from the specimens extant in her- baria. For the purpose of this paper, endan- gered and threatened plant species from Utah will be used to illustrate the contemporary knowledge of status of those species, and to provide the model for a case study of the na- ture of those species. A list of endemic and rare plants of Utah was prepared by Welsh, Atwood, and Reveal (1975). In that publication, some 382 vascular plant taxa were considered, with 66 regarded as endangered, 198 as threatened, 7 extinct, and 20 extirpated. Only 225 species were considered to be endemic to Utah. The num- bers are not comparable to those published in 72 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 the Federal Registers due to consideration of species with broad distribution, a portion of which includes Utah, within the threatened and endangered categories. In later com- putations the number of endemic species is cited as 239 (Table 2). Welsh (1978) pub- lished a reevaluation of the endangered and threatened plants of Utah, in which some 53 species are regarded as endangered and 99 as threatened. Numbers in this latter pub- lication are not comparable to those of the Federal Register lists due to deletions and ad- ditions. That the biology of endangered and threat- ened species is that of restricted local endem- ics is found in the nonrandom distribution of those species. Utah can be divided into elev- en phytogeographic subunits, each topo- graphically, geologically, and phytologically different (Table 2). The numbers of endan- gered and threatened plants is approximately proportional to the number of endemic spe- cies in each phytogeographic subunit. En- demics constitute 27 percent of the total for the Navajo Basin; endangered and threatened plant species of that basin make up 28 per- cent of the total for the state. Proportions are similar for Plateau, Tavaputs, Uinta Basin, and all Qher phytogeographical regions. Ap- proximately 64 percent of all endemic spe- cies in these areas are considered as endan- gered or threatened. It is axiomatic that endemics should constitute the endangered and threatened candidates when the small areas occupied by them are considered. Endangered and threatened species of the Navajo Basin and Plateau subunits constitute half of the total number for Utah. Other im- portant regions include the Uinta Basin (13 percent), Great Basin (13 percent), and Mo- have (14 percent). The remaining areas in- clude only 11 percent of the species on can- didate lists in total. In general, endangered and threatened plant taxa in Utah occupy harsh substrates which are perceived by man as barren or nearly barren of vegetation. Hence, these critical species tend to occur in areas where there is little competition. Survival of the species depends on maintenance of the habi- tat in a condition wherein other species do not become competitive. Protection, as here- in conceived, involves guarantees against man-caused destruction of habitat. Natural changes should not be treated as endan- germent. Phytogeographic Subunits and Endangered and Threatened Species The distribution of critical species does not appear to be at random on the substrates available, and those substrates which support these species are not occupied uniformly. Rather, specific portions of apparently sim- ilar substrates are occupied, while others are not. Clays and other fine-textured coUuvial or aeolian materials and limestones are the most commonly occupied substrates (Table 3). To- gether, they form the substrates of 81 percent Table 2. Comparison of endemic, endangered, and threatened plant taxa by phytogeographic subdivision within Utah. Phytogeographic unit Endemi ics Endangered Number Percent N Threatened Total I umber Percent Number • &t Number P« jrcent Percent 7 3 1 1 1 1 65 27 17 32 25 25 42 28 48 20 11 21 22 22 33 22 3 1 2 4 2 1 25 10 8 15 12 12 20 13 4 0 4 4 4 3 3 1 2 2 2 1 23 10 1 2 6 6 7 5 35 15 7 13 13 13 20 13 26 11 ' 13 14 14 21 14 Colorado canyons Navajo Basin Plateau Tavaputs Uinta Basin Uinta Mts. Wyoming Wasatch Mts. Great Basin Mohave Pine Valley Mts. 239 53 100 99 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 73 Table 3. Endangered and threatened plant species arranged by substrate within Utah. Endangered Threatened Total Substrate Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Clay, silt, mud Sand Gravel Igneous gravel Limestone Talus Loam-humus Water Unknown L5 2 9 8 101 100 of the taxa on critical lists. Water-washed al- luvial deposits tend to support a greater plant cover than do the in situ substrates or those deposited by wind. Hence, probably because of the greater amount of cover and competition, the vast areas covered by water- borne alluvial deposits mainly lack critical species. The exceptions include some gravel deposits, especially those derived from ig- neous extrusive or intrusive stocks. Critical species are present in several of the major vegetative types within the state. As with other criteria, the taxa are not ran- domly distributed in all of the plant commu- nities. Pinyon-juniper, desert shrub, warm desert shrub, and salt desert shrub vegetative types bear 65 percent of all endangered and threatened candidates (Table 4). These are communities which lie within a low precipi- tation regime, wherein edaphic features are not insulated from plants by well-developed soil horizons or by organic matter within the soils. Edaphic features are the main con- trolling factors within low-elevation plant communities. Even where plants of a critical nature are present within a community which tends to occupy most of the surface area, and where soils are well developed, thus preventing di- rect edaphic control, the endemic species are found mainly in clearings, along bluff mar- gins, on ridge tops, and on other poorly vege- tated micro-habitats. Adiabatic and lapse rate differentials are reflected in elevational differences. High ele- vation areas are cooler and receive propor- Table 4. Endangered and threatened plant species arranged by plant community (the plant communities in ap- proximate order by elevation). Community Alpine Spruce-fir Aspen Mountain brush Ponderosa pine Pinyon-juniper Sagebrush Desert shrub Warm desert shrub Salt desert shnib Hanging garden Aquatic Other Unknown Endar igered Percent Threatened Total Number Number Percent Number Percent 5 5 5 3 3 6 14 14 17 11 2 4 1 1 3 2 1 2 1 1 2 1 2 4 7 7 9 6 17 .32 27 27 44 29 2 4 3 3 5 3 12 23 4 4 16 11 5 9 9 9 14 9 4 8 22 22 26 17 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 8 4 4 8 5 53 101 99 99 152 100 74 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 tionally greater amounts of precipitation, re- sulting in production of mesophytic plant communities in those sites. Plant species of a critical nature are mainly xerophytes, regard- less of the community type within which they occur. The large portion of species, some 60 percent of those designated as en- dangered or threatened, exist below the 6000 foot (1930 m) contour (Table 5). Possibly the reason for the great number of species at the lower elevations is due to the proportionally greater number of sites in arid lands which are open to colonization. Chemical and water relations of substrates are closely allied to geological strata. Eda- phic control by geological formations is greatest in areas where the strata are ex- posed. Layers of alluvium, which represent mixtures of materials from different sources, tend to insulate vegetation which grows on that alluvium from the chemical and water relations peculiarities of the individual stra- tum per se. Soil development reinforces sepa- ration of parent materials from plants. Hence, geological control of vegetative cover is greatest at lower elevations, where strata of many kinds are exposed over vast reaches. Soils as such are poorly developed or nonex- istant due to low rainfall and the corollary lack of leaching of soluble salts. There are regions at moderate to high ele- vations where edaphic factors of geological strata are controlling due to peculiarities of topography and geomorphology. Cliff faces and breaks at the margins of plateaus and ridge crests are examples of such places. In others, substrates which are very acidic or basic, as in some igneous or limestone strata, tend not to be insulated due to lack of growth of dense vegetation. Plant species of a critical nature occur on a series of geological strata ranging in age from Quaternary to Pre- cambrian (Table 6). There does not appear to be any particular stratum which bears a disproportionately large number of endangered or threatened species. The largest number is found on Qua- ternary alluvia, mainly on dunes or stabilized dune sand and on residual accumulations on the formations from which they were pro- duced. Even this small number represents only 17 percent of the included species. Dunes are open habitats. They are mesophyt- ic sites in otherwise arid lands. They repre- sent an anomaly wherein competition is low, but where water is relatively abundant and available. If mudstone, siltstone, and shale strata are considered collectively, some 37 percent of the species reside on them. Limestone or oth- er highly calciferous formations, such as Flagstaff, Wasatch, and the Carboniferous strata, provide substrates for 17 percent of the total plant species. Sandstone and con- glomeritic formations account for only 10 percent of the taxa. Partitioning of the phytogeographic sub- divisions demonstrates differences and sim- ilarities in areas of distribution, and in the control of that distribution. Disparity in geo- logical strata is obvious from one subunit to the next, and potential substrates differ be- cause of the different kinds of strata avail- able. The Paleozoic strata of the Great Basin and of the Wasatch Mountains present an en- tirely different array than do the Uinta Mountains, Uinta Basin, Navajo Basin, and Mohave subunits. Plant communities reflect those substrate differences, often in subtle ways. Additionally, the phytogeographic sub- imits are topographic features whose defini- tions are tied to elevation. Despite the problems associated with com- parison, and the obvious differences— which should not require discussion— an analysis of the various phytogeographic subunits will be Table 5. Endangered and threatened plant species arranged by elevation stratification. Elevation <6000 feet (1830 m) 6000-9000 feet (1830-2745 m) >9000 feet (2745 m) Unknown Endan gered Percent Threa tened Total Number Number Percent Number Percent 34 64 58 58 92 61 13 24 30 30 43 28 3 6 10 10 13 9 3 6 1 1 4 3 53 100 152 100 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 75 instructive in attempts at management of limestone. The other phytogeographic sub- lands in the respective areas as regards en- vmits bear so few species as to not demon- dangered and threatened species. The total strate trends. numbers of species in a given subunit might When plant communities are compared for be indicative of trends (Tables 7, 8, 9, and each of the phytogeographic subunits, it is 10). clear that pinyon-juniper and the various Summaries of species number and percent- kinds of desert shrub communities support ages for substrates in each of the phytogra- most of the endangered and threatened plant phic subunits demonstrates similarities be- species in the Navajo Basin, Uinta Basin, and tween the Navajo Basin, Uinta Basin, and Mohave subunits in Utah (Table 8). Spruce- Mohave subunits (Table 7). In each of these, fir, ponderosa pine, and pinyon-juniper com- clay, mud, silt, and sand constitute the sub- munities are the sites of occurrence of some strates of more than 85 percent of all critical 71 percent of the critical species in the plant species. Plateau subunit differs in bear- Plateau subunit. Alpine and spruce-fir are the ing more than 50 percent of the included main communities of those species in the species on limestone, and with igneous Uinta and Wasatch mountains, gravels being second with 18 percent. Pat- The Navajo, Uinta, Great Basin, and the terns in the Great Basin are obscure, with no Mohave subunits bear 80 to 100 percent of single substrate supporting more than 25 per- the species below 6000 feet in elevation. In cent of the species. Six of the seven species Plateau, Tavaputs, Uinta Mountains, and from the Wasatch Mountains are known from Wasatch Mountains all species are above the Table 6. Geological strata as substrates of endangered and threatened Utah plant species (Note: species were assigned to only one stratum, the major one, even if they occurred on more than one. Strata without numbers of species, indicated by a dash, are known to support critical species; those not marked are not known to support them.) Strata Quaternary Flagstaff Green River Bald Knoll Wasatch Duchesne River Tertiary Igneous Kaiparowits VVahweap Straight Cliffs Mancos Shale Tropic Shale Mowry Arapien Cedar Mt. Morrison Entrada Carmel Navajo Wingate Chinle Moenkopi Cutler Cedar Mesa Paradox Carboniferous Precambrian Unknown Threatened Endangered Number Percent Total Number Percent Number Percent 18 18 8 1.5 26 17 2 4 2 1 .3 3 10 19 13 8 9 9 4 8 13 8 5 5 5 3 9 9 1 2 10 7 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 5 5 4 8 9 6 1 1 1 1 2 4 3 1 2 1 4 1 4 1 4 1 3 1 — — 1 1 1 2 2 1 2 3 2 1 1 3 6 4 3 5 5 3 6 8 5 1 1 1 1 7 1 7 1 5 1 9 2 12 2 8 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 12 12 1 2 13 8 .3 3 3 2 7 7 4 8 12 8 99 99 53 99 152 99 76 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Table 7. Substrates of endangered and threatened plant species by phytogeographic subdivision in Utah. Substrate Colorado Navajo Uinta Canyons Basin Ni Plateau Basin Number Percent Number Pe rcent umber Percent Number Percent 23 55 2 6 16 80 1 100 16 38 4 12 3 15 1 5 11 2 6 17 18 52 1 2 1 2 2 1 1 4 3 3 Clay, silt, mud Sand Gravel Igneous gravel Limestone Talus Loam-humus Water Unknown TOTAL 100 2b 6000-foot contour (Table 9). Part of the ex- planation for this correlation is based on the definition of the subunits. The basins are mainly below 6000 feet in elevation, and the mountains are mainly above that figure. Similarities of geological formations in chemical and physical structure seem to be more important than the geological strata by themselves. Cutler, Moenkopi, Chinle, Car- mel, phases of the Entrada, Morrison, Ara- pien. Tropic Shale, Mancos Shale, and Du- chesne River formations tend to resemble each other texturally, and in having high amounts of soluble salts. Each of these sup- port one or more of the endangered or threatened species, some of which might be expected on others of those formations also. Indeed, some do occur on more than one for- mation, even though Table 10 is presented with only the major formation that serves as substrate represented. Differences and sim- ilarities between the subunits of the state are obvious. Geological strata in subunits of the Colorado drainage system tend to be most similar, but even in those there is a tendency for plants to react differentially, despite the similarities of stratigraphy. Predictive Capability Because of the nonrandom distribution of narrowly restricted species in Utah, it is pos- sible to prepare a model with predictive ca- pability which will aid in the search for these critical plants. The model, a sample of which is presented in Table 11, is based on deduc- Table 8. Plant communities of endangered and threatened plant species by phytogeographic subdivision in Utah. Plant Comm. Alpine Spruce-fir .\spen Mountain Brush Ponderosa pine Pinyon-juniper Sagebrush Desert shrub Warm desert shnib Salt desert shnib Hanging garden Aquatic Other Unknown Colorado Canyons Navajo Basin Plateau Tavaputs Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent 12 2 6 9 27 1 3 100 99 100 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 77 Table 7 continued. Uinta Wasatch Great Mts. Wyoming Mts Basin Moh lave Tavaputs Number Percent Number Percent Number '. Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent 5 25 9 43 2 100 2 100 4 2 1 20 10 5 9 43 6 86 5 25 2 10 1 25 3 75 1 5 1 14 2 10 1 5 4 100 2 100 7 100 20 100 21 101 2 100 tions derived from the nature of the distribu- tion of those species evakiated above. The reasoning behind the model is based on the unequal occurrence of the species with re- gard to several parameters. The probabilitv of occurrence is determined by use of a nu- merically weighted system in which the pa- rameters are given a value of zero, one, or two as indicated by the known presence of the species on specific portions of the state. For example, most of the species of restricted plants occur on the finely textured soils, the next highest proportion on dunes, in situ sand, and limestone, and the lowest on soils consisting of gravel, talus, loam, and humus. Hence, these substrate types are rated as two, one, and zero, respectively. The example outlined in Table 11 is sug- gested for the state, but more finely parti- tioned models are suggested for each of the phytogeographic subunits. It would not be logical to apply a high numerical weighting to elevations below 6000 feet for areas within the Plateau phytogeographic subunit where practically all the known critically restricted plants are above that elevation. Despite the usefulness of the suggested model, and its modifications, it is suggested that the model should be used as a planning tool only. There is no substitute for on- ground inspection and the collection of the general flora to provide information on ac- tual presence of plant species. Wherever pos- sible such on-site investigations should pro- vide herbarium materials for deposit in herbaria, taken in such manner as not to con- Table 8 continued. Uinta Basin N: Uir Ml ita :s. Wyoming Wasatch Mts. Great Basin Mohave Number Pe ircent umber Percent Number Percent Number Percent Ni jmber Percent Number Percent 3 1 60 20 1 5 14 71 8 40 1 20 1 50 1 14 1 3 5 15 1 7 5 .33 9 3 45 15 1 50 10 4 2 50 20 10 2 9 2 10 43 10 20 100 7 100 2 100 7 99 20 100 21 101 78 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Table 9. Elevation of endangered and threatened plant species by phytogeographic subdivision in Utah. Colorado Canyons Navajo Basin Plateau Tavaputs Elevation Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent < 6000 ft. 6000-9000 ft > 9000 ft. Unknown 100 100 33 100 100 stitute a threat in and of itself. This will guar- antee that information gained in field surveys will not be lost in the files of agencies and in- dustries attempting to work on the lands of the state. Perspective on the Endangered Species Act Value judgements as to the role of plants of limited distribution have not stopped, slowed down, or even modified the course of human expansion through all of history until now. Tlie present society has asked whether plant species should be eradicated as a part of the common good of our civilization. Value is a time-oriented function; that considered as valueless today might be judged as very valu- able in the future. Numerous examples of minerals are known which support this obser- vation. Plants have been surveyed many Table 10. Geologic strata serving as substrates of threatened plant species by phytogeographic subdivision in Strata Quaternary Flagstaff Green River Bald Knoll Duchesne R. Wasatch Tertiary Kaiparowits Wahweap Straight Cliffs Mancos Tropic Dakota Mowry Arapien Cedar Mt. Morrison Entrada Carmel Navajo Wingate Chinle Moenkopi Cutler Cedar Mesa Paradox Carboniferous Precambrian Unknown Colorado Canyons Navajo Basin Plateau Tavaputs Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent 4 10 3 2 9 6 2 100 2 5 14 7 2 42 21 6 1 8 3 1 2 20 67 2 1 100 1 1 3 3 4 3 2 2 2 2 7 7 10 7 5 5 1 2 3 6 3 7 2 6 1 100 41 98 a3 99 2 100 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 79 Table 9 continued. Uinta Basin Uinta Mts. Wyoming Number Percent Wasatch Mts. Great Basin Mohave Number Percent Number Percent Number '. Percent Number Percent Ni umber Percent 20 100 20 100 2 3 5 40 60 100 1 1 2 50 50 100 5 2 7 71 29 100 17 1 2 20 85 5 10 100 19 90 2 10 21 100 times for sources of biologically active mate- rials, e.g., alkaloids, vitamins, hormones, won- der drugs, and cortical steroids. Now they are again being surveyed for antitumor agents. Common plants are being surveyed first, pri- marily because of their ready availability. The rare plants will be reviewed as material becomes available. It would be a tragic irony if the best anticarcinogenic agent should be discovered in the leaves of a herbarium speci- men of a species which had just become ex- tinct. Extinction occurs as a function of natural forces, or as a function of man-caused factors. The former is selective in reducing popu- lations of living things. The latter is non- selective. The reasons for extinction of narrowly re- stricted plants on the same outcrop might in- volve loss of a pollinator for one species, in- Table 10 continued. Utah (Note: Only the major formation is indicated where plants occupy more than one.) Uinta Basin Uinta Mts. Wyoming Wasatch Mts. Great Basin Mohave Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent 50 35 20 20 100 20 100 100 100 25 15 100 5 101 80 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 festation by insects or disease for another. A construction project might cause wholesale extirpation by removal of the entire commu- nity. The rate of man-caused extinction far exceeds the natural rate. Thus, extinction caused by man is not a part of the natural scheme. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 made it possible for future generations to be in- volved in the value-oriented decisions. The act provides an advocate for generations yet unborn. Genetic pathways are, despite all of the possibilities, essentially one-way streets. The route by which a species is formed is as im- portant as the end result. The reconstitution of the pathway requires the same criteria as were present in the past, a functional impos- sibility to recreate. Thus, the loss of any spe- cies terminates a line which cannot be re- formed. And, once gone, the question of value to mankind is deprived of practical sig- nificance. The reason most of the proposed endan- gered and threatened plants are considered thusly is because the known populations are small and exist in very limited areas. Average distributional densities of one endangered species to each two or three thousand square kilometers, and of threatened species to val- ues of roughly half that figure, give an ap- proximation of their true paucity. Further, only a very small part of the total land sur- face is involved. Distribution of rare species is not equal, as has been discussed above. Certain areas ap- pear to lack them altogether, while other areas support concentrations of several spe- cies. Unless a specific mineral to be exploited is located within one outcrop which supports one or more species, or unless the area to be occupied by a particular development is large, there is no reason why modern expan- sion should impress any of the currently known endangered or threatened species. Even in these two exceptional instances there is no real reason to displace indigenous en- dangered and threatened species; the best site for industrial development is not always the only good alternative. Thus, if developers, and if the govern- mental agencies which control development on federal lands, follow the requirements as set forth in the act, there is little question that many, if not all, of the plant species which are ultimately determined as endan- gered or threatened can persist in perpetuity. The question of value of these plants is not an issue; the areas occupied by these plants can be avoided. Literature Cited Kartesz, J. T., AND R. Kartesz. 1977. The biota of North America. Part 1. Vascular plants. Volume I— Rare plants. Bonac, Pittsburg, Pa. 361 pp. Welsh, S. L. 1978. Endangered and threatened plants of Utah; A reevaluation. Great Basin Nat. 38: 1-18. 1978. Status reports of endangered and threat- ened plants of Utah. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser- vice (unpubl. ms.). Welsh, S. L., N. D. Atwood, and J. L. Reveal. 1975. Endangered, threatened, extinct, and rare or re- stricted Utah vascular plants. Great Basin Nat. 35: 327-376. Welsh, S. L., and K. Thorne. 1979. Identification man- ual of endangered and threatened plants of Utah. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service publication. 399 pp. Table 11. Outline of a predictive model for establishing priority areas for study of endangered and threatened plants of Utah. Numerical weighting Substrate Community Elevation Geology Phyto Subunit 0 Gravel, talus, loam, humus Other 9000 Other Colorado Canyons, Wyoming, Pine Valley 1 Dunes, in situ sand, limestone Spruce-fir Ponderosa 6000-90(X) Sandstone, in situ sand and limestone Wasatch Mts., Uinta Mts., Tavaputs PI., Plateau 2 Clay, silt, mud Pj-Des Sh variations 6000 Shale mud and siltstone Navajo, Uinta, Mohave, Great Basin MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS FOR PLANTS ON FEDERAL LANDS Diiaiie Atvvood' .\bstr\ct.— The plant phase of the Endangered Species Program is discussed from the point of view of a profes- sional botanist in government service. Some of the new amendments are also discussed from a botanical standpoint. Federal agency programs and policies in the western United States are briefly reviewed. The strength of the Endan- gered Species Program is dependent upon input from qualified professional biologists in and out of government ser- vice. Some of the problems encountered in the program are outlined. The comments I would like to make today are based on my experience with government agencies over the past several years. I do not speak as a representative of any government agency, although I have had experience with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and the Forest Service (FS). First of all, let me point out that professional people who work for government agencies have a very frustrating and difficult task. They want to get on with the job that should and could be done, but cannot because of regulations, policies, and conflicts with the management and planning staff. There is a communication gap between professionals and managers and planners that needs to be bridged somehow. Until recently, some of these agencies were strictly manage- ment and planning oriented. Passage of new federal laws and regulations, such as the En- dangered Species Act (ESA), created a need for these agencies to hire professionals with specialized training. It must be recognized that managers and planners have a difficult job making the proper decisions for the best uses of our natural resources and still be in time with the multiple use concept. Our job as professionals is to supply managers and planners with sufficient data on any given problem or project, as it relates to our area of responsibility and expertise, so they can eval- uate the pros and cons and in turn make the proper decisions. The active support of the Endangered Species Program (ESP) varies from agency to agency and from state to state within a given agency. For example. California has an excellent and effective Threatened and Endangered (T/E) plant pro- gram at both the state and federal level. Both state and federal agencies there have active, qualified botanists. Additional professionals outside of government have also taken an ac- tive interest in the ESP. In discussing various topics with the par- ticipants of this symposium, I was impressed with the need to clarify the responsibilities of the different agencies that participate in the ESP. As most of you know, the Fish and Wildlife Service has taken the lead in this program for terrestrial species and has the re- sponsibility for developing and implementing regulations to guide other federal agencies and the states in meeting the purpose and in- tent of the ESP. To accomplish this task they have published guidelines to implement the Convention on International Trade for En- dangered Species of Fauna and Flora, prohi- bitions on certain uses of endangered and threatened plants, criteria for determining critical habitat, and the Inner Agency Coop- erative Section 7 Regulations. In addition, the Fish and Wildlife Service has the respon- sibility for the consultation process, as re- quired by the Section 7 Regulations, and the listing and delisting processes. To most of us here the listing process is the activity the Fish and Wildlife Service should be moving forward with most rapidly. However, they have a disproportionate share of the work load and budgeting restrictions have been placed on them. Other major responsibilities of the Fish and Wildlife Service include law 'Uinta National Forest, Forest Service, U.S.D.A., 88 West 100 North, Pn 81 82 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 enforcement, land acquisition, cooperative agreements with states, and development of recovery plans and/or teams. The new amendments to the ESA require some changes in the program. One of the new amendments now allows for the acquisition of land for plants. Prior to these new amend- ments. Section 5 of the act, regarding land acquisition, was only for wildlife species or plants officially listed and concluded in ap- pendices to the convention. This new amend- ment is a breakthrough for plants. As I un- derstand it, the Forest Service, as well as the Department of the Interior, can now acquire land for plants. Formerly, the Department of the Interior was the only federal department that could acquire land. Additionally, there is the new requirement for development of re- covery plans for all officially listed endan- gered and threatened species. In Utah we have two plant species officially listed that are either on or adjacent to Forest Service Lands. We will be developing additional background data for use in these two recov- ery plans. I have two slides on them. The first is of Astragalus perianus, which is endemic to two locations in the central part of Utah at high elevations. The species was originally collected in 1905 by some of our early botan- ists, but was not rediscovered until 1976. The other species is Phacelia argiUacea, which is endemic to the Green River Shale formation along the railroad right-of-way in Spanish Fork Canyon. This is the only existing popu- lation that we know of, and only nine indi- vidual plants exist, based on counts made in 1978. In view of the restricted nature of this species, the Fish and Wildlife Service will place this one high on their priority list for development of a recovery plan. The various phases of the program that the Fish and Wildlife Service are trying to devel- op and implement directly affect the activi- ties of other federal agencies, particularly land-managing agencies such as the BLM, Forest Service, and National Park Service. As most of you know, the Forest Service and BLM are trying to develop active programs. The National Park Service apparently takes the position that threatened and endangered species in the parks are already protected and that they don't really need to do any- thing. However, as Stan Welsh pointed out. the influx of people into these areas does have a detrimental effect on many T/E spe- cies that exist there. Some of the other agencies who have no lands to manage but have an impact on endangered and threat- ened species are the Bureau of Reclamation, the Soil Conservation Service, and the Navy, Army, and Air Force. For example, projects with which the Bureau of Reclamation is in- volved will destroy habitat. There is, there- fore, a direct conflict with the purpose and intent of the ESA when endangered or threatened species are impacted by those projects. Some of those agencies are making no effort to determine the impact their proj- ects have on these species. We as profes- sionals, I feel, have the responsibility to be- come aware of their projects and to help provide these agencies with data and exper- tise. The trend among federal agencies is to solicit information and public opinion on var- ious projects. How many of you are respond- ing? To comply with the objectives and policies of the Endangered Species Program, the BLM, Forest Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service have developed the following policy to insure protection for T/E species prior to official listing and protection under the En- dangered Species Act. These agencies are considering all species that are likely to be- come endangered or threatened as though they are already officially listed to insure their actions do not jeopardize the existence of these species or modify their critical habi- tats. The degree of implementation varies within each agency from state to state and even within a given state. The strength of the program at these levels is dependent upon the professionals available to insure program development. There are very few plant tax- onomists in government to help guide the program. Therefore, the scientific commu- nity must become more involved if we are to achieve a realistic program. The benefits of such a policy are fourfold: (1) protection of sensitive species prior to listing, which can and will meet the purpose and intent of the 1973 ESA, thereby (2) preventing the need for official listing of many T/E Species, (3) resulting in fewer legal restrictions and more management options for agencies, and (4) creating more benefits to the species and 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 83 project development. A major concern of federal agencies is to meet the requirements of Section 7 of the ESA, which reads The Secretary shall review all programs administered by him and utilize such programs in hirtherance of the purpose of this act. All other federal departments and agencies shall in consultation with and with the assist- ance of the Secretary utilize their authorities in furthe- rance of the purposes of this act by carrying out pro- grams for the conservation of endangered species and threatened species listed pursuant to Section 4 of this act and by taking such action as necessary to insure that actions authorized, fimded, or carried out by them do not jeopardize the continued existance of such endan- gered and threatened species or result in the destruction or modification of habitat of species which is deter- mined by the Secretary after a consultation with the af- fected states to be critical. However, the overriding concern is to meet the purpose and policy of the ESA, "... to provide a means whereby ecosystems upon which endangered species and threat- ened species depend may be conserved, to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened spe- cies . . . [and the] . . . policy of Congress that all Federal departments and agencies shall seek to conserve endangered species and threatened species and shall utilize their au- thorities in furtherance of the purposes of this Act." It is my interpretation that the intent in the purpose and policy of the act is to con- serve and protect species likely to be endan- gered or threatened with extinction in the foreseeable future. John Spinks has indicated that the Fish and Wildlife Service will only be able to list 20 to 30 species of plants in 1979. This is less than 1 percent of the 1785 proposed species. The Forest Service and Bu- reau of Land Management policy, if it is en- forced, will provide the necessary protection for species which would otherwise become extinct due to the slow listing process. Fur- thermore, such a policy will minimize the need for official listing under the ESA. Two other major problems in the plant program come to mind: (1) a lack of data on candidate and proposed species, and (2) in- adequate lists of threatened and endangered plants. The latter is a result of insufficient data. Therefore, we must emphasize the need for additional inventories to determine the range of these species, their habitats, infor- mation on population biology, threats to their survival, and management problems. Presently a lack of funds is the biggest ob- stacle in developing an efficient data base. Some contracts have been let, and the cur- rent trend is to acquire these data through new contracts. Once we determine the loca- tions of the T/E plants, we have to go back to these specific locations and obtain suf- ficient data for use in management programs. My assigned topic today was on management programs for plants on federal lands. The fact is federal agencies have formulated few or no management programs for most plants be- cause we are in the inventory stage at the present time. We do have sufficient data on some species to make recommendations on listing or delisting from candidate and pro- posed lists and establish monitoring studies for others. The purpose of these monitoring studies is to acquire additional data on the status of the populations, their trends, condi- tion of the habitat, and the biological needs of the species to develop realistic manage- ment programs for their protection and re- covery, if possible. California has an active program that places them well ahead of other states. Most of the other western states are developing programs. Much of this effort is from the pro- fessional and private sectors and the rest from federal and state agencies. The state government, in most states, has shown the least interest and, in general, leans more to development. Four federal agencies will issue contracts for plant inventories in Utah this year. It is hoped these studies will be con- ducted by qualified professionals. In addition, we have established coordinating committees for state, federal, professional, and amateur botanists in most of the western states to avoid duplication of effort and coordinate program activities. Botanists in Utah have now established a Utah Native Plant Society. One function of the society will be to help implement a T/E plant program for the state. It is hoped our program will be as suc- cessful as that in California. We solicit your membership if you have an interest in the na- tive flora of Utah. Most federal agencies do not employ plant taxonomists. Fortunately, they do have some biologists with sufficient interest and back- ground to help develop a plant program. The 84 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Forest Service will hold training sessions for existing range and wildlife staff to familiarize them with T/E species in their areas of re- sponsibility. As a zone botanist, I am respon- sible for the Forest Service T/E plant pro- gram in Utah and Nevada. Within this area there will be from two to three hundred proj- ects requiring site inspections for T/E plants. With the current level of funding and avail- able staff we can expect to look at only 10 percent of these projects until more funding and personnel are available. We have, there- fore, prioritized the species and areas to be worked on. The initial effort is on critically endangered species. The following slides il- lustrate some of these. The first is Phacelia argillacea, which, as I mentioned earlier, is officially listed. Next is Townsendia oprica. It is known only from two populations and, as Stan Welsh indicated, one population had been destroyed by a gypsum operation. Only one population remains. Aictomecon humilis is restricted to the Moencopi formation in Washington County, Utah. It is more com- mon, but the impacts to the area are so se- vere that immediate listing is necessary to in- sure protection. Government-funded inventory contracts have resulted in range extensions for many of the proposed species, as well as the discovery of new species. Psoralea pariensis is a species described in 1975. Just a few years ago. Pri- mula specuicola was known only from a few collections along the Colorado River drain- age system. Recent studies, as a result of the ESA, have provided many new locations and, even though from 30 to 40 percent of the habitat has been inundateed by Lake Powell, official listing is not necessary. In the West, much of the land is adminis- tered by federal agencies. Table 1 illustrates the number of acres under Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and Fish and Wildlife control. Prob- ably 5 percent or less of all these acres will constitute critical habitat requiring pro- tection for T/E plant species. However, until our inventories are complete, we will not know where that 5 percent of the 632,992,185 acres is. Again we must use a priority system for inventories, based on the minimal data available. To show another relationship, I have outlined the number of candidate, possibly extinct, proposed and of- ficially listed species by state. Currently there are 15 plant species officially listed. More than half of them occur in California. The new amendments now include plants in Section 6 of the act under Cooperative Agreements. Table 2 outlines the status of co- operative agreements with states prior to the new amendments. Even though plants were not included in Section 6 of the act, original- ly four states submitted proposals to the FWS requesting funds for plants. Naturally, none have qualified. However, Utah submitted Table 1. Number of acres and T/E plants in the western United States. (1975 FR) (1976 FR) Number of (1975 FR) Number of BLM USES NPS FWS Candidate Possibly Proposed Officially listed plants' admin. admin. admin. admin. threatened extinct endangered State acres acres acres acres species species species Threatened Endangered Alaska 272,673,528 20,622,014 7,306,037 22,236,273 21 6 Arizona 12,596,043 11,219,839 1,629,943 877,200 106 5 65 California 15,577,909 20,327,515 4,258,2123 68,944 415 28 282 13 Colorado 8,354,671 13,773,966 535,050 51,947 18 3 32 Idaho 11,985,079 20,342,387 86,425 40,944 41 21 Montana 8,141,498 16,767,962 1,159,505 539,340 8 1 3 Nevada 48,373,664 5,112,7.55 262,321 2,202,045 85 6 48 New Mexico 12,956,665 9,106,299 241,621 316,183 26 3 19 Oregon 15,739,792 15,486,367 160,881 466,011 135 2 51 Utah 22,641,037 7,990,271 888,936 97,944 102 7 65 1 1 Washington 306,692 9,069,287 1,801,428 128,466 72 2 19 Wyoming 17,536,891 8,679,047 2,310,653 20,640,923 44,787 7,070,084 18 1,047 3 60 8 619 Totals 446,883,469 158,397,709 1 14 •22 species of the T/E plants have been officially listed. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 85 their proposal in June 1977 for both plants and animals and is close to qualifying. This is based on my conversation with the Washing- ton office of the FWS. Some states have heri- tage programs, and research natural area councils that have been extremely helpful in developing plant programs for the respective states. Your attendance at this symposium is evi- dence of the interest shared by many Ameri- cans in preserving our unique flora and fauna. We can have the necessary devel- opment to sustain us and still preserve these valuable resources by having an open mind to the problems at hand. Let's help close the communication gap between scientists, envi- ronmentalists, and politicians. Questions for Dr. Atwood Q. Is the listing of these taxa being coordinated because there are so few that are going to be hsted? There are strategies whereby protecting one species in a very interesting habitat would preserve maybe four or five others in the same area. A. It's my understanding that the Fish and Wildlife Service in-house policy is to develop listing packages on individual species. I think the best approach would be an ecosystem concept where there are two or three species, such as in Utah, where we have Thelypodiopsis argillacea, Glaucoc(ir})inn mffrutes- cens, and Crijtantha barnebyi in the Uinta Basin that occur in very similar habitats that are close to- gether. This could be a neat package, and we may incorporate Cnjptantha grahamii, which is nearby, and Penstemon gralumiii so you could have four or five in one package. Now that they have the new regulations for conducting public hearings, one pub- lic hearing would take care of all of those. Q. Ninety percent of the projects are being completed without an inventory. Isn't that contrary to the law? A. Not really. It's contrary to in-house policy, but not to law. The law, of course, is only for listed species. We have few listed species, and the projects, of course, are not impacting those. Those are on our priority list. If they were impacted, we wouldn't al- low the projects to continue. Table 2. State programs for T/E plants in the western United States. States" Cooperative Agreements Under Sec. 6 of the ESA Other State Programs Animals Plants Research natural Heritage areas Signature stage Yes, inactive Signature stage Active program Proposal stage ? Proposal Idaho Natural Areas Coord. Committee Established in 1975, None now handled by state fish and game None None Established in 197.3 State Natural Areas Preserves Committee None Started Fall 1977 Natural Areas Advisory Preserve Committee Established in 1978 ■p Proposal State p Arizona California Colorado Idaho New Mexico Nevada Oregon Utah Washington Wyoming Montana reviewed None None Qualified on 6/2.3/76 None Qualified on 6/23/76 None Trying to qualify None Qualified on 6/23/76 None None None None None Trving to qualify Proposal submitted by state on 5/04/77 Qualified on 6/23/76 Proposal submitted in 1976 None Proposal submitted by state on 2/11/75 State program being State program being reviewed by FWS °23 states have qualified for cooperative agreement for wildlife programs. STRATEGIES FOR PRESERVATION OF RARE PLANTS AND ANIMALS G. Ledyard Stebbins' .\bstract.- Human preservation of endangered species apparently commenced prior to recorded history with Ginks hiloba, in China, a tree now known only under cultivation. A niunber of species have become extinct because man either failed to recognize their value or did not act quickly enough to preserve them even when their value was appreciated. A philosophy of conservation must be based upon cooperation with others looking to the future. Appro- priate strategies that could be adapted from the military to achieve the objectives of species conservation include: (1) Know your enemy, his strengths and weaknesses, and the tactics he is likely to employ. (2) Inferior forces cannot hope to annihilate or completely neutralize an enemy, but can deflect him from his course. (3) If you have limited manpower, don't try to do too many things at once; concentrate on primary objectives. (4) Seek the most powerful allies you can find and learn to cooperate with them as nearly on their own terms as is compatable with your objec- tives. (5) Soften the enemy by harrassment, when possible, before beginning the final attack. (6) Make use of all the time that is available; do not risk defeat by premature attack. (7) Never give in as long as there is hope. (8) The most important principle of all, never underestimate what you are doing. The first rare species to have been pre- served by humans was Ginkgo biloba, the Chinese Maiden Hair Tree. Nobody has ever seen it as a wild tree. The first Europeans to see and name it found it in the courtyards of the temples of China. Fossils indicate that during the Tertiary period, 30 or more mil- lion years ago, it was widespread through the Northern Hemisphere, but by the time hu- mans had appeared on the scene it was al- ready confined to China. Where did it grow as a native and why was it preserved in culti- vation? A possible answer to these questions is provided by clues given me by a good sci- entific friend of mine, the late Edgar Ander- son. He had one of the most remarkable per- ceptions for understanding cultivated plants and their relationships to their wild ances- tors. He said, "Ledyard, have you ever thought about this fact— that the trees which are most successful along the streets of our cities are those which are native to the banks of great rivers or deltas? This is because a riv- er tree is used to being flooded at one season and parched dry at another season, having heavy soil dumped on it, and big logs fall over it, receiving all the punishment that a tree gets under street conditions." Ginkgo is such a tree. I was impressed by this many years ago when I was working at Columbia University in a laboratory suite on the eighth floor of the biology building there. I looked out every morning at the top of the Ginkgo tree eight stories above the courtyard where that tree had been planted. In the middle of New York City, it was certainly a very suc- cessful tree. The Chinese plain is traversed by two huge rivers, the Yangtse and the Hoang Ho (the Yellow River). Although the climate of China is a forest climate, those plains are now com- pletely denuded of native trees. Cultivation extends right to the edges of the rivers. Pre- sumably those forests were cut down long be- fore the Christian Era. My speculation is that Ginkgo was an element in ancient Chinese ri- parian forests. When the forests were being cut down, the priests of the temples thought it an unusual tree, and having medicinal properties. They brought in the seeds and saved trees in the temple courtyards. They were the first conservationists I can think of. We come from a long and honorable lineage. Nevertheless, the concept of conservation became almost extinct during the earlier cen- turies of our own millennium. The past 500 years have witnessed the most extensive ex- tinction of animal species due to a single cause to have happened during a 500-year period throughout the evolutionary history of 'Department of Genetics, University of Califomia, Davis, California 95616. 87 88 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 animals. That cause is human interference with nature. Among the well-known victims of human destruction are the dodo, the great auk, the passenger pigeon, the plains bison, the moas of New Zealand, the Asiatic lion, the European forest horse, and the native wild horses that formerly roamed the Ameri- can plains. Many others could be mentioned. Must this destruction continue or can we stop it? Before considering means of reversing this trend, we must be fully aware of the problem we face. Our opponents are not merely a few greedy men who are out to make a fast buck in total disregard of other human values. We certainly must face and neutralize such enemies by any means available to us. In ad- dition, we must realize that our efforts are running counter to a life-style that was adopted by prehumans long before our own species. Homo sapiens, came into existence. Recently acquired knowledge about human evolution suggests strongly the belief that when human ancestors left the shelter of the tropical forests that were their original homes and began to live by hunting game in savanna areas, they adopted, partly in a sub- conscious way, a life-style that was based upon two objectives: destroy or annihilate the enemy and exploit the resource. The first enemies of humanity were predators. Hence the extinction of the Asiatic lion a short time after the Christian Era and in very recent times, the destruction of the California griz- zly bear, the symbol of our state, during the 19th century. Many more species have become extinct as a result, either directly or indirectly, of the philosophy: exploit the resource. Before hu- mans started to cultivate fields or domes- ticate animals, the resources were wild game animals as well as wild plants that provided edible seeds, fruits, and roots— consequently early exploitation of wild horses took place in most of their range. Anthropologists have un- covered, particularly in the new world, many sites suggesting that primitive humans drove horses over cliffs, slaughtering them whole- sale, picking up the bodies of those they could carry and using them for food, hides, and other purposes. This to them was a nor- mal way of life. The destruction of flightless, slow-moving island birds such as the dodo and the great auk by European sailors and the moas in New Zealand by colonizing Maori people came about as a natural result of a desire for fresh meat on the part of men who had been deprived of it for a very long time. Other species have become totally ex- tinct or preserved only in cultivation or do- mestication because their existence involved competition with resources of agriculture or domestication. Ginkgo has already been men- tioned. Another is probably the ancestor of domestic cattle. As is shown so beautifully in paintings made by men who lived in Europe from 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, wild bulls were hunted as game. Archaeological records suggest that the first domestication of cattle was connected with religious rites. Bearing curved horns that resembled a crescent moon, cattle were regarded by some ancient tribes as sacred to the moon goddess. Sacred bulls of ancient Crete are well known to his- tory, and, in India, sacred cows that cannot be killed still cause trouble. The expression "holy cow" is more than a casual bit of mod- ern slang. It follows a long and venerable his- tory. Domestication of cattle was one cause for the near extinction of wild animals. A beast as strong as a bull could be handled only if reasonably tame, yet whenever cows belonging to herds of domestic cattle were covered by wild bulls and produced calves from those bulls, genes for wildness in- troduced in this fashion must have counter- acted the effects of primitive husbandmen to breed tractable herds. Wild cattle became not only a resource to be exploited, but also enemies to domestication. Modern history gives us similar examples of species that have become extinct or nearly so because of com- petition with various kinds of human efforts. The senseless slaughter of plains bison and passenger pigeons during the last century were not the only cause for the extinction of these species. Nesting grounds for the passen- ger pigeon were in rich bottom lands highly suitable for agriculture. Farm produce was regarded not only by the farmers themselves, but by everybody as more important than nests of pigeons. The buffalo competed with both cattle and dry farmers. Once the prairies were fenced in, the wanderers could no longer survive because their basic way of life had become impossible. More recently, plant species have become extinct because 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposi 89 growing cities have destroyed their habitat. Of two species that once grew only within the crowded city hniits of San Francisco, one of them, Sanicuki maritima, is completely ex- tinct and another, Arctostapliylas francis- cana, the San Fransisco Manzanita, is repre- sented by a single wild shrub plus many in gardens. These examples should teach us the follow- ing lesson: the main barrier to preserving our priceless heritage of rare animals and plants is not human greed. It is, rather, the natural tendency for people of all kinds to be short- sighted and to prefer to satisfy immediate needs rather than long-term benefits, particu- larly those which will be enjoyed only by their progeny of successors. Moreover, conservationists are allied with a whole series of people who realize the need for reversing a life-style that has dominated humanity for over a million years. Annihila- tion and liquidation must be replaced by col- laboration, or at least tolerance on all fronts. Exploitation must be replaced by con- servation. The future existence of humanity depends on the success of efforts toward this reversal. Saving rare plants and animals is a small but highly significant part of mankind's vital efforts to survive during the coming centuries. From the above considerations, a philoso- phy of conservation must be based more upon cooperation with others and looking to- ward the future. Education that might con- vert apathy into a true realization of the problem is preferable to a direct attack on an enemy, who is painted in black colors of un- compromising greed. Conservation Is a form of politics, whether we like it or not. In a de- mocracy or in a community of free nations, political action, especially when it is prac- ticed of necessity by a small minority, de- pends for its success on adopting and exploit- ing to the limit strategies that are appropriate for each particular goal. The fol- lowing well-known military strategies are particularly appropriate for conservationists who are seeking to preserve rare animals and plants. First, know your enemy, his strengths and weaknesses, and the tactics he is likely to employ. Potential enemies are any group of people who for reasons that may seem to be completely valid and justifiable are likely to destroy rare plants and animals and their nat- ural habitat. Among them are people en- gaged in agriculture, livestock raising, oper- ators of mines or quarries, prospectors, urban and suburban developers, developers of mass recreational facilities such as golf courses and ski slopes, and conservationists who believe the greatest need for future civilizations is water backed up in giant dams and water power projects. Each of these groups is armed with verbal weapons that may appear, on the surface, to be equally or more pow- erful than any of those in our arsenal. The growing population needs more food. New resources of minerals and energy pro- vided by coal, oil, and gas are vital to the na- tion's growing economy. The greatest need of the United States is more and better housing. Recreational development such as golf courses and ski slopes make life more enjoy- able for millions. The rare plants and rare an- imals of the wilderness can be appreciated and enjoyed only by a small cult of nature lovers. The realistic way to provide for future generations is to build dams that will make more water and power available to people. All of these arguments sound logical, realis- tic, and incontrovertible. In a way they are. Attempts to refute them directly will cer- tainly end in failure. Our strategy must be to recognize the partial validity of these and similar arguments. We must work around them, not try to overthrow them. Tlie second principle is: inferior forces cannot hope to annihilate or completely neu- tralize an enemy, but they can deflect the enemy from its course. On this basis, reason- able answers to the arguments mentioned above could be found. Surely more food, minerals, energy resources, and housing are needed, but with few exceptions these can be had by developments that do not destroy pre- cious and irreplacable habitats and the native species they contain. The same can be said even more justifiably about the development of golf courses and ski slopes. As a matter of fact, I have taken part in opposition to devel- opment projects that are ill advised and ill conceived from a strictly economical point of view, regardless of conservation. Opposition from conservationists in those cases called at- tention to the unsound nature of these proj- ects and, by causing them to be abandoned, 90 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 saved the developers or their innocent cHents from economic embarrassment or possible disaster. One of these is located in the north coast ranges of California. It was a proposed resort development on the shore of Boggs Lake, a large, vernal pool. In April or May, during the wet season, Boggs Lake is a sheet of blue, limpid water almost a mile in diameter sur- rounded by gently sloping gravelly beaches, behind which is a cool pine forest. Situated in the mountains almost 3000 feet above level, far from the nearest city or freeway, it would seem to be an ideal place for a hideaway where a cool forest glade and pure mountain water could be enjoyed. That description, and accompanying photos used by developers were based only on its spring condition. Its appearance, however, is highly deceptive. Boggs has no spring-fed inlet and is exposed continuously for five months throughout the California summer to a hot, dry sun. If one, therefore, visits this "lake" in August or Sep- tember, the former lake has become a dry and dusty flat with a few soggy places in its center. Pine forests are still there, but they too have become hot and dry and present a continuous fire hazard. Pools of this kind usually harbor several rare and endemic species. Boggs Lake is one of the best of this kind for botanical research. When members of the California Native Plant Society heard about a proposed resort planned along its shores, we went in great number to a hearing in the Lake County Courthouse to present our views. Before doing so, we took the trouble to walk around the area carefully and acquired a greater fa- miliarity with the terrain than had the devel- opers. Their publicity was based chiefly upon an airplane survey. Our view of the situation was strong enough to dissuade both the coun- ty supervisors and the developers from con- tinuing the project. Boggs Lake was then ac- quired by the Nature Conservancy and its imique habitat is premanently preserved. The third principle is, if you have limited manpower, don't try to do too many things at once. Concentrate on primary objectives. In terms of conservation strategy, do not spend valuable time on every species that is rare and local. Most of the rare species that live in national parks, state parks, wilderness areas, that have been set aside by the national park and similar privately controlled areas, need only occasional monitoring to see that provi- sions and rules for preservation are being car- ried out. Sometimes the officials need to be informed. I remember an example of a grass in the Sierra Nevada, a rare species, Stipo la- tiglumis, known from only about three local- ities. I had a suspicion about its origin. I sus- pected that it evolved in what now is a genetically familiar fashion: crossing between two other species of Stipa and doubling the chromosome number: an allopolyploid. The most accessible place for this species, accord- ing to herbarium labels, was Lost Arrow Camp in Yosemite Valley. In Yosemite Na- tional Park, as in other parks, a collecting permit is required. Collecting permits always say in very large capitals, NO COLLEC- TING OF ANY KIND IS PERMITTED ON THE FLOOR OF THE VALLEY. Never- theless, I went to the park naturalist's office to ask for a permit. When I explained what I wanted, the park naturalist himself received me. He said, "Where does it grow in the val- ley?" "The labels say Lost Arrow Campground." "This is where the government center is built." "Do you think there are any native areas here?" "I think I know them pretty well, but I don't think you'll find anything unusual here at all." "May I look? And if I find it here, may I collect'it?" "Well, I guess you can." We started looking. We found it in the front yard of the private residence of the park naturalist himself. Its allopolyploid na- ture was demonstrated by Dr. Richard Pohl. Other rare species, not in the national parks or preserved areas, nevertheless grow in such inaccessible spots that they are very unlikely to be destroyed. An example is a species of the genus Eupotorium that many years ago I discovered on a north-facing limestone cliff near Lake Shasta. Eupatorium shastensis is always perched on cliffs, and 80 percent of the plants of it are so high up on the cliffs that no one can reach them except by specialized rock climbing techniques. There is danger, possibly, from prospecting 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 91 or blasting of these limestone cliffs, except for the fact that they are in very rugged ter- rain, one of them isolated from any highway by the waters of Lake Shasta and the other on the summit of a very rugged mountain. Bringing in equipment to mine these areas would be extremely expensive. Because it is on their land, the Forest Service knows about it and I believe will not issue permits for prospectors or mining on these rather unusu- al limestone cliffs. This case requires mon- itoring, even if there is no formal preserva- tion. General applications of this strategy, I be- lieve, is to keep lists of rare and endangered species as short as practicable, to pay as much attention as possible to the amount of danger and the nature of the danger to which a species might be exposed and to determine actual rarity in terms of space occupied and actual numbers of individuals in each popu- lation. Government officials and leaders of general conservationist organizations, such as the Sierra Club, should not be presented with lists of two or three hundred species with un- familiar names. I suspect that in many in- stances these are filed in some cabinet, which a secretary might open every six months or so. Here is a situation where the more we know about potential and imminent danger, the better off we are. The fourth principle is to seek the most powerful allies you can find and learn to co- operate with them on as nearly their own terms as is compatible with your objectives. My happiest experience with powerful allies resulted in partial preservation in an area that for 25 years previously had been very dear to my heart. This is a little-known por- tion of the fabulously scenic Monterey Penin- sula on the coast of central California. That area, a small, ancient "raised beach" millions of years old (Pliocene), is underlaid by a ster- ile, hard, and impervious "hard pan" soil. Its plant communities contain so many problems in evolution and plant geography that I have nicknamed it "Evolution Hill." Its most dis- tinctive tree species are the Bishop pine and the narrowly endemic, rare dwarf, Gowen cypress. Each time I have taken students to this area it has given me cause for apprehen- sion. We could traverse by foot a network of trails and rough roads. The owners had the trees and bnish cut so that they could very easily be converted into paved streets and the whole place put into a resort development. Ownership is in the hands of an exclusive multimillion dollar organization, Del Monte Properties, which was then the fiefdom of one of the most prominent citizens of north- ern California, Samuel F. B. Morse. One day during the 1950s I obtained an appointment with Mr. Morse to discuss the future of Evo- lution Hill. The great man was polite and cordial. He said that he too was much inter- ested in saving the area and to see that it re- mained preser^/ed as long as he remained in control. He could not, however, make com- mitments that would tie the hands of his suc- cessors. Mr. Morse at that time was in his late seventies and he had clearly given me only a temporary stay of execution. Several years later, after Mr. Morse's death, the blow fell. I received a telephone call from a prominent resident of the peninsula, the director of a nearby laboratory. He said, "I want you to come down to Salinas to attend a meeting of the County Planning Commission. The new director of Del Monte, who used to be vice- president of the Corning Glass Works, wants to start a sand quarry for glass in the forest right behind our house." I realized at once that Evolution Hill was in danger, but also that we members of the California Native Plant Society had powerful allies. Several of the most wealthy and prominent home- owners who had bought and built in the for- est in order to have quiet solitude with undis- turbed woodlands for hiking and horseback riding felt that their life-style was severely threatened and that the hundreds of thou- sands of dollars they had invested in their homes might go down the drain. The result of the first hearing was noncommital, but the stay of execution was maintained. No permit to quarry was issued. We then organized a joint fact-finding site visit attended by more than 100 members of the Native Plant So- ciety plus several homeowners. Such an event deserved and received good newspaper pub- licity in the area. Hearings and litigation con- tinued for about two years. Finally the quarry-minded individuals from the Del Monte Company gave up the sponge. They donated a portion of the hill to the county to be set aside as the S.F.B. Morse Preserve and 92 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 agreed not to quarry for sand in an area near the established homes. We would have pre- ferred to see the preservation of all of Evolu- tion Hill, and this may still be possible. Ten years after this partial victory, it is still as I first saw it; no homes have been built in the area. The fifth principle of strategy: if possible, soften the enemy by harrassment before be- ginning the final attack. This principle is well illustrated by an experience we had a few years ago in an endemic area in the Sierra Foothills, known as Pine Hill. This hill, 25 miles east of the state capitol of Sacramento, about 2000 feet high, has a number of en- demic species. The most spectacular of these is a flannel bush, Fremontodendron deciim- bens, described by Dr. Robert Lloyd. It is noted for its prostrate habit and its copper- colored flowers, where most flannel bushes have bright yellow flowers. It is a very dis- tinctive species, not known anywhere except on Pine Hill. I say with some confidence that my friends and I have combed over every hill in the neighborhood that could possibly hold it and we have never found it, so I'm certain the central ridge of Pine Hill is the only place where this shrub grows. One day a member of the Native Plant So- ciety visited Pine Hill only to find that the Forest Service, in order to construct a fire break, had cut down almost all of the shrub of Fremontodendron, and it looked as if it was gone. His reaction was immediate and posi- tive. He wrote a strongly worded article that was soon published in our society's journal. The article brought a flood of letters from outraged members of the Native Plant So- ciety to the office desk of the district man- ager. That was in May. In October I got a letter from a friend in the nearest town, Pla- cerville: "Ledyard, I want you to come. I've got to go out with the ranger to Pine Hill." Why? "Because they want to put in a little powerplant, about 10 X 20 feet and they want to do it without having all the flack that we gave them on the fire break." So we went up there and we told them where to put it, a place where there were almost no plants. Soon after, we were able to enlist the powerful ally. The husband of the secretary of our Sacramento chapter of the Native Plant Society, Warner Marsh, had been in the Sacramento office of the State Forest Ser- vice for many years and was highly respected by all personnel in that service. So, Warner went out with one or two other people and the ranger and put a little pink ribbon on every shrub of the Fremontodendron. Fortu- nately, it is quite a resilient shrub. Cutting down the branches didn't destroy the roots, and so new branches came up. They're back again and now the California State Forest Service isn't going to disturb them. We are having other problems with Pine Hill be- cause of changes in the state government or- ganization, but we're still very optimistic that the whole area will be preserved. The sixth principle of strategy is to make use of all the time that is available. Do not risk defeat by premature attack. Many con- servationists who are aware that an unusual habitat is threatened by mining, quarrying, development, or some other way, tend to magnify the threat and particularly its imme- diacy. Sometimes this attitude is justified and necessary; other times it is not. Surely, if the developer is known to have his eyes on one of our favorite spots, we must act quickly with all resources at our command. Never- theless, we cannot be stampeded by a poten- tial danger which may not be realized for some time. Here again precise knowledge of the danger that threatens a rare species or community is of the utmost importance. The seventh principle is never give in as long as there is hope. One can lose several battles but still win the campaign. The last two principles are well illustrated by the campaign to save the lone Manzanita area on the eastern margin of California's central val- ley, one of the most dramatic of California's ecological islands. I call it an ecological is- land because the soil is so different from the surrounding soils that the species living there are isolated as if they were on an oceanic is- land surrounded by a sea of grass and oaks. Another inhabitant of the barrens is a species of buckwheat, Eriogenum opricum, described about 25 years ago by J. T. Howell. When the California Native Plant Society was formed, one of our objectives I thought of almost immediately was saving lone Man- zanita, so a group of us went to the Amador County Courthouse first to find out who owned it. The results were not encouraging. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 93 The whole area belongs to a syndicate con- trolled by a large San Francisco bank, which leases land to miners and quarriers because there is a clay of extremely high value. When we approached one of the officials of this company, we got a very emphatic reply, "We'll mine every blank blank cubic foot of that sand and clay and we dare you blank blank s. o. b.'s to stop us." Somewhat later, we were still trying to find a way around them and went on a Sun- day when we thought nobody would be there to look for another spot for the Eriogonum epricum. We ran into some people who turned out to be miners who were not mining on Sunday, but were hunting quail or some- thing like that. They said, "What are you doing in our place?" We explained what we were doing. "You better get off. We're hon- est miners and we've been working this for 20 years. This place is full of rattlesnakes and I wish there were twice as many of them to keep you blank blank blanks from going on to it." Well we haven't given up. We've had articles in our journals. We've had publicity wherever we could find it. We've discussed it with the California Department of Parks and Recreation and other groups, and we have gained some allies. Meanwhile the quarries that existed for some time are still there and still working, but they haven't invaded any more territory than they had when we first started in 1966. So while there's life there is hope. (NOTE: As this article was going to press, I received a welcome announcement: The central heart of the lone Manzanita area has been purchased by the Nature Conservancy.) The eighth and last principle— the most im- portant principle of all— never underrate the importance of what you are doing. Human civilization is built on two great pillars. A pillar of knowledge and a pillar of beauty and its aesthetic appreciation, whether it be the beauty of nature, artistic creation, or the beauty of the spirit. Drs. Lovejoy and Cle- ment this morning showed us part of a world- wide effort to save humanity from its own destruction. Fountains of knowledge can be bound up in the most ugly and unattractive weeds we are trying to save. A plant known only in a few suburban areas, which is now severely threatened, is a tar weed known as Holocarphra macradenia. Now tar weeds are among the nastiest weeds in California pastures. To try and tell a ran- cher that you want to save a tar weed is just like telling him to stop drinking beer. Well, it so happens that this species was part of a large-scale research project carried on by I. Clausen and D. D. Keck 25 or 30 years ago. They discovered that what the taxonomists had called two species are actually four mor- phologically recognizable ones. Among those four species, hybrids between almost any col- lections from two different localities were sterile or couldn't be made. In other words, hiding under first two and then four species is a whole series of little narrow endemic spe- cies, the nature of which is associated with chromosomal difference. In our quest for un- derstanding the mechanisms of the origin of species, the tarweeds, including Holocarpha macradenia, could be a key group. Now we will have to resist the desire to succumb to the developers and keep the species alive, at least under cultivation. After all, the habitat will be gone anyway. The place where it has been known for the last 50 years is in associ- ation with wild oats and other introduced species. Its prehuman habitat was gone long ago. This is an example of a humble sticky, smelly, nasty weed which could be a gold mine of scientific information. Now we should then come to the aesthetic value. My illustrations cannot equal the beau- ty you saw in the booklet of the National Wildlife Federation we all received this morning. I'll show finally just two slides which give a modest impression of the beauty of plant species. One is a Monterey cypress, growing on the granite cliffs facing the blue Pacific Ocean, with its picturesque branches and trunk growing out of solid granite. The other is a pure white flower of the California rose mallow centered with the deep maroon spot in the middle of the flower, growing in the hot valley in the middle of the summer. STRATEGIES FOR PRESERVATION OF RARE PLANTS Arthur H. Holmgren' .\bstract.— Preservation of the habitat is the only logical strategy to save endangered species from earlv extinc- tion. Ecological amplitudes of rare species are very narrow, so transplantation to such alien sites as botanical gardens is not a solution. Protection may not be the answer. We must learn as much as we can about the biology of the species in question, in the field and under laboratory conditions. The first steps must be to determine the distribu- tion. This would be followed by analysis of soils by means of physical and chemical studies. Pollination ecology, associated species, phenological records, and genetic and cytological studies must be a part of the biological studies. Such studies would require teamwork by qualified botanists. I suspect I was asked to take this assign- ment because, as several of you know, I have cultivated many of our western native plant species. Most of these plants were introduced into my gardens so I could have laboratory material for my taxonomy classes. I had great success with Penstemons and at one time I had 33 species in this genus. Many of my Penstemons hybridized under prolonged flowering conditions in my gardens until it was difficult or nearly impossible to deter- mine parents of most of my hybrids. Some of my introductions in other genera became troublesome weeds. These are not the kinds of species we are concerned with in this sym- posium. I will devote my time to strategies for preservation of rare plants. My answer and only logical strategy is to preserve the habi- tat of the threatened and endangered species so that we may save them from early extinc- tion. Species inevitably become extinct, in times past by natural forces, but in recent times greatly accelerated by man's destruc- tive activities. Extant knowledge of rare species indicates that ecological amplitudes are very narrow and thus transplantation to such alien sites as botanical gardens is not a solution. And still, Franklinia alatamaha Marsh was preserved in cultivation. The lost camellia or Franklin tree, originally from someplace in the coastal plain of Georgia, was discovered by John and William Bartram in 1765 and has not been seen in its native place since 1790. Many bot- anists have searched long and hard for the lost camellia. Dr. Ritchie Bell of the Botany Department at the University of North Caro- lina has made several expeditions with gradu- ate students in search for the lost camellia that has been in cultivation for nearly 200 years. In the absence of hard data, habitat preser- vation is the only option open, and it is in- creasingly at hazard because not even the sci- entific community understands the problems. Habitat preservation is seen as a powerful threatening tool to the. public at large and es- pecially to those who are anxious to develop our natural resources. Elected office holders and seekers are afraid to line up with the bi- ologist who sees the need to preserve habitats of threatened and endangered species. We have no idea yet how much area to protect or even if protection is the answer. Two species come to mind that thrive in disturbed sites. Astragalus patjsonii (Rydb.) Barneby is usually found in burned-over areas in Wyoming and Mertensia toijahensis Macbr. thrives in similar habitats in the Toiyabe Range in Lander County, Nevada. Many species make a living in disturbed sites, but it is unusual to find rare species in .such habitats. Perhaps more fieldwork will show that the two species mentioned here are not as rare as we have thought. Dr. Howard S. Irwin, president of the New York Botanical Garden, said in a letter to me 'Professor Emeritus of Biology and Acting Curator of the Intermountain Herbarium, Utah Stale University. Logan. Utah 84322. 95 96 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 dated 16 October 1978: "The most desperate need is a federal program that would encour- age students to study the biology of species' rarity, more or less in the manner followed by Dr. Lazarus Walter Macior at Akron Uni- versity in investigating the Furbish louse- wort." I contacted Dr. Macior and received a prompt reply dated 14 November 1978. Dr. Macior enclosed a copy of his manuscript which will appear in the October-December 1978 issue of the Bulletin of the Torreij Bot- anical Club. All papers published in the Bul- letin of the Torrey Botanical Club are copy- righted, so the manuscript was sent to me for my personal use only. Dr. Macior's work with the Furbish lousewort will certainly be- come a model for experimental studies on rare species. The first step in a strategy for preserving rare plants must be to learn as much as pos- sible about them in the field and under con- trolled conditions in the laboratory. Every ef- fort must be made to determine the distribution of the taxon in question. Sme- lowskia hohngrenii Rollins was thought to be confined to one rock prominence in the To- quima Range, but Sherel Goodrich discov- ered that this unusual species was actually more common in the Toiyabe Range to the west. The known distribution at this writing includes four stations in the Toquima Range and 10 populations in the Toiyabe Range, so the species is not considered to be in the pre- carious situation suspected prior to the 1978 field season. This unusual mustard is a dis- tinctive species, and, as is true so many times in this family, species are easier to recognize than the problem of assigning them to gen- era. I still have difficulty thinking of this spe- cies as belonging to the genus Smelowskia. To me, it seems to have closer affinities with the genus Bray a, far to the north. It may turn out that we have a new genus. Arahis shockleyi Munz is another species that may turn out to be more common than we have thought. Only a few widely scattered collec- tions have been made from Tooele County, Utah, to the San Bernardino Mountains in California. The paucity of collections prob- ably illustrates how poorly some of our desert ranges are known. Detailed field studies would vary to some extent with different species. The Smelowskia of central Nevada is found in crevices of an- desite rocks, and future studies on this species may show that it has a preference for this kind of a substrate. Arctomecon humilis Cov- ille and A. californica Torrey and Fremont probably require gypsum soils, often referred to as "gumbo" clay. Detailed biological studies would begin af- ter the distribution of the species has been determined. Biological studies of rare species would investigate the ecological adaptations of the species as to edaphic factors and biotic environment. Soil samples would be taken from many sites and thoroughly analyzed with every sophisticated chemical and phys- ical means we know. Weather records would be analyzed or gathered. Total precipitation means little unless we know the distribution throughout the year. Climatic characteristics in a broad sense would also include solar radiation and temperature records. Pollination ecology may be a key as to why a species is rare and perhaps even on the verge of becoming extinct. The loss of a pol- linator through spray programs may place a species in imminent danger of becoming ex- tinct. Phenological records should be kept and associated species recorded. What are the re- quirements for seed germination? Much re- mains to be learned about seed germination and especially for rare species. Under what conditions is flowering initiated? How soon after flowering are fruits matured, and what is the mode of seed dissemination? Are cer- tain species usually associated with a taxon we are studying, or is a niche so inhospitable that our species has the habitat without a competitor? Cytological studies would help in possibly determining closely related species. Dr. James Reveal and I prepared a paper several years ago on Cilia caespitosa A. Gray that was never submitted for publication. The chromosome number of this rare and restrict- ed species was determined to be the same as the wide-ranging and highly variable G. sub- nuda A. Gray, 2n = 16. Gilia caespitosa is restricted to white, decomposed sandstone one mile south of Teasdale in Wayne County, Utah. Dr. Dieter H. Wilken has prepared a fine paper on G. caespitosa in much more de- 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposi 97 tail, "The Status of Gilia caespitosa A. Gray (Polemoniaceae)," which has been accepted for pubHcation in Madrono. Dr. Wilken has concluded that G. caespitosa has a close rela- tionship with G. subnuda. Reduced speci- mens of G. subnuda are very similar to the uniform specimens of G. caespitosa. Dr. Wil- ken suggests that G. caespitosa may represent one of he more primitive elements within Gilia. In my Honor Lecture in 1977 at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, I pointed out that this beautiful little perennial may have arisen from an extreme biotype of the variable and common G. subnuda. If a wide- spread species becomes established in an un- usual edaphic situation, it will carry only a small part of the genetic variability of the original species. Inbreeding and random fix- ation will tend further to make this insular population more uniform and still more dif- ferent from the ancestors as the years of iso- lation continue. The individual plants of this beautiful species appear to be as nearly gen- etically alike as separated parts of a clone. It does not seem logical that this species is a se- nescent species. It probably evolved where it is found today and adapted to a single eco- logical niche. It seems unlikely that it occu- pied a larger area in past times. The biological studies outlined above are all a part of the first phase in learning about rare species, but the studies obviously do not stop here. If the species is threatened in part of its range, some natural populations must be preserved in situ for further study. This is especially true for the three species of Ar- ctomecon. Each species is confined to a pre- carious habitat and all three are fast dis- appearing. The fact that requirements for seed germination are not known and that the plants cannot be transplanted make it im- perative that these plants be studied in situ. Housing developments, trail bikes, and gyp- sum processing plants doom at least two of these bear poppies. Oh, yes, I had better not forget to point a finger at the plant tax- onomist. I was appalled when I discovered how many specimens we had in the Inter- moutain Herbarium. It is well known that numbers of specimens in a herbarium are no indication of rarity. Another step in preserving a rare species may be in attempting to cultivate plants in identical habitats or very similar to the origi- nal ones. This would involve attempts to ger- minate seeds for transplanting of garden or greenhouse-grown plants and transplanting growing plants from natural habitats. This does not excite me, as we have attempted to grow several rare species. Leila M. Shultz, curator of the Intermountain Herbarium, suc- ceeded in germinating seeds of the rare Sphaeromeria mtJiiae Holmgren, Shultz, and Lowrey from Zion National Park. At the present time, we have two potted plants growing in my home greenhouse in soil from the type locality. After two years of vacil- lating from "Looking good" to "Will they make it?" I begin to wonder if my specimens will ever flower. So many things come to mind. What about solar radiation, length of day, and on and on? I have successfully trans- planted and multiplied Cijpripedium cal- ceolus L. from the mouth of the Logan Can- yon that was in the way of a new home. I have divided the clumps several times and even moved the entire population when we moved from our old Logan home to a site near the base of the mountain just north of the mouth of Logan Canyon. There are more plants today in my garden than the original population contained 35 years ago. I have thought of moving a few plants to sites in Lo- gan Canyon to habitats that would probably support this lovely orchid, but I hesitate when I think of the pressure of every foot of bank area along Logan River by fishermen. The plants I am growing represent the only known living plants of this species in Utah. Extirpation would once again remove a spe- cies from the wild that ranged from Logan to Provo when the Mormon pioneers came to Utah. I have attempted to grow the rare hetero- stylous Primida maouirei Williams that is known only from a nine-mile stretch in Lo- gan Canyon and consisting of only seven known populations. Plants flowered the first year and emerged the second year without flowering, and, after languishing for a short time, disappeared from my garden spot, which I had thought was quite similar to the canyon habitats. 1 hope to see a graduate stu- dent work out the biology of Primula ma- guirei in the near future. Howard Irwin re- ports that the New York Botanical Garden 98 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 recently got a grant to conduct studies of the New York Monkshood, Aconititm novabores- cense A. Gray, initially to determine its dis- tribution and also to get some biological study imderway. This unusual monkshood is presently known from a few localities. This is the way to go, and sometime in the future we will have hard data to give us a better under- standing of past and present histories of floras and species. The most important strategy of all has to be for us to win public support and thereby gain support of elected officials on all levels. Unless we gain this support, there will be no funding for the work that is just beginning. We have made gains since Earth Day, 22 April 1970, but in other important ways, we have lost ground (no pun intended here). The radical rhetoric of street protests has been re- placed by legal briefs. There are probably more than 8 million members of environmen- tal groups who make contributions totaling nearly 70 million dollars a year. The Audu- bon Society and Sierra Club were the first of the conservation groups, but they have been joined by many more. State native plant so- cieties are organizing, with several new so- cieties each year. We know of the accom- lishments in California and what the potentialities are. We have just organized a Utah Native Plant Society. This is the way we can get our message to the state and local levels. I share the anxiety of Howard Irwin, Walt Macior, and Dieter Wilken in preserving rare species; but, in the meantime, we cannot be sympathetic with those who would preserve them only as instruments for political strate- gy. Those who have taken strong stands pro or con without sufficient knowledge have hurt our cause. In the meantime, let's study our rare species intently with qualified, pro- fessional botanists. Questions to Dr. Holmgren Q. There is a big problem in that information available is not keeping up with the demand. The gentleman from the Forest Service said they had 200 cited to survey and funds to do 20. The problem is even greater in private industry. The company proposes a project and requires a survey and the information is just not generally available. Do you foresee a way out of that dilemma? A. I just don't see a way out of it. In fact, very often we see proposals or requests for proposals come across our desks and we are supposed to have something in on it a week before the proposals came to us. Some- times we have about six weeks to work this out. There is no way we can do it. To pretend that some of these things can be done in such a hurry is not being honest with the problems that are at hand. It is going to take some time. Very often these things have been under planning stages for a long, long time, but the problems do not come to us until the last minute. No one plans a $100 million plant with- out having gone through a lot of planning, and then in the final stages the requests come across our desks. What can we do? It is going to take some time. Comment: The Forest Service is developing a policy now that would require all external organizations proposing projects on Forest Service land to hire a professional botanist to inspect the project for T/E species, so we'll get a lot of these covered in that way. Q. Does the cultivation of plants and plant planning hold a better opportunity than we have experienced with animals? A. Sometimes it does. Janice Beetley brought in some seeds oi Arctomecon, and she succeeded in germinat- ing them but they never flowered for her. We know that is a genus where transplanting is an impossibi- lity. It surprises me because so many members of the poppy family can be grown from cuttings, but this particular one defies that. I used to think I could grow anything if I knew the right witchcraft, but I've discovered there are all degrees of absolute suc- cess, to the point where you have weeds coming along in your garden to the point of absolute failure on the other end. In my years of experience with na- tive plants, I could plug in something all along the wav so that I would go imperceptibly from complete success to failure. Comment: A comment really to the gentleman's earlier comment. I believe there are a growing number of industrial concerns who recognize the problem of endangered species to the point that they would much rather incorporate biological knowledge ear- lier in the planning process than face litigation later on. In this way I think there is progress being made in this area. A. I'm sure there is. I think that is one of the good things about some of the problems we've had along the way that these people have discovered. As they begin to plan, this is one part that has to be in the planning stages right from the very beginning. I think there were references to that in talks we heard yesterday. People are beginning to come to some of these agencies, and Doug Day has had several people come to him and ask for help as they were beginning to plan a study. I think we are going to have more of that to a point where I hope that final- ly we can get the public on our side. It's going to be a long education, but every day when I pick up newspapers now I read articles by different authors, DeLong and several others, who are writing very well-written essays on the problems we are now fac- ing. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 99 Q. One thing I'm surprised no one has mentioned. I'd hke to know if the Fish and WildUfe Service has contacted either BYU or the Intermountain Herba- rium. \t the present time Stan Welsh has com- puterized all the herbaria for Colorado, Wyoming, North Canada, and North Dakota. Listed in their computer program is every sample surveyed of those herbaria. Any agency or industry person interested in developing a project need simply place a phone call to Fort Collins asking them to print the species list. It has a tremendous option on it. Included on it are all the rare and endangered species in a specific geographic area and I've heard nmiors from work- shops held in Fort Collins that they plan on expand- ing this. Have you been contacted about that? .\. I haven't. Have you, Leila Shultz? Comment: No, but I do have a comment on it. Herbaria standardly have 40 to 70 percent misidentifications and so, as good as the information is, it's nice to have it available. But if you want lots of mis- information you can get it quick. A. Yes, there are so many people who will look at a her- barium label and the identification on that becomes the gospel truth. We know. We get plants from oth- er institutions that are not even in the right genus, and sometimes the species is a long ways away (but not from the BYU). We're glad we have such good working relationships with all universities. Comment: I have talked to Colorado State about possi- bly getting on this sytem, and, although there are misidentifications, I think, where you have the com- puter printout, if something comes out in the distri- bution very different from what you expect, it comes to your attention in a hurry. I think there is good po- tential in it. \. I was trying to get Leila's attention because for the last several years she has been listed as the assistant curator, but I'll have you all know that she is the curator. She's done it all and I've been happy, but sometimes it has given her more than a person ought to carry. Comment: I have one comment here. Perhaps the infor- mation or the lack of information here with regard to the private industries approach to endangered and threatened plants needs to be traded. Until now it hasn't been, so I will take it upon myself to give you my own professional view of it with regard to the private industries I have dealt with. Private in- dustry is willing to cooperate with the endangered species program. They do not wish to interdict any of the endangered or threatened species. They are willing to do what is necessary in order that they may fall in place, but they do need to be able to sur- vive the regulations so that they can carry on their businesses. The problem arises though, not with the private industries, but with the general public. The general public is the place where we really need to do our education job and not with the private in- dustries. The private industries are ordinarily with us. STRATEGIES FOR THE PRESERVATION OF RARE ANIMALS Clayton M. White' ,\bstract.— Strategies used to enhance or help restore rare and endangered animal species are reviewed. No new strategies are presented, but rather a review of various levels at which programs can be initiated are indicated. Nearly 93 percent of the recognized endangered animals are vertebrates. Programs to help restore vertebrates can be aimed at either the habitat or the organism level. Habitat restoration or preservation is the more difficult to achieve and, accordingly, most strategies are aimed at the organism. Species, populations, or communities and ecosystems can be treated, but most often each requires a separate approach. Among organisms the species level attracts most of the enhancement effort because species are easier to understand and deal with. Numerous strategies are being tried with species, and several examples, such as the Aleutian Canada goose, Galapagos tortoise, a wingless undescribed orthropteran, and fish species requiring turbid water, are given. Populations or communities of animals are more difficult to work with, but some strategies such as faunal reserves are likely to be successful. A table listing .39 exam- ples of endangered species from across the animal kingdom, along with the major reasons for their declines and currently working strategies or possible ones to help them recover, is presented. This report reviews strategies used to en- hance or help restore rare or endangered ani- mal species, and, as such, the approaches are clearly different than most of the strategies reviewed by Holmgren (this volume) for plants. This report, however, is not intended to be an exhaustive review of all the various plans, mechanisms, or strategies that have been used with all animal species. At the outset, it must be recognized that most ideas advanced thus far apply to verte- brates and are not necessarily applicable to invertebrates. In part, our knowledge of the population dynamics of many rare in- vertebrates lags behind that of the verte- brates. As pointed out earlier by Lovejoy (this volume), the invertebrates are also cur- rently treated administratively in a different manner than vertebrates. Those animals offi- cially recognized as rare or endangered by federal or international conventiorr as of 1 December 1978 (U.S. Department of the In- terior 1978) are in the following categories: lammals irds leptiles Jiiphibians •ish 281 Snails 8 214 Clams 25 68 Crustaceans 1 16 Insects 8 51 'he above total to 672 kinds, plus there are an additional 158 kinds proposed. Of those listed, about 74 percent are mammals and birds and nearly 93 percent are vertebrates. Before approaching the topic of discussion, I think it fair to conclude that endangered species programs and concerns are mainly generated in affluent societies where people have the leisure time and the monies to con- sider such problems (cf. Smith 1976). Roland Clement (this volume), however, ironically pointed out that it is the affluent societies themselves which, because of their exploitive nature, have been the root of the causes of habitat destruction and thus species endan- germent. The basic question seems to be "What will man as a species tolerate?" In nonaffluent regions they appear to tolerate considerable, even the loss of part of their faunal heritage. Myers (1971), in discussing the preservation of fauna in Uganda, has cor- rectly pointed out that the wildlife heritage of that country is of international concern, and that the land .should be developed, con- served, and managed in accordance with sound ecological principles. Sociological con- cerns also play an important role in such is- sues. Another curious paradox is that the bald eagle {Haliaeetus leucocephalus), which we have declared as part of our heritage by af- 'Department of Zoology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602. 101 102 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 fording it the status of the symbol of our country, is endangered. Similarly the quetzal {Pharomachriis mocinno) is endangered in Middle America, where it is represented on the coinage and is a national symbol in Guatemala (Lovejoy, this volume). Levels of Organization There are at least two major levels of or- ganization from which strategies for preser- vation have been or can be approached, namely, (1) the habitat (environment) level and (2) the organism level. The only clear way to preserve animals is, of course, to preserve or maintain habitat in large enough blocks of land to maintain the species diversity. This leads basically to the concept of the "megazoo" as developed by Sullivan and Shaffer (1975). Among others. Diamond (1975, 1976), Terborgh (1974), and Wilson and Willis (1975) also discuss the hab- itat approach to organism preservation and the strategies achieved by maintaining signif- icantly large tracts of habitat. The habitat and the organism level have rather different approaches. For example, zoological gardens may be used if simple preservation of the rare or endangered ani- mal is desired (Conway 1967, 1978). Such preservation, however, can be and most fre- quently is independent of any approximation of habitat because the animals are simply bred and maintained in cages. Nonetheless, there are currently 26 species of rare mam- mals that have self-sustaining populations in zoos (Finder and Barkham 1978). These rep- resent one species of marsupial, 2 primates, 8 carnivors, 3 perissodactyles, and 12 arti- odactyles. In some cases, there may be as many or more individuals in zoos than there are in the wild. The Asiatic lion has 96 in captivity and an estimated 177 in the wild, the Siberian tiger has about 450 in captivity and perhaps 200 in the wild, and the Pere David deer is extinct in the wild but about 777 remain in captivitv (Finder and Barkham 1978). Before strategies for preservation can be formulated, it is necessary to determine the reasons for endangerment and that, in turn, may lead to a basic knowledge of the biology of the animal to be dealt with specifically. It is difficult to understand an animal's rareness when we don't understand its population dy- namics (see Drury 1974 and Smith 1976). Simon (1969) discussed some of this when he described the status of 86 rare mammals in 33 countries; examples follow: Feru — Vicuiia {Vicagna vicugna): infor- mation inadequate and conflicting, field surveys needed. Brazil — Thin-spined porcupine {Chaet- omys siibspinosiis): little known about species beyond fact that range is restricted, deforestation modifying habitat, and field stud- ies needed. Morocco— Barbary hyaena {Hyaena hyaena barbara): status precarious, true position obscure, and studies needed. Following Simon's (1969) assessment. Mill- er Rottman, and Taber (1973) studied the vicufia in South America and determined that the present stocks are occupying suboptimal habitat and that the carrying capacity of the present available habitat (in terms of pre- ferred forage etc.) is about 10 times the pres- ent numbers. The current range is less well watered than the optimum range. Because the species need to water daily, the answer to improving the population status seems to lie in providing watering localities in areas where forage is adequate but no water exists. Aside from habitat improvement, hunting for fur also needs to be controlled. It is surprising how little we know about the biology and evolutionary dynamics of even the most common species. Both the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and Eu- ropean tree sparrow (Passer montanus) were introduced into the U.S. in the 1850s and 1870s, respectively (Kendeigh 1973). The house sparrow has become continent-wide, while the tree sparrow has remained in the general locality of St. Louis, where it was in- troduced. As a correlary, house and European tree sparrows were also introduced into Aus- tralia in the 1850s and 1860s, respectively (Frith 1977). The former species now covers more than one-third of the continent, but the latter has expanded to a few hundred kilome- ters between Melbourne and Sidney. These two examples both suggest that on the Amer- 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 103 ican and Australian continents some sort of competitive interaction or pressure which we don't understand is being exerted that is not operative in their native Eurasian range. We certainly do not understand their behavioral interactions. If we now turn to the animal level as the working unit, there can be, once again, an or- ganizational breakdown for preservation or restoration as follows (the ecosystem or com- munity level approaches the concept of habi- tat preservation just mentioned): 1. Species level 2. Population level .3. Community or ecosystem level The Species Level Concern here may center at the local or geographic population of the species rather than at the species over its total range. For example, the southern populations of the bald eagle, which are endangered, may be of con- siderable importance in decision making, as opposed the northwest and Alaskan popu- lations, which are abundant. The peregrine falcon {Faico peregrinus tiindrius) from arctic and subarctic regions is rare or endangered over parts of its range, but the eastern U.S. population (F. p. anattim) is extinct. Strate- gies for preservation or restoration of the two falcon populations are basically different. The former faces reduction because of chem- ical pollutants along the migratory route or on its Latin American wintering grounds (White and Cade 1977). Preservation seem- ingly involves a land treatment practice change in those countries. In the case of the latter, which has already been extirpated from its range, the strategy being employed is the reintroduction of captive-bred stocks into its former range. To help design the ra- tionale and process necessary to effect a re- covery of population numbers, as with the falcons just mentioned, and to provide a fi- nancial basis to help accomplish that process, the concept of the recovery plan (Porter and Marshall 1977, Marshall 1978) was con- ceived. Concern may be for the species on its breeding grounds because those breeding grounds may be limited or localized, rather than for the animal at other times of the year. For example, the northern fur seal {Cal- lorhinus ursinus) breeds locally on the Pribi- lof Islands, but at other times of the year it can be widespread in the Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. The short-tailed shearwater {Puf- finus tenuirostris) is localized as a breeder in southeastern coastal Australia, but in the non- breeding season it is very widespread and even common. A now common strategy at the species lev- el is captive breeding or propagation for lat- er release into the wild. The recent book on endangered birds edited by Temple (1978) covers this strategy in great detail, along with numerous other species-oriented strategies. Zimmerman (1975) has also chronicled sever- al of these strategies and refers to what he calls clinical ornithology, or the development and implementation of techniques for specif- ic actions. Genetic manipulation is a strategy not yet fully explored. The rare Edward's pheasant {Lophura edwardsii) is being crossed with the more common and closely related look-alike Swinhoe's pheasant {Lophura sivinhoii). The F-1 offspring are then Ijackcrossed with Ed- ward's pheasant and so forth with successive backcrosses, each time diluting the amount of Swinhoe's genetic material. The design of this strategy is to genetically "rebuild" the Edward's pheasant. Wilson and Willis (1975) carry this concept further and suggest that certain strains of animals might be molded genetically to fit into communities where none now fit or where one has become ex- tinct. Genetic engineering (cloning, etc.) is also now a very real possibility for the saving of some animals by producing large numbers of them from a single individual. Such tech- niques, were they to become developed to the necessary extent, could save literally hun- dreds of dollars in the production of costly, hard-to-breed species .such as the peregrine falcon. On the negative side, however, gen- etic diversity would become drastically re- duced. Foster parenting and cross-fostering are other species strategies that have proven suc- cessful with such birds as falcons and the whooping crane (Grus americana) (cf. Dre- wien and Bizeau 1978, Fyfe et al. 1978, and 104 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Temple 1978a). At this time, some of the strategies that can be devised frequently have only species- specific application. Beyond that, the real need is to design approaches and strategies that will have more general and widespread application, where several species may fit un- der the same program in an effort to reduce the financial burden. A list of some species, the cause for endangerment, and strategies projected to reduce their endangerment is given in Table 1. The Population Level At this level we must first determine what the critical or effective breeding size of the population really is. Knowledge of that pa- rameter may alter the approach used to help the population. It has been suggested that the Laysan duck {Anas laijsanensis) was reduced to but one pair, and from there the popu- lation has rebounded to a self-sustaining wild population plus several score in captivity. The Mauritius kestrel {Falco punctatus) re- bounded from 4 individuals in the wild in 1973 to 12 in 1976 after they adopted a new nesting habitat free from maurading monkeys (Temple 1978b). Populations reduced to such low levels may be subject to the in- corporation of genetic weakness, as suggested by Bonnell and Selander (1974) in their study of the elephant seal {Mirounga angustriostris). Populations that have not been reduced Table 1. Examples of rare or endangered taxa showing known or probable major contributory causes of endan- germent and possible or currently working strategies for preservation or trend reversal. There may be multiple causes or strategies, but only those that are seemingly the major contributors are given. This table is meant solely to provide examples of the array of strategies and is not intended to be complete. Cause of endangerment Strategy for preservation California Condor {Gijmnogyps califomianus) Puerto Rican Parrot {Amazona vittata) Aye-Aye {Daiibentonia madagascariensis) Malagasy lemurs (Lemuridae) Night Parrot (Geopsittlacus occidentalis) Ground Parrot {Pezoporus ivalliciis) Houston Toad {Bttfo houstonensis) Western Swamp-turtle (Pseitdemydiira umhrina) Noisy Scrub-bird (AtrichoJirnis clamosus) Hawaiian Stilt {liimantopiis mexiranus knudsoni) Socorro Isopod {Exosphaeroma tlunnophiluni) Masked bobwhite {Coliniis virginiantis ridgwaiji) Black Robin {Petroica traversi) Loss of habitat and food base, disturbance, perhaps pesticides Predation, over-exploitation, loss of habitat Habitat loss Habitat loss and persecution Habitat loss Habitat loss Habitat loss Habitat loss Habitat loss Restricted habitat with habitat loss Restricted habitat with habitat loss Habitat loss or alteration Habitat loss or alteration Habitat purchase for preserves, supplemental feeding, captive breeding Preserves, altered nesting conditions Habitat reserves Habitat reserves Habitat reserves Habitat reserves Habitat reserves Protected habitat reserves, captive breeding colonies Protected habitat reserves Habitat acquisition and preservation Maintenance of water levels, maintenance of artificial habitat, reestablishment into natural habitat Reintroduction into habitat reserves Reintroduction into habitat reserves 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 105 Red Wolf {Cunis nifus) Palila (Psittirostra baillciii) Hairy-nosed Wombat {Lasiorhin us krefftii) Bridled Nail-tailed Wallaby {Omjchogalea fraenaUt) P;ilinimp Killifish (Einpctriclithys latos) Pupfish (Cijprinodon sp.) Stock Island Tree Snail {Ortlialicus reses) Callippe Silverspot Butterfly (Speijeria callippe) Cranes (Gniidae) Whooping Crane {Grits amehcana) Bermuda Petrel {Pterodroma cahow) Giant Pied-billed Grebe (Podihjmhiis gigas) Utah Prairie Dog {Cynomijs parcideiis) Hawaiian Goose (Branta sandvicensis) Kirtland Warbler (Dendroica kirthindi) Sea turtles (Cheloniidae and Dennachelyidae) Whales (Cetacea) Black-footed Ferret [Mustelo nigripes) jaguar [Panthera onca) Bald niis (Gewnticus cremita) Giant Otter (Pteronura I)nisiliensis) Ryuku Rabbit (Pentalogiis furnessi) South American River Turtle (Podocnemis expansa) Golden Frog [Atelopus varius zeteki) Peregrine Falcon [Falco peregiinus anatum) Arabian Oryx (Ori/.r leuconjx) Habitat alteration followed bv hybridization Habitat loss and competition Habitat loss and competition Habitat loss and introduced predators Restricted habitat, habitat loss, and introduced competitors Restricted habitat, habitat loss, and introduced competitors Habitat loss or alteration becavise of commercial development Habitat loss or alteration because of commercial development Winter habitat loss Habitat loss, over-exploitation Introduced and other predators, over-exploitation Hunting, introduced predators, habitat loss Over-exploitation, habitat loss Habitat loss, over-exploitation, introduced predators Relict, limited habitat, habitat alteration, nest parasites Commercial and other over- exploitation, habitat loss Over-exploitation Loss of prey base, direct exploitation Over-e;xploitation, persecution for pelts Precise causes unknown, direct persecution? Persecution for pelt Predators, overliunting Persecution for food Collecting Chemical pollutants Overhunting Secured habitat without related can ids Elimination of competitors from reserves Establishment of additional colonies in protected areas Protected reserves Managed habitat reserves Managed habitat reserves Protected reserves Protected reserves Reserves, artificial feeding stations Manipulated nesting biology, cross- fostering young, captive rearing Habitat preservation, nest site modification Habitat preservation Relocation, habitat preservation, legal protection Reintroduction into habitat preserves; captive breeding Manage reserves, reduce parasites Legal protection, captive rearing reintroduction Legal protection Habitat and prey base preservation, reintroduction Legal protection from hunting Alteration and preservation of nesting substratum Legal protection from hunting Maintenance of reserves, elimination of stray dogs Legal protection Legal protection Captive breeding and reintroduction Captive breeding and reintroduction, preserves 106 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 below that effective size for self-mainte- nance, although there may be few individ- uals, can probably be maintained within large patches of habitat or natural reserves (Diamond 1975, Terborg 1974). Unfortunately, natural reserves often end up being national parks and the like. When national parks are relegated to unused por- tions of land or are built around scenic at- tractions, they may fail to preserve animals in the manner needed. Pickett and Thompson (1978) have designed reserve concepts based on a "minimum dynamic area" or what they also call "patch dynamics" wherein reserves must be large enough to maintain internal re- colonization sources (cf. Lovejoy's comments, this volume, on minimum critical size of eco- systems). Such a reserve would be in effect sort of a megazoo. These areas should have the following properties: (1) large, (2) circu- lar, (3) undivided or, if divided, connected by corridors, and (4) close to one another. Figure 1 depicts a schematic drawing of such re- serves and is based on Diamond (1976) and Wilson and Willis (1975). Notice that nation- al parks or monuments seldom have these cri- teria. Hence, such reserves must be set aside specifically for the saving of certain popu- lations or groups of species. In dealing with this approach in tropical rain forest in- vertebrates, Elton (1975) has concluded that these reserves must be very large indeed to insure success (self-sustaining populations) within these forests, because the organisms are at such low densities. The Community or Ecosystem Level The final level at which strategies can be aimed is the community or ecosystem level. This is probably the level at which deteriora- tion that eventually leads to endangerment generally first starts. King (1978), for ex- ample, shows that 65.3 percent of the cases of the rare or endangered birds is caused by ecosystem (habitat) destruction. It is at the ecosystem level that ecological engineering may be effective. Wilson and Willis (1975) discuss the orphan species, or those organisms on the brink of extinction in their native range but capable of being fitted, in the ecological sense, into certain alien communities. Such "fittings" have manipu- lative overtones characteristic of ecological engineering. An example of such a fitting through transplanting of a species, but not a true orphan species {sensu stricto) in the con- text of Wilson and Willis, comes to mind when thinking of the Norfolk Island parrot {Cyanoramphiis novaezelandiae cookii). This population is unique to Norfolk Island, where some 40 or so remain (J. M. Forshaw, pers. comm.). A closely allied population did occur on Lord Howe Island, but was eliminated by persecution from early residents of the island (both islands are in the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia). Here then, on Lord Howe, an appropriate habitat exists in- tact but there is no parrot to fill it. The prob- lem of endangerment on Norfolk is the result of the introduction of another parrot, the crimson rosella {Platycercus elegans), an ag- gressive, competitive species that is dis- placing the Norfolk Island parrot. A seem- ingly workable strategy is to transplant the Norfolk birds to Lord Howe Island, where they are free from another competitive par- rot and in a habitat similar to the one from which they were taken. Spellerberg (1975) has worked with the three snakes and three lizards in Britain (es- sentially the entire British reptilian fauna), where they are being threatened by the loss of habitat to land development or by man- caused fires. By examining their behavior and ecological physiology, he concludes that the strategy best suited to the saving of these spe- cies is the reconstruction of islands of habitat into which the entire reptilian communities can be relocated. Holt and Talbot (1978) and Wagner (1977) have described the value of ecosystem man- agement rather than species management. Holt and Talbot suggest that when manage- ment is for single stocks or species it is often done so to the exclusion of a knowledge of: 1. Relationships within trophic levels 2. Relationships between trophic levels 3. Impact on symbiotic or commensal relationships 4. Changes in carrying capacity due to factors such as climate, pollution, or other human influences Regardless of the level at which one wishes to approach a given strategy, much of what 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 107 BETTER WORSE g o o o o B c? o°o o° O Fig 1 The conceptual design of faunal reserves. These configurations are based on current theory of biogeo. gra^h'y as IlatiTo aL of habLt, extinction, and recolonization rates. A a ^f^--J^;^^^T::^Z peninsular effect of a long, narrow one. B: closely clumped reserves are better because of d'^^'^^^.^^f^^* ,^^^;7'^^- connected by corridors of habitat are better than disconnected ones. D^a cont.nuous --^^ ^ ^^J^^,;*^- ^^^^^^^f mented one because of the effect of area. (These data are modified from Diamond 1976 and W.lson and W.ll.s 1975). 108 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 is done will depend on whether the goal is to preserve or protect the animal or to restore it, or whether the treatment is aimed at the proximal or the ultimate cause of endan- germent. Many of the federal or international acts and conventions are in reality strategies that function in providing a certain level of protection until a plan to aid the species in whatever way necessary can be enacted (Schreiner and Ruhr 1974, Schreiner and Se- necal 1978). With the higher vertebrates most of the endangered forms have biological character- istics of a K-selected rather than an R-se- lected species (Pianka 1970) and are, also, ei- ther plagued with reduced survivorship or reduced fecundity. These parameters were among those considered by Adamus and Clough (1978), Ramsay (1976), and Sparrowe and Wight (1975) in evaluating species or set- ting priorities for the inclusion of species into reserves or natural areas or for program man- agement. The priorities were given to ani- mals based on such species characteristics and properties as (1) suitability (mobility, area size needs, etc.) or (2) desirability (scar- city, endemicity, vulnerability, etc.). Ramsay (1976) has suggested that, regardless of whether the problem is approached through environment (eco-unit), preservation, or the maintenance of species diversity, a priority system at the species level, based on econom- ic, biological, or cultural and aesthetic values can be developed. Specific Strategies Let me now cite a few specific examples where a given strategy has been employed or can be clearly viewed as the means to em- ploy. The examples will apply to the species level because most of the knowledge is there and the problems at the population, commu- nity, or ecosystem level are just now being approached. These are also selected strate- gies with simple approaches. Example 1.: Introduced predator or com- petition from domestic live- stock as a major cause of en- dangerment. The plains wanderer (Pedionomus tor- quatus), pig-footed bandicoot {Chaeropus ecoudatiis), and grass owl {Tyto long- imembris) in Australia; Aleutian Canada goose {Branta canadensis lencopareia) in North America; and the Galapagos tortoise {Geochelone elephatopiis) are some examples of these. In the case of the Aleutian goose, the artic fox {Alopex lagopus) introduced onto the islands nearly brought about the goose's total demise by its predation (Springer et al. 1978). The foxes were eliminated from sever- al islands and captive-bred geese (from the single wild-breeding population rediscovered in the early 1960s on Buldir Island, where about 500 pairs breed) were then trans- planted back onto the islands where fox had been removed. The major obstacle now seems to be the geese being able to make a successful migration from their breeding grounds to their California wintering grounds and back to the Aleutians. The success of this plan remains yet to be achieved. It is of inter- est that during the decades between the 1930s and the 1970s the goose was shot on its wintering grounds, and yet the Buldir Island population appears to be at carrying capaci- ty. Total protection may produce some inter- esting changes in the nonbreeding population structure, although all of this remains to be documented over the next decade or so. The Galapagos tortoises on Hood Island were reduced to one male and 5 or 6 females by introduced rats {Rattus sp.) that ate young and feral goats {Capra sp.) that destroyed the tortoises vegetative food sources (Michael Harris, pers. comm., 1978). All the adults were taken into captivity and about 100 young tortoises were raised. Goats have now been removed from Hood Island (M. Harris, pers. comm.) and the tortoises' food supply appears to be coming back. Once the young tortoises reach about four years of age they are large enough to be released and rats will not depredate them. Because the tortoises do not breed until about 40-60 years of age, there will be time to work on the problem of eliminating the introduced rats. Apparently there have been no young tortoises raised this century on Duncan Island because of rat pre- dation (M. Harris, pers. comm.). In Australia there is a wingless, undes- cribed orthropteran called P-42 (Key, 1978) that survives in only six localized areas of lightly grazed pastures. There they are asso- 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 109 ciated with one of the native composite plants of the genus Helichnjsum. This com- posite is ehminated by heavy Hvestock graz- ing. The apparent strategy is a simple one of controlling or eliminating grazing from these localities. If some of these localities are on Crown Lands, the task of controlling grazing will be made easier. Most populations on islands (either habitat or geographic islands) can be protected by simply controlling the introduction of pre- dators or by eliminating them from islands where they have previously been introduced. Many of the examples in Table 1 fall into this category. Example 2.: Major habitat alterations or losses as a principal cause of endangerment. A prime example in such a case can be seen in the bony-tail chub {Gila elegans), ra- zor-back sucker {Xijmuchen texanus), and Colorado squawfish {Ptychocheihis hicius) in the Colorado River. The construction of dams or direct use of the water by man has caused at least two major classes of change, namely, (1) alterations of natural water cycles (dam, dewatering, stream flow changes, etc.) and (2) water quality changes (silt loads, tem- perature, pollution, etc.) (Seethaler 1978, Minckley 1973). The introduction of exotic fishes may also have helped to reduce these species to critical levels. Breeding cycles, correlated with such parameters as silt loads, stream bottom morphology, and temper- ature, have been reduced or eliminated and, although attempts at spawning by the chub and squawfish are observed, juveniles are in- frequent or lacking. A nice correlary exists with the Macquarie perch {Maequoria aiis- tralasica), trout cod (Maccullochella mit- chelli), and Murray cod {Maccullochella mac- quariensis) of the Murray-Darling river system in Australia. These fish need high silt loads, flooding, and fluctuating river condi- tions, as are common with spring rains, to in- itiate spawning (Lake 1971). Dams and reser- voirs have flattened out fluctuations and lowered silt loads. On one portion of the riv- er there has been no flooding since 1939 be- cause of dams (Roughley 1951). The fisheries industry and introduced European carp {Cyprinus cai-pio) have also had their impact on reducing these species. One solution to this problem in both North America and Aus- tralia is to introduce these species into streams with the neces.sary parameters where dams do not occur. Currently, of about 50 species of Australian fresh water fishes (most are endemic), about one-third are endangered or threatened, many because of man-caused changes in water conditions (Lake 1971). The above examples tend to be very straightforward causes of endangerment, and in some cases the solution to alleviating the problems is rather simple. Most frequently, however, there are not single but multiple causes of endangerment. These have no easy or readily obvious workable strategies for sol- ving the problem. The Higgins eye mussel {Lampsilis higginsi) of the Mississippi River system is an example wherein at least the fol- lowing six factors have a measurable adverse impact: 1. Excessive commercial exploitation 2. Water quality degradation (industrial wastes, pesticide run off, etc.) 3. Increased siltation and turbidity 4. Dredging 5. The effective impact of exotic clams which dislodge the Higgins eye from at- tachment locations 6. Possible reduction of host fish species for larvae As a final statement, perhaps the most im- portant and critical strategy at this stage is to engage young, innovative minds in determin- ing quickly and efficiently what the problems are, wed the multiple interests and groups into a common cause, decide what the prior- ities should be, and solve the specific prob- lem at a minimum effective financial cost. Something as simple as convincing the Aus- tralian farmer that dead snags of the river red gum {Eucalyptus camaldulensis) do not take up significant space and that he should leave them in his field may be all that is needed. These trees contain many cavities and pro- vide nesting places for a myriad of species. That one simple judgement, not to burn down the dead tree, may have far-reaching impact. Ramsay (1967) has rightly pointed out that our judgments must be preceded by as much forethought and rationality as pos- sible because developing priorities for preser- 110 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 vation decisions favors an analysis of species from the viewpoint of human values. These values may indeed not be the critical ones for the integrity of a healthy ecosystem. None- theless, some value judgements (Myers 1976 and Holliday 1978) as to the worth of species and man's stewardship must be the first step in the long and never-ending process of maintaining a diverse ecosystem. Literature Cited Adamus, p. R., and G. C. Clough. 1978. Evaluating species for protection in natural areas. Biol. Con- serv. 1.3:165-178. BoNNELL, M. L., AND R. R. Selander. 1974. Elephant seals: genetic variations and near extinction. Sci- ence 184:908-909. Conway, W. 1967. The opportunity for zoos to save vanishing species. Oryx 9:154-60. 1978. Breeding endangered birds in captivity, the last resort, pp. 225-2.30. In: S. A. Temple (ed.). Endangered birds: management techniques for preserving threatened species. Univ. of Wiscon- sin Press, Madison. Diamond, J. M. 1975. The island dilemma: lessons of modem biogeographic studies for the design of natural reserves. Biol. Conserv. 7:129-146. 1976. Relaxation and differential extinction on land-bridge island: applications to natural pre- serves. Proc. 16th International Ornith. Cong, pp. 616-628- E>REwiEN, R. C, AND E. G. BizEAU. 1978. Cross-fostering whooping cranes to sandhill crane foster parents, pp. 201-222. In: S. A. Temple (ed.). Endangered birds: management techniques for preserving threatened species. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Drury, W. H. 1974. Rare species. Biol. Conserv. 6:162-169. Elton, C. S. 1975. Conservation and the low population density of invertebrates inside neotropical rain forests. Biol. Conserv. 7:3-16. Frith, H. J. (consultant ed.). 1977. Complete book of .Australian birds. Reader's Digest Services Pty. Ltd., Sydney. Fyfe, R. W., H. .\rmbruster, U. Banasch, and L. J. Beaver. 1978. Fostering and cross-fostering of birds of prey, pp. 18.3-193. In: S. A. Temple (ed.). Endangered birds: management techniques for preserving threatened species. Univ. of Wiscon- sin Press, Madison. R\LLiDAY, T. 1978. Vanishing birds, their natural history and conservation. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. Holt, S. J., and L. M. Talbot. 1978. New principles for the conservation of wild living resources. Wildlife Mongr. No. 59, 33 pp. Kendeigh, S. C. (chairman). 1973. \ symposium on the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and European tree sparrow (Passer montanits) in North Ameri- ca. .\mer. Ornith. Union Mongr. No. 14, 121 pp. Key, K. H. L. 1978. The conservation status of Austra- lia's insect fauna. Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service, Canberra, Occas. Paper No. 1, 24 pp. King, W. B. 1978. Endangered birds of the world and current efforts toward managing them, pp. 9-17. In: S. A. Temple (ed.) Endangered birds: manage- ment technique for preserving threatened spe- cies. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison. La.ke, J. S. 1971. Freshwater fishes and rivers of .Austra- lia. Thomas Nelson Ltd., Melbourne. Marshall, D. B. 1978. The recovery team approach to endangered species restoration in the United States, pp. 429-4.34. In: S. A. Temple (ed.). En- dangered birds: management techniques for pre- serving threatened species. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Myers, N. 1971. Wildlife and development in Uganda. Bio,science 21:1071-1075. 1976. An expanded approach to the problem of disappearing species. Science 193: 198-202. Miller, S., J. Rottman, and R. D. Taber. 1973. Dwindling and endangered ungulates of Chile: Vicugna, Lama, Hippocamehis and Pndu. Trans. N. Amer. Wildl. Natl. Res. Conf. ,38:55-68. Mlnckley, W. H. 1973. Fishes of Arizona. Arizona Game and Fish Dept., Phoenix. Pi.\NKA, E. R. 1970. on r and K selection. .\mer. Nat. 104:.592-597. Pickett, S. T. .\., and J. N. Thompson. 1978. Patch dy- namics and the design of nature reserves. Biol. Conserv. 13:27-37. Pinder, N. J., AND J. P. Barkham. 1978. An assessment of the contribution of captive breeding to the conservation of rare mammals. Biol. Conserv. 13:187-245. Porter, R. D., and D. M. Marshall. 1977. The recov- ery team approach to restoration of endangered species. Proc. World Conf. on Birds of Prev, Vienna, ICBP: 314-319. Ra.msay, W. 1976. Priorities in species preservation. En- viron. Affairs 5:595-616. Roughley, T. C. 1951. Fish and fisheries of .\ustralia. Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Schreiner, K. M., and C. E. Ruhr. 1974. Progress in saving endangered species. Trans. N. .'Am. Wildl. Natl. Res. Conf. .39:127-1.35. Schreiner, K. M., and C. J. Senegal. 1978. The Ameri- can government's program for endangered birds, pp. 19-24. In: S. A. Temple (ed.). Endangered birds: management techniques for preserving threatened species. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Seethaler, K. 1978. Life history and ecolog)' of the Col- orado squawfi.sh (Ptychoclieilus luciiis) in the up- per Colorado River basin. Unpublished thesis, Utah State Univ., Logan, Utah. Simon, N. M. 1969. Proposals for field investigations of rare and endangered mammals. Biol. Conserv. 1:280-290. Smith, R. L. 1976. Ecological genesis of endangered spe- cies: the philosophy of preservation. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst., 7:.33-55.' Sparrowe, R. D., and H. M. Wight. 1975. Setting prior- 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 111 ities tor the endangered species program. Trans. N. Am. Wildl. Natl. Res. Conf. 40:142-156. Spellerberg, I. F. 1975. Conservation and management of Britain's reptiles based on their ecological and behavioral requirements: a progress report. Biol. Conserv. 7:289-300. Springer, P. F., G. V. Byrd, and D. W. Woolington. 1978. Reestablishing Aleutian Canada geese; pp. .3.31-3.38. In: S. A. Temple (ed.), Endangered birds: management techniques for preserving threatened species. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Sullivan, A. L., and M. L. Shaffer. 1975. Biogeo- graphy of the megazoo. Science 189:13-17. Te.mple, S. a. (ed.). 1978. Endangered birds: manage- ment techniques for preserving threatened spe- cies. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison. 1978a. Reintroducing birds of prey to the wild, pp. .355-.363. In: S. A. Temple (ed.). Endangered birds: management techniques for preserving threatened species. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison. 1978b. Manipulating behavioral patterns of en- dangered birds: a potential management tech- nique, pp. 4.35-443. In: S. A. Temple (ed.). En- dangered birds: management techniques for preserving threatened species. Univ. of Wiscon- sin Press, Madison. Terborgh, J. 1974. Preservation of natural diversity: the problem of extinction prone species. Bioscience 24:715-722. U.S. Department of the Interior. 1978. Endangered species technical bulletin. U.S. FWS Endangered Species Program, Vol. 3 (2): 1-12. Wagner, F. H. 1977. Species vs. ecosystem manage- ment: concepts and practices. Trans 42nd N. Amer. Nat. Res. Conf. pp. 14-24. White, C. M., and T. J. Cade. 1977. Long-term trends of peregrine populations in Alaska. Proc. World Conf. on Birds of Prey, Vienna, ICBP: 63-72. Wilson, E. O., and E. O. Willis. 1975. Applied biogeo- graphy, pp. 522-.534. In: M. L. Cody and J. M. Diamond (eds.). Ecology and evolution of com- munities. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge. Zimmerman, D. R. 1975. To save a bird in peril. Cow- ard, McCann and Geoghegan, Inc., New York. RARE SPECIES AS EXAMPLES OF PLANT EVOLUTION G. Ledyaid Stebbins' .\bstract.- Rare species, including endangered ones, can be very valuable sources of information about evolution- arv processes. They may be rare and valuable because: (1) they are evolutionary youngsters and could represent an entirelv new evolutionary strategy of great scientific and practical value; (2) they are evolutionary relicts that have stored enormous amounts of genetic information of great worth; (3) they may represent endemic varieties that har- bor a great deal of the genetic variability in the gene pool that would be of enormous value to a plant geneticist; the rarity of the plant is not necessarily correlated with the size of its gene pool; (4) they may represent unique ecologi- cal adaptations of great value to future generations. Studies of gene pools and the genetics of adaptation constitute a new and developing field of the future. This morning I'm talking about a some- what different topic than yesterday evening and one more in hne with my usual interest because, as many of you know, I am primari- ly an evolutionist. The theme that I would like to develop is that rare species, including the endangered ones, can be very valuable .sources of information about evolutionary processes. To illustrate that theme, I am go- ing to give you examples of four alternative, but not mutually exclusive, theories that have been suggested for the reason that species are rare. One of the oldest, which was cham- pioned in the early part of the 20th century by J. C. Willis, was that the rare endemic species were youngsters. They appeared on the earth recently and haven't had time to spread. He wrote a whole book on the sub- ject, which he called Age and Area. I first heard of that book from my systematics pro- fessor, M. L. Fernald, who was very much in- terested in rare species. He regarded them as senescent relics, and strongly opposed Wil- lis's theory. However, Willis was partly cor- rect. We have perhaps more direct evidence of this than for any other hypotheses. This is expected, because the origin of some new species would be recent enough that we would know when it appeared. A now classic example is that presented by the late Marion Ownbey, of Washington State University, with respect to the goatsbeard genus, Trag- opogon. Projected on the screen is a chart which Ownbey put in the American Journal of Bot- any in 1950. The three species which are list- ed all have the chromosome number 2n= 12. They are well-known European plants in- troduced as weeds into North America. There are no species of Tragopogon in the Old World that have chromosome numbers higher than 2n=12 and n = 6. However, in the backyards and railroad yards around Pull- man, Washington, Ownbey found two differ- ent entities having 24 chromosomes, twice the number of all the others in the genus. By a series of ingenious hybridizations and analy- ses of chromosomes, he established without doubt that one of them, described as a new species, T. miscellus, was derived from hy- bridizations between T. ditbius and T. pra- tensis. Its chromosome number has been doubled either before or after the initial hybridization, giving us a stable intermediate, a principle long known to geneticists. A sec- ond species, T. minis, has originated in the same way from a cross between T. porrifoUus and T. duhius. Because T. dubiiis did not ex- ist in western North America before about the 1890s, the age of these two species when he first found them was not more than a half century. They now are spreading. They are known in one or two places in Montana. There is another locality in Arizona. They are certainly not endangered. A hundred years from now, they may have become com- artmenl of Genetics, University of California. Davis, California ( 113 114 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 mon weeds. There are other very young examples, not quite so young as these. Indirect evidence suggests that some species have arisen since the retreat of the glacial ice from northern North America and the drying up of the cli- mate in places like California where the Pleistocene was a rainy or pluvial period. One example is that of three species in the genus Laijia, or "tidy tips," an annual plant of the composite family, or Asteraceae. The three species involved are L. jonesii, L. mun- zii, and L. leucopappa. They are very closely related, on the l3order line of becoming spe- cies. They can be hybridized easily and the hybrid is partly fertile. They are more dis- tantly related to L. fremontii and L. platij- glossa. Their distributions are as follows: Laijia jo- nesii occurs near the coast of south central California, not far from San Luis Obispo; Laijia miinzii is found in the small valleys of the inner south coast ranges; and L. leuco- pappa, in the central valley of California, on one or two hillsides not far from Bakersfield. They are closely related entities occupying neighboring areas in the same general region. The climate of this region was drastically changed in the Pleistocene. It seems likely that the splitting of these three populations from each other is post-Pleistocene, about six to eight thousand years ago. Layia miinzii is on the border line of being rare in a dry season, but is certainly not en- dangered. Layia jonesii, being on the coast, might be endangered. Layia leucopappa, in the highly cultivated central valley, definite- ly is endangered. A nature conservancy group, located in Bakersfield, is very much interested in it. It occurs on a large private range area, the manager of which says they are going to preserve it for us. This is a case of a young species which is on the rare and endangered list. Another example of a similar nature is a species of larkspur. Delphinium hesperinm is a common widespread species of the oak woodlands in the inner coast ranges of Cali- fornia. Delphinium recurvatum is foimd in the central valley and bottom lands and Del- phinium gypsophilum, as the name implies, lives in gypsumlike soil on the hills bordering the valley. It occupies a habitat between the other two species. Delphinium hesperinm and D. recurvatum have been crossed. The hybrid is partly fertile and looks like D. gypsophi- lum. The interesting thing is that when the F-1 hybrid is crossed with native D. gyp- sophilum it is found to be more compatible than the cross with either of its own parents. This is pretty good evidence that the native D. gypsophilum is derived from hybridization between the two other species. This again is a recent species. It is too common to be on the rare and endangered list, but it is cer- tainly recent and uncommon relative to its ancestors. An ancient species is the California Big Tree, Sequoiadendron giganteum. It is con- fined to certain groves in the Sierra Nevada in California, extending from Sequoia Na- tional Forest in the south in Tulare County into ever-smaller groves, to a very tiny one in the northernmost area in Placer County to the west of Lake Tahoe. It does not have a much-restricted gene pool. Horticulturists have found they can extract various modifi- cations of it by simple inbreeding. Daniel Ax- elrod, with his brilliant studies of the pa- leobotany of western Nevada, has shown that California Big Tree was very abundant in Pliocene forests, six, seven, or eight million years ago in western Nevada when the Sierra Nevada didn't exist and the climate of Ne- vada, due to moist winds from the ocean, was still relatively mesic. Because of the Pleisto- cene changes in climate, it has become re- stricted in two ways: (1) the elimination of the stands to the east of the Sierra Nevada by aridity and (2) the reduction of the stands in California by the increasing length of the rainless dry summer. I say this because of re- search by the late Woodbridge Metcalf, ex- tension forester at Berkeley. He showed that the big tree would seed itself only in a year when the dry season from May till October is shorter than usual. If it gets a few of these short dry seasons between seed germination and the time when the trees are 8-10 years old, then it competes with sugar pine, white fir, and other forest species. If young trees are exposed to a succession of normal dry summers, they cannot compete with the seedlings of the other species. This, then, is an example of an ancient species. There are some others. One of the inter- 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 115 esting things that Professor Jack Major and I worked out some years ago is that the con- centration of rare rehctual species, which were more common in the past, is bipolar in Cahfornia. It represents two elements, first a northwestern element which is related to the Pacific Northwest and Asia. The species in- volved are mainly trees or shrubs related to holarctic members of the same genera. Exam- ples are the Weeping Spruce {Picea brewe- riana), which is narrowly restricted to this area. The Sadler Oak {Qiiercus sadleriana) is related to the Chestnut Oaks of the eastern United States, and is restricted to the Sis- kivoii Mountain area. The Port Orford Cy- press (Cliamaecijparis lawsoniana) is in this area. It contains several endemic species of mesic genera like Vancouveria and some gen- era of the saxifrage family. In the southern area occur rare, endemic species like Hesperocallis of the Lily family, the jojoba shrub, Simmondsia, not particu- larly rare but certainly relictual. Bv contrast, central California contains en- demic species, which seem to be new like those of ArctostapJnjlos or Manzanita, al- ready discussed, and other annuals. Because central California has received the greatest disturbance in relatively recent times, one can get some idea of whether a species is re- lictual or not, both by its taxonomic affinities and by the geographic areas in which it grows. An example of an herbaceous species from the northern relictual area is Darlingtonia caUfornica. It does not have official preserva- tion that I know of in California. It should, because it is an attractive species, an insect- digesting pitcher plant. Every high school bi- ology teacher wants one in the classroom, and people also like them in their homes. There is danger to them from vandalism. I sometimes blush when I go up the Oregon Coast Highway and see that Oregon has a preserved area of Darlingtonia labeled as such, while California doesn't. The next group of rare and endangered species are of an entirely different nature. Here, I want to state publicly that one of my articles written in 1942, and often quoted, apparently is not correct. In 1942, I made the speculation that rare and restricted species would usually be so because of restricted gen- etic diversity. At that time I was influenced by the work of Sewall Wright on inbreeding and its ramifications, which was very popular at that time. Now we have data on restricted species like Clarkia franciscana, which grows in only a single hillside in the city of San Francisco and which, as my colleague Leslie Gottlieb has shown, has as much biochemical variability in it in terms of enzyme alleles as Clarkia ruhicunda, which is much more widespread throughout the San Francisco Peninsula. I now reduce the category of spe- cies that are rare because of restricted gene pool to a rather small one consisting of spe- cies that have not only become inbred be- cause of small population size, but, in addi- tion, because of the shift from cross- fertilization to self-fertilization or pre- dominant fertilization. Again, Leslie Gottlieb has shown with his work on enzyme varia- bility that in eastern Oregon there is a wide- spread species of the composite genus Steph- anomeria {Stephanomeria coronaria), which has an enormous amount of genetic varia- bility, but right next to it there is a very re- stricted species along Malheur Lake in east- em Oregon, Stephanomeria malheurensis, which has very little variability. One differ- ence between the species is that S. coronaria is largely outcrossed and S. malheurensis is almost completely inbred. The inbreeding as much as the restriction in size of the popu- lation and habitat was responsible for the re- duction in size of the gene pool. The same situation exists in some species of animals like the burrowing rodents of the Middle East, studied by several Israeli zoologists, and cer- tain fishes in Mexican caves which have very restricted gene pools. One that is rather widespread, the southern alligator, apparent- ly has extremely low variability in its gene pool. The whole hypothesis that there is a strong correlation between rarities and en- dangeredness and the size of the gene pool must be greatly modified, if not entirely re- jected. In my own thinking, I am substituting the concept of ecological traps. Plant species may be hemmed in by environments that are so different from the ones in which they grow that they do not have the genetic po- tential to colonize those habitats. Sometimes the "traps" are quite clearly defined so that I call them ecological islands. Usually the soil 116 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 is so different on the islands, relative to that of the surrounding islands, that the plants are as if they were on an oceanic island sur- rounded by a sea of unfavorable soil condi- tions. Such an island is Pine Hill, 25 miles east of Sacramento. It consists of basic intru- sives, a very distinctive type of rock, sur- rounded by the various metamorphic rocks commonly found in the Sierra Nevada foot- hills. Interestingly enough, this particular is- land is believed to have once been an oceanic island. Dr. Eldredge Moore of our geology department at Davis, in association with the new theory of Plate Tectonics, points out that basic intrusives are associated with the roots of volcanos. The situation could be ex- plained if the rocks now exposed at Pine Hill were the roots of an ancient submarine vol- cano that arose in the Pacific Ocean to the west of what then was the seashore, but is now the eastern edge of the central valley. Because of cnistal movements, this ancient is- land jammed itself against the older rocks. A striking endemic on Pine Hill is Fe- montodendron californicum ssp. decumhens, a prostrate shrub that bears highly distinctive copper-colored flowers. Another ecological island is in the area by Monterey and Pacific Grove. There are two species of rare endemic cypresses of the area. Neither of them is in danger now, because both are preserved. One is the well-known Monterey cypress {Ciipres.sus macrocwpa), found only on the granite ledges near the shore. The other is the Gowen cypress, found only in the hard pan of the raised beach, in the interior of the peninsula. Monterey pine is confined to the Monterey ecological island plus two others in Califor- nia, one 50 miles north, the other 120 miles south. There is evidence that it is not restrict- ed in its colonizing ability, if it has the right conditions, so that it could get out of its eco- logical trap. This is evident from what the Monterey pine has done in the southern hem- isphere, in Chile, New Zealand, and Austra- lia. In all three regions, extensive forests of this species have been planted that in many places look quite natural. Some trees are far taller than those in California, reaching heights of 100 to 150 feet. Most interesting of all, in the vicinity of Canberra, Australia, I have seen Monterey pine seedlings invading a forest of native Eu- calyptus. A well-known ecological island exists in the Sierra foothills of California, near the town of lone. It is based on a hard pan soil which is of Eocene age, about 40 million years old. It was a sea-beach terrace facing the Pacific Ocean, which at that time cov- ered all of the present central valley. It is dominated in many areas by an olive-colored shrub, Arctostoplujios mijiiifolia, the lone manzanita. There is a margin of the common gray manzanita, Arctostoplujios viscida, and interior live oak, but most of the area sur- rounding it is grassland consisting of in- troduced annual grasses and scattered blue oaks and digger pines that are the normal dominant vegetation of the area. The plants that are rare and endangered are held in check by the very special ecological condi- tions that prevail here. There is really an is- land within an island because a buckwheat, Eriogonum apricum, which is confined to the lone manzanita island, grows only in the few most barren parts of it. The gene pool of E. apricum is most inter- esting. There are three patches of it. The maximum distance from one to another is about 10 miles and there is one about half- way in between. Rod Myatt of UC Davis did a master's study on morphological variability and found that the different patches can be distinguished morphologically. They are races. There is not only a lot of variation within each of these patches, but distinctive differences between patches. In other words, it appears as if the lone manzanita within its area of 10 miles has as much morphological variability as does another buckwheat, Eriogonum nudum, within an area of equal size, 10 miles in diameter in the Sierra foot- hills. The difference is that Eriogonum nu- dum, one of the most common buckwheats in California, has a multitude of races that are adapted to all sorts of climatic conditions over this extensive area. Another fact is that E. nudum is a much bigger species and its seeds are much bigger. Its seedlings are prob- ably much more competitive so that it could colonize new areas more easily than could Eriogonum apricum. Perhaps E. apricum is a relic of the days when annuals, even native annuals, were much fewer than they are now. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 117 It may have colonized the barren places that no other perennials could live in, when there wasn't so much annual competition. That's pure speculation. This again emphasizes the ecological entrapment which I believe is the basis for imderstanding the distribution of most of our rare and endangered species, in- dependent of age and independent of quan- titative sizes of gene pools. The final example is similar. It is Convict Canyon in the eastern Sierra Nevadas. It is distinctive, because while most of the Sierra is either granitic or ancient acidic crystalline volcanics of Mesozoic age or earlier. Convict Canyon has a vein of limestone running through it. It is the only sizable part of the Sierra Nevada that has limestone in associ- ation with alpine or subalpine conditions. Mount Baldwin, 12,000 feet high, supports a rare rock cress, Draba nivalis, and is the only locality in the Sierra Nevada. The near- est to it, as far as I know, are the Ruby Mountains in eastern Nevada. One of the most remarkable plants, how- ever, in this area, is a willow which is related to a Rocky Mountain species. Salix brachyo- carpa. Another species is a relative of the sedges, perhaps ancestral to the genus carex Kobresia mijosuroides and an extremely local- ized dwarf bullrush, Scirpus rollandii, some- times put in the species Scirpus pumilus, which has been the subject of interest for arc- tic alpine botanists for many years. The two discoverers of these species were Jack Major and Sam Bamberg. Now, why do these rare plants grow here? It isn't because they are lime-loving calco- philes. The Kobresia grows on Mount Evans in Colorado which is acidic granite. Certainly Scirpus rollandii is to a certain extent a cal- ceophile, but it doesn't seem as though the limestone is the basic reason. The other fac- tor is this— limestone is porous. Because it holds water, on a steep slope like the one which supports the rare plants, water oozes out from the ground throughout the summer. Remember that the Sierra Nevada, in con- trast to the Rocky Mountains or the Wasatch Range, has very few summer storms. They ex- ist, but they're small and most of them hardly wet the ground. Much of the sierran area in the well-drained slopes becomes very dry in the summer, and the mesic plants have to grow where they get heavy snowfall during the winter. The rare plants, however, grow on a bench area that gets relatively less snow during the winter which is constantly coming out of the limestone formation. This, I be- lieve is responsible for the unusual nature of the environment. My final remark has become obvious from what I've had to say. Ecological genetics is a relatively new field. The combination be- tween studies of gene pools and the genetics of adaptation, I predict, is a field which is just beginning to emerge and will be explo- sive in the next half century. Young scientists who are interested in native environments and wish to study them in depth from an ana- lytical point of view will have an exciting ca- reer of discovery ahead of them. THE MEANING OF "RARE" AND "ENDANGERED" IN THE EVOLUTION OF WESTERN SHRUBS Howard C. Stiitz' .\bstract.— In the evolutionary process, species continually come and go. Consequently, all species on earth today were, at one time, "rare and endangered" while in their infancy, and most will become "rare and endangered" once more as they are replaced. Therefore, decisions relative to protecting rare and endangered species are largely meaningless if based on numbers alone. They must include information about their biology and evolutionary history. Lists of endangered forms currently being prepared apparently include ouly those which are (1) scarce (rare and of restricted distribution), (2) named, and (.3) sponsored. Their biological, economic, and academic values may be more important, but apparently are not often considered. As abundantly illustrated in western shrubs, genetically rich genotypes are sometimes maintained by only a few individuals, whereas uniform, and therefore rare, genotypes may in some circumstances, be represented by many individuals in uniform environments. Wise management decisions cannot, therefore, come from numbers alone. Interpretations of the origin of species in- dicate that all species now on earth were at one time rare and endangered. Whether they arose slowly by accumnlating mutations that permitted divergence from parental forms, explosively as polyploid derivatives, or as re- combinants from interspecific hybrids, they all had humble, precarious beginnings. Fur- thermore, they represent but a tiny fraction of all that might-have-been. Many are un- doubtedly inferior to former contempo- raneous taxa which, although superior gen- etically, were lost by fortuitous accidents during their infancy. As species come and go in response to the challenge of an ever-changing world, some are rare simply because they are new, others are rare because they are being replaced by more adaptive competitors. All species are endangered in the sense that they are success- ful only as long as the environment in which they are superior endures, or until other modified, improved competitors replace them. Intelligent intervention in this efficient, .sif- ting, ever-improving drama in the guise of protecting threatened species, requires there- fore understanding the evolutionary dynam- ics which define them. Because artificial pro- tection of any species may concomittantly impose intensified selection against all other associated species, utmost care and caution is essential in management decisions designed to deliberately favor specified taxa. Some species, represented by many individuals but which are genetically uniform, in certain cir- cumstances may be far more in danger of ex- tinction than "rare" species which are gen- etically diversified. Protective measures aimed at preserving one particular taxon may be detrimental to the entire ecosystem. However, rare forms which are of high intrinsic value because of their potential for improving an ecosystem, or for providing a fountain of genetic varia- bles from which other new improvements can arise, or for providing economic or aes- thetic benefits for mankind may deserve deference and intense protection. Decisions regarding management of eco- systems designed to preserve "rare" and "en- dangered" species are therefore always pre- carious and are essentially indefensible unless founded on intimate knowledge of the gen- etics and genealogy of affected species. As rosters of rare and endangered species begin to emerge, it is important that defin- able criteria be used for deciding whether or not a species is to make the roster. Apparent- ly, to date, only three ingredients are re- quired: 'Department of 1 and Range Science, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah i 119 120 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 (a) Scarcity (rare and of restricted distribu- tion) (b) A name (c) A sponsor Apparently it has had nothing at all to do with value. Also, (b) is not independent of (a) nor is (c) independent of (b). If scarce, a spe- cies may not have a name; if unnamed, it will almost never have a sponsor. Actually, however, because favoring one species may concomitantly disfavor another, decisions cannot really evade value judge- ments. In my opinion, they should not. I would recommend that they deliberately in- clude at least the following: (a) Aesthetic values, including beauty, uniqueness, antiquity, etc. (b) Biological values, particularly in rela- tionship to genetic potential and con- tributions to the ecosystem. (c) Economic values which would include their contribution to wildlife, to range use, to industry, to recreation, etc. (d) Academic values including contribu- tions to the interpretations of evolu- tionary history, geological events, climatological changes, and ecological succession. Illvistrations of rare forms which are being replaced and may, therefore, not invite hu- man intervention for their protection, as well as forms which are "brand-new," exciting, promising, arrivals and may, therefore, prof- itably be enhanced, are abundant in western North America. Recent major geological and climatological changes have provided a mul- titude of new habitats in which newly formed species have been and still are being favored. Concomitantly, similar other populations have become reduced or extinguished as their required niche disappeared. Examples may be found in nearly all groups of plants and animals; the following are illustrative: 1. The Rose Family In the rose family, Cercocarpus, Purshia, and Coivania have all shown explosive re- sponse to recent habitat changes. However, management decisions concerning the ac- companying rare and endangered forms of these genera will of necessity vary, simply because each has a distinctive evolutionary meaning. In Cercocaijms, three principal species are known in the Great Basin: C. montaniis, C. ledifolius, and C. intricatus. Natural hybrids are common between C. ledifolius and each of the other species, but are rare between C montanus and C. intricatus, even when they are sympatric (Plummer et al. 1957, Pyrah 1964). Cercocai-pus intricatus is the most xer- ic of the three, often growing on steep, ex- posed limestone cliffs, but it is found only in Utah and the immediate borders of neighbor- ing states. In areas where C. intricatus and C ledifolius grow together, there is often such a continuum of intermediates that individual plants are difficult to define. For these rea- sons, it appears that C. intricatus has been re- cently derived from C. ledifolius, having ac- quired adaptive attributes by rapid genetic assimilation of drought-resistant phenotypes which were, and still are, latent in C. ledi- folius. Similar evidence, although less straightforward, suggests that C. montanus may also have been derived from C. ledi- folius by selection of types that were more competitive in the more densely vegetated mountain brush zone. The requirement for broader leaves, an apparent prerequisite for competition with Quercus gambellii, Ayne- lanchier alnifolia, and Prunus melanocarpa, was apparently possible only if these broad leaves also became deciduous to escape the long winter drought of frozen soil. If these interpretations of the recent and continuing evolution of Cercocarpus are valid, what might our decisions be, relative to the component rare and endangered forms? Cercocarpus intricatus, although re- cently derived and somewhat rare, is cur- rently not endangered and probably needs little, if any, artificial protection. Its habitat is not often used by man nor by domesticated animals. Very little of the current impact of human civilization appears to be in any way threatening this species. Hybrids and hybrid derivatives, however, are a different story. Not only are they very rare but they are also very important reser- voirs of potential diversity and, in many cases, severely threatened. They are of value as demonstrations of biological evolution, as fountains of genetic combinations from which both C. montanus and C. intricatus might be enriched and from which even oth- 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 121 er species might arise, and as beautiful, rare specimens, with simple intrinsic aesthetic value. Although these populations may not represent species, they are important and in many instances deserve deliberate protection. However, because they are unnamed and, perhaps, even unnamable, because the indi- vidual plants are the unique rare entities, they may never make the roster. Furshia and Cowania, two other genera of the rose family, are also rapidly evolving and have recently produced several new adaptive products (Stutz and Thomas 1964). While some of the new forms may have come from new mutations, almost all appear to have come as adaptive segregation products from intergeneric hybrids between them. Purshia tridentata is distributed from southern Utah northward into Canada. Cow- ania stanshiinjana grows from northern Utah southward into Old Mexico. Consequently, almost the entire state of Utah is an overlap zone in the distribution of these species. In many places in Utah, where these two species come together, hybrids and hybrid deriva- tives are common. So commonplace is such hybridization there appear to be no popu- lations of Purshia tridentata in all of Utah which do not contain introgressants from Cowania (Stutz and Thomas 1964). Many, perhaps most, are one of a kind. They appar- ently continually come and go with few if any ever being superior to their progenitors. Here then is an example of species in which rare and endangered forms are ramp- ant. But, as interesting as they are or as po- tentially valuable as they may be, attempts to protect them all would be absurd. Selected forms, or even selected individuals, may be locally desirable, but it would be impossible to preserve every noble segregant. The Cow- ania X Purshia Fj hybrid and the segregat- ing hybrid swarm northeast of Provo, de- scribed in detail by Stutz and Thomas (1964), might have been profitably spared but, be- cause they have both already been com- pletely obliterated by a recent housing devel- opment, that is now impossible. Protection of similar known F^ hybrids and hybrid segre- gants is probably unwarranted. However, specific products that show unique adaptive promise may be profitably protected. Near Clarkston, Cache County, Utah, a distinctive population derived from Coivania X Purshia parentage is on the verge of being exterminated by overgrazing. Although con- siderable segregation is still evident, many of the plants appear to be stabilizing around a unique combination of characteristics which are apparently adaptive in this area. The fniits, leaves, and habit are all intermediate between their putative parents. Because it is unlikely that this small population will sur- vive long under present grazing pressures, adjustments in management of this area would seem highly desirable. However, it is unnamed and unnamable and will probably not make the roster even with me as its spon- sor. Other adaptive products from this parent- age include a species of recent origin, Purshia glandulosa Curran, and a series of popu- lations of Purshia tridentata throughout Idaho, Oregon, and Montana that have been enriched with Cowania genes by in- trogressive hybridization. Because the in- trogressed populations are being differen- tially favored by current grazing practices, they apparently require no deliberate pro- tection. Sheep apparently prefer Purshia tri- dentata plants that contain no Cowania genes, so introgressed populations are becom- ing increasingly abundant. These "rare" forms are therefore not at all endangered and may eventually prove to be very abundant and perhaps even detrimental as range for- age. In this case, the rare does not at all equate with endangered. Already it is becom- ing difficult to find "pure" nonintrogressed populations of P. tridentata. In time, they may indeed become the rare and endangered representatives. Each population of P. glandidosa is also somewhat genetically unique. The particular combination of Cowania and Purshia genes that identifies the adaptive features of P. glandulosa is common to all populations, but other characteristics, under less severe selec- tion, apparently segregate somewhat ran- domly. Consequently, plants in every popu- lation are similar with respect to the unique features which characterize them as P. glandulosa, but they differ considerably in other segregating attributes. Already P. glandulosa as a taxon is sufficiently well es- tablished that it is far from being rare or en- 122 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 dangered. Although individual variants may be "rare," they appear to be of little con- sequence in the evolutionary drama that is producing P. glandidosa as a newly derived species. Consequently, there appears to be little wisdom in deliberately preserving them even though they meet the rare and endan- gered criteria. 2. The Oaks Much of the variation in Quercus gambeJii in northern Utah appears to be the result of introgression from Q. turbinella. Although in Utah these species are currently sympatric in only a limited area in the southern part of the state, hybrids are common along the Wasatch Front 200 miles to the north (Cot- tam et al. 1959). According to those authors, the hybrids were apparently left behind dur- ing the altithermal postglacial period when, because of milder climates, Q. turbinella was able to grow that far north. Although most of the intermediate forms are much alike and mav be mostly Fj hybrids, some segregation is apparent. Both "Fj hybrids" and segregants are severely restricted to a narrow temper- ature-inversion belt at about 5,400 feet eleva- tion where temperatures are normally higher than either above or below (Cottam 1959). These rare hybrid specimens are of high aesthetic value and apparently also of high biological significance. If, as appears likely, much of the expressed variation in Q. gam- belii is due to introgression from Q. tiirbmella via these hybrids, they have already made great biological contributions and promise to continue to do so as long as we permit them to remain. However, many of these valuable speci- mens have already been destroyed and most of those that remain are threatened with ex- tinction. One very unusual hybrid derivative near the mouth of Immigration Canyon, east of Salt Lake City, Utah, has recently been re- placed by a house. This particular plant differed from both parents and all other seg- regants in having oval leaves with serrate margins. The leaves resembled superficially those of chokecherry {Primus melunocm-pa). It was a magnificent specimen with a speed of about 40 feet. It should have been pre- served. If anything can be done to save the others, they will have longlasting significance biologically, aesthetically, and economically. But these unusual plants {Q. X pauciloba) may never make the roster. 3. The Saltbushes Many of the new habitats which have re- cently become available in North America are still completely vmoccupied. Species have not yet evolved that can accommodate the niunerous steep mud hills, salt flats, and alka- li playas that characterize much of the west- ern deserts. The plants at the borders of these sterile islands, and therefore closest to in- vading them, are almost all members of the family Chenopodiacea: Salicornia, Allen- rolfia, Suedo, Sorcobatus, Salsolo, Hologeton, Graijia, and Atriplex. Most of these genera are represented by only a few species and are therefore probably there because of charac- teristics acquired elsewhere that made them preadapted to these harsh sites. The principal exception is Atriplex. This genus is represent- ed by numerous species and varieties, many of which appear to be of very recent origin. In some cases new successful forms appear to be no more than a few years old. Every known evolutionary force appears to be operative in Atriplex at an accelerated rate (Stutz 1978). Species appear to be aris- ing from new mutations, from introgressive hybridization, as new hybrid segregants from interspecific hybrids, as autopolyploids, and as allopolyploids. Rare and endangered forms are therefore abundant. Some are of obvious high value; many others are undoubtedly im- portant. One of the most successful species of Atri- plex to invade western North America is A. conescens (fourwing saltbush). It has the widest distribution of all native perennial species, growing from central Mexico to Can- ada and from the Dakotas to the Pacific Coast. With such a wide distribution, it is probably not surprising that it is a highly var- iable species. Some of the variation is due to phenotypic plasticitv, but most of it appears to be genetic. Four different chrosome levels in Atriplex canescens are known: diploids, tetraploids, hexaploids, and twelve-ploids. Rare and en- dangered forms are foimd in each. A. The diploids (2n = 18) Individual diploid plants have been found 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 123 sporadically in several polyploid populations and hence are probably derived by poly- haploidy. They are certainly rare, and cer- tainly endangered. But should they be pro- tected? Probably not. None appears to have any capacity for increasing (partly because, being rare in a polyploid population, they can leave only sterile offspring). With more knowledge, some of them might be recog- nized as potentially valuable entities and might therefore warrant careful propagation and ultimately increase for some specific use. For the most part, however, we might expect these to be continually produced and contin- ually discarded as novel but nonadaptive var- iants. Being rare and endangered in this case is probably insufficient license to receive any special protection. Three distinctive diploid varieties are known, however, which are highly successful in specific habitats and are therefore very valuable. At least one of them is sufficiently rare to be considered endangered. All are probably relics derived from ancestral dipl- oids rather than polyhaploids derived from polyploids. The most abundant of these diploids, and probably the most ancient, is a form which is common in southern Arizona and also report- ed from southwestern New Mexico by Max Dunford (oral comm.). It appears to be the most drought resistant of all forms of A. ca- nescens, growing sympatrically with creosote bush {Larrea tridentata) and mesquite (Proso- pis glandulosa). The other two diploids are narrowly en- demic. One (A. ganettii) grows only in loose sandstone-talus along the Colorado River and at the mouths of its tributaries from 10 miles northeast of Moab, Utah, to Lake Powell. Many populations of this species disappeared with the impounding of water in Lake Pow- ell. Atriplex ganettii is a very fragile species and would probably be facing extinction were it not for the protection afforded by its inaccessibility in the steep canyons and nar- row gorges along the stretch of the river where it grows. The third diploid form is restricted to the Little Sahara sand dunes in central Utah. It is strikingly different from other A. canescens in its gigas habitat. Its growth rate is nearly twice that of the tetraploid forms that grow nearby (Stutz and Melby 1968). This rare form is becoming increasingly threatened. The sand dune retreat has apparently pre- served it to date by excluding herbivores that have difficulty in walking on the dunes. Re- cent development of recreational facilities on the dunes by the BLM as a resort for dune buggy enthusiasts may spell its doom. Many plants are damaged directly by dune buggies; others are destroyed by people. Because this is almost the only woody plant available in this area, it is sometimes used as fuel. It is also highly palatable to livestock and has been harvested to feed horses. Other uses in- clude mattresses for sleeping bags and make- shift windshelters. The handsome fruiting stalks are often gathered for home decora- tion. During the annual spring dune buggy racing events, thousands of people swarm over these dunes. Even the games they play take a toll. Although requests have been made to pro- tect this fragile population by restricting ve- hicle use to a small area, it is apparently go- ing to be difficult to accomplish. This is a rare and endangered form which, although identified by a very vocal sponsor, has still failed to make the roster. B. Tlie tetraploids Although collectively the tetraploids are abundant and widespread, numerous local- ized small populations are genetically imique. Many of these are obviously of signif- icant biological value. Several deserve and need protection; others appear capable of holding their own. Although some of the variation between tetraploid forms may reflect separate poly- ploid origins, most variations occur as prod- ucts of interspecific hybridization. The fol- lowing three examples are among the most common. (1) Atriplex canescens X confertifolia. Hybrids between these very different spe- cies have been previously reported by Plum- mer et al. (1957), Plummer and Drobnick (1966), and Hanson (1969). The first one I found was in Elko County, Nevada, 10 miles west of Wendover. It was in an area which later became the median between the lanes of a freeway and was 124 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 therefore destroyed. From seeds harvested from it, however, 17 seedHngs were obtained which are now growing in the BYU nursery. All of these plants appear very much alike in habit and leaf characteristics but are dis- tinctively different from either parent and from all other species oi Atriplex. Differences in fruit characteristic are apparently due to only a few genes which permit clear segrega- tion in this small population. Other charac- teristics, such as habit, spininess, and leaf characters, do not conspicuously segregate, suggesting a more complex genetic control. Surprisingly, the males show regular meiosis, which implies that most of the differences ac- quired by these two very distinct species have come from gene mutations unaccompa- nied by gross chromosomal aberrations. A large number of hybrids from this par- entage have now been collected and progeny from them assembled in a common garden. From these, it appears that at least some of the natural variation present in both parental species has come from introgression from these hybrids. Near Honey Lake, California, a small population of A. canescens is ob- viously heavily introgressed with A. confer- tifolia genes. Near Garrison, Utah, a popu- lation of A. confertifolia appears to have received genes from A. canescens. Should these hybrids and introgressed pop- ulations be included on the rare and endan- gered roster? Individually, they appear to be fully qualified. They are highly important as sources for new adaptive combinations. Some possibly might represent the beginnings of valuable species if they are spared. Will they need names to make the preferred list? (2) Atriplex canescens X A. cuneata. Although A. canescens is a large woody plant and A. cuneata is a low-statured her- baceous perennial, hybrids between them are common. They have been reported by Plum- mer et al. (1957), Plummer and Drobnick (1966), and Hanson (1969). Stavast (unpubl. no.) reported an extensive population of hybrid segregants west of Hanksville, Sevier Coimty, Utah. From natural hybrids, segregating seed- lings have been grown to maturity in the BYU nursery. While most of them are more like A. canescens than like A. cuneata in habit and fruit characteristics, cuneata in- fluence is unmistakable. From observations of these garden-grown segregants, it has since been possible to iden- tify several distinct introgressed populations in nature. One particularly striking form is becoming established near Ferron, Emery County, Utah, as a low-statured form, with small fruits and a capacity for growing with and favorably competing with, Ceratoides la- nata and Xanthocephalum sarothrae, which neither parent can do. It now occupies only about 40 acres so is still rare and, of course, endangered. It may be the beginning of a very valuable addition to our rangelands if we can preserve it. Other novel adaptive combinations from this same parentage are likely also forthcom- ing if the source is protected. (3) Atriplex canescens X A. gardneri Many years ago A. Nelson reported hy- brids between A. canescens and A. gardneri and named them A. aptera (Nelson 1904). Such hybrids are still common west of La- ramie, Wyoming, and elsewhere where these two species meet. They appear to have given rise to a series of very successful derivatives which now occupy the banks of most of the tributaries of the Missouri River in Montana, southern Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, North and South Dakota, and northwestern Nebraska. It was a specimen of this form which was collected by Lewis and Clarke in 1804 north of Chamberlain, South Dakota, and to which the name A. canescens was as- signed. In most places it is low growing and shows vigorous root-sprouting, but some are quite woody. Some have broad wings on the fruiting bracts; some show only small traces of wings. Apparently segregation is still going on as unique combinations find habitats in which they are competitive. Collectively these hybrid products are not at all rare or endangered, but local unique populations certainly are. Should tliey re- ceive protection? Several other interspecific hybrids in- volving tetraploid A. canescens from which segregating progeny are sometimes abundant and stabilized, sometimes rare and variable, have been found in western North America. Some have already yielded new adaptive in- 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 125 cipient species; others may yet do so from the rich common gene pool. Some of them will obviously require protection if they are to become established. Others already appear to be sufficiently established to be able to continue even with human assaults. C. TJie hexaploids Within many tetraploid populations of A. canescens, occasional hexaploid plants have been found. They are apparently contin- uously and sporadically produced from unre- duced gametes. For the most part, they have not become established as separate adaptive derivatives. This is probably due primarily to the high improbability of two such hexaploid plants being produced simultaneously in suf- ficiently close proximity to each other to in- terbreed, and also, even if they did, it would be imusual for their offspring to be an im- provement over the parental forms. Even so, a few exceptional, small, localized hexaploid populations have been found in isolated pockets. In the White Sands National Monument, New Mexico, some very promis- ing hexaploids have become established in lo- calized colonies fairly close to the more abundant tetraploid form. In the BYU nur- sery, they show a shorter, more compact habit than the tetraploids and may have attri- butes which would be superior in particular range conditions. Because they are still few in number and sporadic in distribution, they could profitably use protection, but under current policy they appear to have little chance of receiving it though their existence under circumstances that severely hinder their establishment suggests they may have great potential for success once they get started. The ephemeral hexaploids that appear as single plants in tetraploid populations, al- though rare and of course endangered, prob- ably do not merit legislated protection, sim- ply because they cannot demonstrate particular values until removed from their tetraploid neighbors and manipulated by plant breeders. Their potential may be high, but protecting them in their ephemeral in- fancy is probably not warranted, although they apparently meet all current prerequi- sites except for having designated names. In contrast to rare, ephemeral, and local- ized small pockets of autohexapaloids, there are several allohexaploids that appear to hold great promise as new additions to the desert ranges. One of these is already abundant in the north-south-oriented valleys of Nevada. It appears to have been derived from the par- entage 4N A. canescens X 2N A. falcata. Apparently doubling of the chromosomes in the triploid F^ hybrid gave rise to a remark- ably well-adapted new taxon. It is a short- statured form that often flowers during its first year of growth. Because there are marked differences between different popu- lations, they have apparently arisen repeat- edly at different places. Although, collec- tively, this hexaploid is well established, successful, and apparently capable of with- standing intensified grazing pressures, some of the individual component populations are genetically distinct and apparently suffi- ciently rare to be endangered. Should we at- tempt to protect these new arrivals during their fragile infancy, or shall we settle for the already acquired forms which are performing at least satisfactorily? Another hexaploid fourwing derivative that appears to offer unique and exciting promise as a new adaptive taxon, has appar- ently come from the parentage 4N A. canes- cens X 6N A. tridentata. This interesting form occupies only about 80 acres east of Grantsville, Tooele County, Utah. It is up- right and woody like typical nearby tetra- ploid A. canescens plants, but it has soft-tex- tured furfuraceous leaves and late-maturing flowers and fruits like A. tridentata. It also grows on heavy clay soils as does A. triden- tata. This small population appears to be re- markably adapted to this valley and is appar- ently spreading. Currently almost entirely within a military reserve, it is already receiv- ing needed protection during its infancy. However, if that protection were removed, the entire population could very quickly be lost. Indeed, were it not for the presence of the reserve, it may have never survived beyond its birth. A hexaploid A. tridentata-\ike derivative from this same parentage has apparently come into existence only during the past dec- ade. It is still confined to the roadsides along a 30-mile stretch of freeway between Salt 126 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Lake City and Wendover. Because the free- way itself is only about a decade old, the new adaptive derivative must also be no older than that. In the center of the population, A. tridentata and A. canescens are sympatric. Hybrids and hybrid products, as well as the new stabilized segregant, are all present. In the summer of 1977, an actual count was made of the plants of this new form. On the roadsides of the lanes leading westward into Wendover, 17,600 plants were counted. As- suming approximately the same number on the roadside of the lanes leading eastward to- ward Salt Lake City, the total population consists of only about 35,000 plants. It is still rare, but as long as the highway is there there is little threat to its continuation. This por- tion of the freeway is mostly across empty salt flats, so grazing and other biological pressures are essentially absent. Conceivably, these robust, unique plants may be pre- adapted for occupying areas other than the side of the freeway, in which case they may one day find an escape from this restricted is- land, in any case, legislated protection is probably meaningless, despite their rarity and high intrinsic aesthetic and scientific val- D. The twelve-ploids Atriplex canescens var. laciniata Parish is distinguished by fruit bracts that are thin and lacy. It is common sporadically in much of the Mojave Desert, with extensive popu- lations near Barstow, California, and around the Salton Sea. It is apparently an allopoly- ploid derived from the hybrid A. canescens X A. pohjcapra. Although this extraordinary species is now well established and apparently in no need of protection, it hybridizes freely with both A. canescens and A. pohjcarpa, yielding numer- ous novel progeny, each one of which is rare. Although most are aneuploids, some of them may be preadapted for habitats yet uninha- bited. Parallel examples can be drawn from other groups of saltbushes and probably from many other desert plants. Rare taxa and endan- gered taxa are commonplace in these rapidly changing environments. The problem then is not one of finding them or defining them. but, rather, understanding them. Not until we know their biology and their genealogy can sound decisions be made concerning their management. Large, genetically uniform populations may be, biologically, much more endangered than smaller but heterogenous populations. Genetically they are certainly more rare. In terms of management then, it is far more important to identify rare and endan- gered genotypes than rare species. In some instances species having abundant genetic variation and few individuals may be much less endangered than species having limited genetic variation, albeit many individuals. Conclusion It appears clear, therefore, that the mean- ing of "rare and endangered" must extend beyond mere head counting. Abundant indi- viduals may not always mean abundant and therefore secure genotypes, and vice versa: species represented by only a few individuals may be so rich genetically that their continu- ance, under almost any normal environmen- tal assault, is essentially certain. Equally im- portant, in view of the cost to ecosystems, to human society, and to other contemporary organisms, some rare forms may not warrant preservation at all. A sterile, weak poly- haploid derivative with essentially no poten- tial for amounting to anything of value can- not justify protective measures merely because it is rare and endangered. A dinosaur pet, as fun as it might be to have, would be prohibitively costly just to feed— let alone to house and to exercise. On the other hand, new exciting infant forms with rich potential for high aesthetic, biological, economic, or academic values should be encouraged and their establishment and growth accelerated. To tell which of the rare forms are coming into existence and which are going out re- quires intimate knowledge of their biology and genealogy. Simply enumerating named taxa which are rare is not enough. If we are going to meddle in the evolutionary process, let us do it intelligently. Otherwise it would be better that we do not meddle at all. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 127 Questions for Dr. Stutz Q. Howard, how are you going to choose wliicli ones voii are going to save? A. I would expect that vakie judgements will be used just like we use them in creating priorities in every decision we make in life. We categorize them. So I think that if I were given an array of choices I could make that decision on the basis of relative value. But it's not going to be a simple recipe. It's going to be based on intimate knowledge of the species being considered. Q. But you mean they are going to be entirely based on man? A. In the absence of that, then we would have to do as has been suggested by several, including Dr. Steb- bins and Dr. White. We simply maintain the ecosys- tems, refrain from imposing our personal prefer- ences, and let natural selection make the choice. Then we're removed from that dilemma. I think, in many cases, ultimately that's what has to happen. It's obvious we cannot put everything into a wilder- ness protected area, but we need to have preserves. We need to provide opportunities where the evolu- tionary process can proceed without our inter- vention. On the other hand, there are situations where we must evaluate. We will have to decide whether to plow that field or to put in that hydro- electric plant. When it is necessary to impose hu- man decisions, then we must also impose human val- ue judgements. At that point we need all of the biological information we can possibly get to make those decisions. Thev must not come simply from a knowledge of numbers of individuals alone. Dr. Stebbins: First I think this is a fascinating topic, but I'd like to bring this whole question of preserving or not preserving into the context of what you said about intelligent meddling with evolution. I think in this case, if we're going to understand evolution, we want to make it go. After all, the engineer doesn't just look at what electric motors did in the past, he makes new ones. Now in the case of the examples you have in both your Purshia-Cowania and your Af- riplex, it impresses me that these obviously recent populations have not yet fitted in to any jDarticular ecological niche. The way to save them, in my opin- ion, is to gather large numbers of seeds and meddle just a little bit by finding out just what kind of eco- logical niches they prefer. Those that aren't likely to be disturbed will be happy homes for these things and will then lead on to something new and still dif- ferent. I'm particularly interested in this stabilized Purshia colony in that connection. You should go up there and ask permission from that rancher to get all the seeds you can and grow them somewhere along the margin there and just see if you can't find a place where it will be more than just a puny little population. In the case of your Wendover freeway, heavens knows there are miles and miles and miles of freeway that have nothing but Salsola kali, for in- stance. Wouldn't it be nicer to have this thing rather than Russian thistle or halogeton? A. The answer is in the affirmative. I'm glad vou brought that into perspective. Dr. Stebbins, because we have another great opportunity before us today which needs to be exploited. That is the sudden availability of new environments provided by mining operations in which we can do this very thing. Dr. Frischknecht of the Forest Service Shrub Laboratory is working on preparing plants which will be able to tolerate oil-shale refuse dumps. Also with strip min- ing, there are brand new islands made available and new areas in which we can do just exactly as Dr. Stebbins suggested. We can introduce gene pools into these new arenas and watch them evolve. We can monitor the evolutionary changes and we can get a record of evolutionary dynamics like we've never been able to before. We need to cooperate with industry and use their by-products to help us learn more about succession and evolution. Dr. Stebbins: Let me just mention this. I think it's nov- el, but I don't know how many of you know about it. If you have read the books of the marvelous scien- tific philosopher, Rene Dubois, he has made the comment that we Americans are too wilderness ori- ented becau.se we, or our ancestors, were brought up in or near pioneer habitats and wilderness, whereas Dr. Dubois was brought up in the vicinity of Paris. He knows country as cultivated land, as well-mani- cured forests, and sees the beauty in that. Isn't there some justification in our thinking in terms of produc- ing a pleasing landscape of human manufacture from many of the areas which are just junk now and, at the same time, of course, preserving the wilderness? Dr. Deacon: A couple of comments, one fairly specific. It is possible to include unnamed entities. I think that's one of the criteria that need not be met. The listing process that I've been involved with has something like over 10 percent unnamed taxa. Dr. Stutz: How are they listed? With a number? Dr. Deacon: They're simply referred to as a subspecies with a common name that's distinctive or unique to that group. In other words, what is necessary is to realize that it is unnecessary to actually go through the process of naming. Dr. Stutz: This entity, for example of Purshia-Cowania. I suppose we'll need a handle before it can even get on the roster. That was my only point. Dr. Deacon: Not the formal scientific name. But more serious than that, in my view, was the illustration of the coyote/rabbit: if you .save one, you're likely to save the other. It's the same sort of illustration that Congressman McKay used with respect to the Colo- rado squawfish eating the humpback chub. The point is, if you save an evolving ecosystem you save all parts of it. Just because you kill an individual doesn't mean you kill the species so that the evolu- tion of predator/prey is what nuist be preserved. I would hope you might reconsider using that illustra- tion. Dr. Stutz: I already have. Dr. Deacon: The other point I would like to make in that respect is that certainly the consideration of value, which is the main point of your talk, is really the most difficult thing we have to deal with here, and when you come to the process of involving eco- nomic value, it looks like one of the most fniitfid possibilities for consideration. The discussion pre.s- 128 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 ented so nicely to us yesterday by Dr. Spencer is perhaps one of the most optimistic I've heard pres- ented here from the standpoint of the pressure al- ready in existence. I think he represented to us the changing social values that are in fact forcing us into the changes necessary for us to establish "a world- wide sensible economic system." Mr. Clement: This is a fascinating evolution in refining our expression of what we're concerned about, and let me add one more fact: distinguishing between economic and fiscal valuation. Most of what we call economic is fiscal, private concern about economic return, and when you come to valuing in a broad sense, all values are economic, because we're dealing with scarce resources, whether they're material, aes- thetic, or spiritual. Literature Cited CoTTAM, W. P., J. M. Tucker, and R. Drobnick. 1959. Some clues to Great Basin postpluvial climates provided by oak distributions. Ecology 50:361-377. Drobnick, R., and A. P. Plummer. 1966. Progress in browse hybridization in Utah. Proc. Conf. West. State Game and Fish Comm. 46:203-211. Hansen, C. A. 1962. Perennial Atriplex of Utah and northern deserts. Unpublished thesis. Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Plummer, A. P., R. L. Jensen, and H. D. Stapely. 1957. Job completion report for game forage project. Inform. Bull. 31. Utah State Dept. of Fish and Game. Pyrah, G. L. 1964. Cytogenetic studies of Cercocarpus in Utah. Unpublished thesis. Brigham Young Uni- versity, Provo, Utah. Stutz, H. C. 1978. Explosive evolution of perennial Afn- plex in western America. Great Basin Nat. Mem. 2:161-168. Stutz, H. C, J. M. Melby, and G. K. Livingston. 1975. Evolutionary studies of Atriplex: a relic gigas diploid population oi Atriplex canescens. Amer. J. Bot. 62:2.36-245. Stutz, H. C, and L. K. Thomas. 1964. Hybridization and introgression in Cowania and Purshia. Evolu- tion 18:18.3-195. SOME REPRODUCTIVE AND LIFE HISTORY CHARACTERISTICS OF RARE PLANTS AND IMPLICATIONS OF MANAGEMENT K. T. Harper' .\bstract.— .\nalvsis of the vascular floras of Utah, Colorado, and California suggest that a syndrome of life form and reproductive characteristics separates rare and common species. Woody plants are heavily underrepresented, and herbs are overrepresented on the official lists of endangered and/or threatened plants of the floras considered. Few of the rare species are descended from wind-pollinated ancestors, but instead are derived from insect-pollinated stock. Theorv suggests that many of the rare taxa will ultimately be .shown to be self-pollinated. The date show a tendency for rare species to be better represented among taxa having bilaterrally symmetrical as opposed to radially symmetrical flowers. In aggregate, the results suggest that most rare taxa are equipped for rapid exploitation of small, unusual habitats. Because many rare taxa appear to be dependent on insects for reproduction, their survival depends not only on appropriate physical habitat but also on healthy pollinator populations. Reproduction of out- crossed taxa will be handicapped by road dust and other sources of atmospheric particulate which might foul stig- matic surfaces. Self-pollinated taxa may have little generic variability and thus be especially sensitive to environmen- tal modifications. Because most rare taxa are dicotyledonous herbs, herbicides such as 2, 4-D which have been widelv used in vegetation management for control of broadleafed plants can be expected to have highly deleterious effects on populations of rare species in the target area. The goal of management in any discipline is control of the components of the system mider consideration. The components of any system can be controlled only if their charac- teristics are imderstood. Once the critical characteristics and their dynamics through time are known, control strategies can be for- mulated and tested. Currently we know a great deal about which plant species are so uncommon that their existence could be endangered by even moderate natural or manmade changes in the environment. We know less about the size and distribution of the populations of most rare species. Even less is known about the habitat requirements of the individual rare species. But perhaps our greatest ignorance concerning rare taxa relates to the specifics of their life history and reproductive biology. Before such taxa can be successfully man- aged, managers must understand the life cycle, longevity, and reproductive habits of each. In this paper, I will examine various life form, longevity, and reproductive characters of endangered and /or threatened plant spe- cies of three states of the western United States: California, Utah, and Colorado. The incidence of a given characteristic among species listed as endangered or threatened in a particular state (U.S. Department of Interi- or 1975) will be compared to the incidence of that character in the entire seed plant flora of that state. By the use of appropriate statistical tests, characteristics that are over- or underrepresented among rare taxa can be identified, provided the incidence of each character is known among both rare taxa and the full flora of the state. Methods The basic data for this paper have been drawn from Munz and Keek's (1973) flora of California, a Soil Conversation Service Checklist of Utah plants (no date given), Har- rington's (1964) flora of Colorado, and the U.S. Department of Interior's (1975) initial listing of endangered and threatened plant species. Characteristics of the individual taxa have been drawn from species descriptions in the floras, examination of herbarium mate- rial, and personal experience. Some taxa in all states could not be characterized ade- quately and were thus omitted from consid- 'Department of Botany and Range Science. Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 129 130 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 eration (this deficiency was particularly serious for the California flora). Suffrutescent (woody rooted herbs) taxa are treated as perennial herbs. Annual and biennial taxa were combined for the purposes of this paper. Mode of pollination (wind, wa- ter, or animal) was inferred for each taxon from floral structure, degree of exertion of stamens and stigmas, and published reports. The accessibility of the pollen and/or nectar to the average animal visiting the flower was deduced from floral structure. Flowers were considered to have restricted access to ani- mals if they possessed any of the following characteristics: (1) petals, sepals, or calyx tube fused into a long (over 3 mm) tube of small diameter (as in some Gilias, Oeno- theras, or Cirsiums), (2) nectaries positioned in tubes that extend away from the reproduc- tion organs (as in Delphinium or Aguilegia), and (3) separate sepals and petals that are so positioned as to stand rigidly erect forming a narrow, false tube around the reproductive organs (as in Erysimum, Streptanthus, or Vicia). Not all sympetalous taxa were consid- ered to have restricted access flowers. For in- stance, some Campanula, Valeriana, and Kabnia species were classified as being open and freely accessible to pollinators. Although composite flowers that include both ray and disk flowers could be considered to include both radially and bilaterally symmetrical components, I have classified such flowers as radially symmetrical. Composite flowers con- sisting of ray flowers alone have also been categorized as radially symmetrical in this study. For the purposes of this paper, I have as- sumed that characteristics that are over- represented among rare taxa (in comparison to the flora from which they have emerged) impart some survival advantage to the rare entity. Conversely, I assume that character- istics that are underrepresented put rare taxa at a survival disadvantage. It will be recog- nized that the foregoing assumptions are based upon yet another assumption, namely that most taxa that are designated as endan- gered or threatened are relatively recent in origin. This latter assumption imphes that the rare taxon is commonly possessed of a suite of characteristics that permit it to be successful in spite of small populations and restricted habitat. I also recognize that the foregoing assumptions reveal still another assumption inherent in the analyses presented here: if characters that are overrepresented among rare taxa are viewed as enhancing their chances of survival, it must be assumed that ancient taxa that are not well suited to mod- ern conditions and are thus in a state of pop- ulation decline are uncommon entities on the lists of endangered and threatened species. This point will be considered further in the Discussion section. In the analyses which follow, the chi- square statistic is used to determine whether a characteristic is over- or underrepresented among the taxa listed as endangered or threatened: the incidence of that character in the regional flora is used as the basis for com- parison. In such analyses, the individual spe- cies become the statistical observations or replications in the compartments of the 2 X 2 contingency tables. Relationships were de- clared statistically significant only when the probability value for the relationship was .05 or less. Results Characteristics of Regional Floras Five regional floras have been analyzed in connection with this study (Table 1). Each flora has been analyzed to give the incidence of some or all of the following character- istics: percentage of the taxa that are woody (shrubs or trees), percentage that are wind pollinated, percentage that are short-lived (annual or biennial), percentage that have flowers that do not restrict animal access to pollen and/ or nectar, and percentage that are radially symmetrical. The five floras are surprisingly similar in respect to the fore- going characteristics. The most different flora in respect to the characteristics considered is that designated as Wasatch Prevalent Spe- cies. As the name implies, that list ignores species that were sampled infrequently (Os- tler and Harper 1978). An emphasis on the more common species of a region seems to unduly emphasize woody and wind-polli- nated species: annuals appear to be under- represented on the Wasatch Prevalent Spe- cies list. Whether the underrepresentation of 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 131 annuals is attributable to the fact that the Wasatch Prevalent list ignores desert habitats or to some other cause is unknown. The date (Table 1) demonstrate that woody species constitute between 10 and 15 percent of the state floras considered. In areas that are primarily desert (such as the Kaiparowits region of Utah), woody taxa may contribute almost 25 percent of the species in the flora. Wind-pollinated species contribute from 19 to 26 percent of the species in the regional floras studied. Short-lived species (annuals or biennials) furnish from 22 to 31 percent of all species in the regional floras imder consideration. Animal-polluted flowers dominate all of the floras considered. In the Colorado flora and the two subsamples of the Utah flora, only from 32 to 41 percent of the zoophilous taxa have flowers that are fully opened (nectar and /or pollen readily reached by most animal visitors). Most of the zoo- philous taxa in the Colorado and Utah floras are radially symmetrical (79 to 85 percent of the species). The characteristics of the regional floras will serve as the basis against which charac- teristics of the endangered and threatened species of those floras will be compared. In the case of the Wasatch Prevalent Species list, no endangered or threatened species are included. Consequently, characteristics of species from the bottom third of the com- monness gradient formed by arranging the prevalent species in order of decreasing aver- age frequency will be compared with charac- teristics of those species which appear on the top third of the commonness gradient. Hope- fully, such an analysis will reveal something about characteristics that enhance the survi- val of less common species. Size and Longevity of Rare Taxa In four of the five floras examined, woody plants are underrepresented among the en- dangered and threatened taxa (Table 2). The nonconforming flora is that of California: there woody plants are more common among endangered taxa than one would expect con- sidering the number of woody taxa in the state flora, but the departure from random expectations is not statistically significant. Al- though most of the endangered woody spe- cies in California belong to three rapidly evolving genera {Arctostaphylos, Ceanothus and Eriogomim), a number of the taxa appear to be old entities that are survivors of ancient groups that are well adapted to only a few of the modern environments of the state. Spe- cies representative of apparently old, declin- ing lineages include the following: Cupressus goveniana var. abramsiana, Juglans hindsii, Lavatera assiirgentiflora, Lyonothamnus floribundus, Fremontodendron decumbens Table 1. Number of species studied and characteristics of the floras considered. Floristic data sources appear at the bottom of the table. Blanks occur in the table where specific analyses have not been made. Flora Wasatch Kaiparowits' Prevalent' Characteristic California' Utah^ Colorado' (Utah) Species (Utah) Size of flora Percent woodv species 5,489 14.0 3,507 10.1 2,7.35 11.0 848 22.1 244 21.3 Percent wind pollinated species 18.9 18.5 25.9 24.0 .33.2 Percent annual or biennial species Percent unrestricted access flowers (Zoophilous only) Percent radially 30.7 21.9 22.7 40.4 25.1 .32.0 12.3 39.9 symmetrical flowers (Zoophilous only) - - 80.2 79.0 84.7 'Munz and Keck (1973) •Soil Conservation Service (no date given) 'Harrington (1964) 'Welsh et al. (1978) •Ostler and Harper (1978) 132 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 and F. mexicanum. The floras of Utah and Colorado appear not to have a significant representation of such ancient, woody taxa. The weight of the evidences seems in favor of the hypothesis that larger (woody) species are underrepresented among rare species. Three reasons may be suggested for the un- derrepresentation of woody plants among rare taxa: (1) large size limits the number of individuals that can occupy any given area, (2) slower maturation rates are accompanied by lower rates of population growth, all oth- er things being equal, and (3) long life and low reproduction rates impede the rate at which genotypes can be attuned to peculiar environments. The affect of organismal size on individuals per unit area is self-evident. The profound influence of age at first repro- dviction on intrinsic rate of increase of a pop- ulation was demonstrated over a quarter of a century ago by Lamont C. Cole (1954 and Fig. 1). Unquestionably, the average age at onset of reproduction is older for woody plants than for herbs. Thus organismal size and age at first reproduction can be expected to combine to depress the population size of woody taxa in the early history of their exist- ence. Theory strongly supports the concept that extinction rate is inversely correlated with population size and intrinsic rate of re- production (Pielou 1969:17). Theorists con- clude that most extinctions occur during the initial phase of population growth (Ricklefs 1979:649). Unfortulately, that is the period when slow-maturing organisms such as woody plants are at a particular disadvantage in terms of reproduction rate and population size. The chances of extinction for woody species is further enhanced by a slow rate of genetic fine-tuning to unique environments. Small, faster-reproducing (because of earlier maturation), and short-lived herbaceous taxa are almost certain to genetically adapt to new environments faster than woody taxa. Given the advantages of small size and early reproduction, one might have expected Table 2. The observed and expected occurrences of woody taxa among rare species of five floras. Expected values are based on the occurrence of woody taxa in the regional floras. A sample 2x2 contingency table appears at the bottom of this table. Expected values in the contingency table appear in parentheses. Flora Characteristic California Utah Colorado Wasatch Kaiparowits Prevalent (Utah) Species (Utah) No. of endangered and threatened species considered 234' No. of woody species observed 40 No. of woody species expected 33.0 Chi-square summation for the relationship 1.8 Significance of relationship NS 157 5 15.1 7.8 49 1 5.3 4.0 44 5 9.5 2.9 NS 85^ 14 22.9 9.7 Life form Species group Herbs Woody Total Taxa California endangered California flora 194 (201) 4,721 (4,714) 40 (33) 768 (775) 234 5,489 4,915 808 5,723 'Endangered species only considered 'No. endangered or threatened species included: species from the bottom third of the commonness gradient used instead NS— not statistically significant ■-statistically significant at the .05 but not the .01 level "—statistically significant at the .01 level 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposiui 133 annual and biennial plants to be significantly overrepresented among the rare taxa. In only the California flora, however, were the short- lived taxa overrepresented, and even there the relationship fell far short of statistical sig- nificance (Table 3). In both Utah and Colo- rado, annuals and biennials were significantly underrepresented. Two possible reasons are offered for the results observed: (1) short life requires that a genotype by highly pre- adapted to the environment to be occupied, and (2) the relationship may be a taxonomic artifact because annual and biennial groups appear not to have received the close tax- onomic scrutiny that numerous perennial herbaceous and wood plant groups have been exposed to. In respect to reason 1, many unique perennial herbs undoubtedly persist in potentially exploitable environments for many years before genetic recombinations are generated that permit the taxon to suc- cessfully colonize the site. Such extended pe- riods of genetic "experimentation" would not be possible for annual or biennial taxa: in their case, the novel genotype must reach an open niche and be sufficiently well adapted to that environment to reproduce success- fully in the first reproductive event. The probability that the novel genotype will be sufficiently preadapted to reproduce success- fully in the potential niche during the first reproductive event is apparently small. 2.4-. 2.2 2.0- 1.8- c/) O .E 1.4- H— O 1.2 - TO 10-1 .9 0.8. 20 NUMBER OF BEE SPECIES VISITING UJ 0 15- LJ Q_ Ul LJ LJ CQlO- 1-2 3-4 5-6 7-8 9-10 =>10 1-2 3-4 5-6 7-8 9-10 11-15 NUMBER OF FLOWER SPECIES VISITED Fig. 2. a,b— Distribution of shortgrass prairie flower species according to the number of bee species visiting them over two years on two sites in southeastern Wyoming; c,d— distribuion of bee species by the number of flower spe- cies utilized. 146 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 100 80 y 60 u UJ Q- ^ 40- UJ UJ CD 5^ 20- DF BEE SPECIES a x=O502 (±.229) BR BEE SPECIES b x = 0.407 (±.219) BETWEEN YEAR SIMILARITY IN FLOWERS VISITED DF FLOWER SPECIES lOOi 80- rr 60 40- 20- x=0375(±.316) BR FLOWER SPECIES d x"=Q200(±.187) ■75 0- >25- >50- >.75 0- >25- >.50- .25 .50 .75 .25 .50 75 BETWEEN YEAR SIMILARITY IN BEE VISITATION Fig. .3. a,b— Distribution of resident bee species by their similarity in flower utilization between consecutive years on two shortgrass prairie sites; c,d— distribution of flower species by their between-year similarity in bee species visiting them. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 147 imately 150 bee species recorded on each of two sites could meet such relaxed require- ments for residency as >3 individuals on a given site in each year. Most species were ei- tlier present in very low numbers in each vear or were abundant in one year and ab- sent in the other. The percentages of total in- dividuals collected that were nonresidents varied from 8.6-40.4 percent at the Boulder Ridge site and from 16.9-26.8 percent at the Dirt Farm. Although some nonresidents were undoubtedly incidentals from other habitats, the large number of species and individuals in this category suggest the presence of a sub- stantial fugitive species contingent. With diminution of native habitat, fugitive species will comprise an increasingly domi- nant element of the bee fauna. Unlike spe- cialized bees and to a lesser extent resident generalists, fugitives will be uninfluenced by size of reserves because of their tendency to disperse and their ability to utilize a variety of floral resources. Fugitives will have little difficulty succeeding outside reserves because of the many patches of floral resources avail- able along roadsides, in agricultural fields, backyards, etc. Indeed, these are the kinds of situations to which fugitives are adapted (Wilson and Willis 1975, Diamond 1976, Whitcomb et al. 1976). As resident bee spe- cies gradually disappear from reserves be- cause of random extinctions of their relative- ly small populations, they will be replaced not by other immigrants of the same species but by fugitives. The affect on the flora of losing general- ized pollinators is difficult to assess. It is tempting to claim that many generalists are functionally redundant and therefore expen- dable; if lost, their pollinatory activities will be assumed by others. Such a justification for nonpreservation is potentially insidious be- cause we have virtually no information on the relative efficiencies of different pollina- tors on particular plants or of a single pol- linator on several plant species (Primack and Silander 1975). Conversely, several studies have now shown that plant and pollinator di- versity are significantly correlated (Heithaus 1974, Moldenke 1975, del Moral and Stand- ley 1979). A reduction in the diversity of ei- ther plants or pollinators may lead to a re- duction in the diversity of the other. There are reasons for believing that func- tional redundancy is minimal, and that elimi- nation of generalized bee species as well as specialists can lead to differential alterations in seed set between plant species. First, some bees may collect nectar and/or pollen from certain species of flowers without pollinating them (Grant and Grant 1965, Faegri and van der Fiji 1971, Percival 1974, Tepedino 1975). Small species and certain bumble bees are more likely to fall into this "robber" category (Faegri and van der Fiji 1971). Their cate- gorization as potential pollinators of those plants from which they rob is misleading and can lull us into a false sense of redundancy. We must be careful to distinguish between visitors and pollinators to arrive at intelligent conservation decisions, and this will necessi- tate much additional study. Nor is it valid to conclude that because a generalized pollina- tor robs the resources of one plant species it is without value as a pollinator of other spe- cies. Many bumble bees rob nectar from cer- tain plants but are important pollinators of others (Faegri and van der Fiji 1971). Secondly, although generalized bee species utilize a broader subset of available floral re- sources than do specialists, the foraging of any given species does not include all avail- able flower species. Neither are the visits of any particular species proportional to the abundance of flower species available (Tepe- dino and Stanton, in prep.), nor are bee spe- cies equally efficient at pollinating all plant species visited. The extinction of a single pol- linator species will reduce visitation rates to certain plant species in the community to some unknown degree. Without evidence, it seems overly optimistic to assume that such a reduction will be compensated for by re- maining species. Further, even if visitation rates by other species do compensate for the lost pollinator, there is no basis for assuming that the efficiency of such visits is equivalent to that of the species which have dis- appeared. For example, in a study of four solitary bee species visiting alfalfa, Batra (1976) found that, although all gathered nec- tar and pollen and accomplished pollination, they did so with varying degrees of pro- ficiency. Two species spent more time than others foraging on hidden flowers, one visited many more flowers which had already been 148 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 pollinated, etc. The species varied during morning foraging from 0.8 to 3.68 pollina- tions per minute. The effect of removal of one of these pollinators upon seed set would depend upon which species was removed. If we extend the results of this simple green- house study to plant communities in the field, we gain an impression of the unknown com- plexities which we are tampering with. It seems clear that plant species that de- pend upon particular bees for their reproduc- tion will experience severe selective pressures to evolve autogamy (Levin 1972) or wind pollination or to realign their floral morpho- logies to take advantage of remaining pol- linator species. For many specialized plants such adaptations will be impossible (Levin 1971, Baker and Hurd 1968) and their extinc- tion is likely. While it is not uncommon to develop facultative autogamy from obligate outcrossing (Baker 1959), selling may be least advantageous in environments with low pre- dictability such as shortgrass prairie (Solbrig 1976). In such regions plant species that solve pollination problems with obligate autogamy may become extinct more gradually. As specialized pollinators are replaced by fugitives, more generalized plant species may become endangered because fugitives are rel- atively inconstant foragers. Several theo- retical studies provide similar results for situ- ations in which plant species compete for pollinator visits: if pollinator constancy is proportionate to floral abundance, minority species will receive fewer pollinating visits than more abundant species and will eventu- ally disappear (Levin and Anderson 1970, Straw 1972, Waser 1978). Even worse, if pol- linators show disproportionate preference for more abundant species, then less abundant species will approach extinction more rapid- ly- There is little doubt that in North America we will lose many bee species and other pol- linators as well, particularly from the western states. As a result of these extinctions, we will probably see some gradual transition in the composition of our flora. Floral change will be most obvious and far-reaching in desert, chaparral, and alpine ecosystems, where the percentage of insect-pollinated plants is high (Moldenke 1976). In forests and grasslands, where the dominant plant species are wind pollinated, changes will be more subtle and less easy to predict. Obviously, the key to slowing the rate of pollinator and plant extinction is habitat preservation. We need to set aside as much land as we can possibly afford in the form of greenbelts, parks, and reserves of various sizes. In addition, we should encourage the use of local plant species as ornamentals in backyards and gardens instead of the sterile creations of seed companies. Local plant spe- cies are frequently as esthetically pleasing and, because they are adapted to the region, require less care and expense in the form of fertilizers, water, etc. It is also quite simple to provide nesting material for some solitary bees in the form of pine wood blocks or scraps with holes drilled in them (Krombein 1967). These can be set out on posts in back- yards as are bird houses and feeders. The spe- cies which will utilize these trap-nests are not at all agressive and will sting only when han- dled. In short, every little bit will help and, unfortunately, we need all the help we can get. Acknowledgments F. D. Parker and P. F. Torchio provided helpful suggestions on the manuscript. I thank G. E. Bohart for unpublished informa- tion on the genus Dufourea and B. B. Becker for the figures. 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Opler, and C. S. Robbins. 1976. Island biogeography and con- servation: strategy and limitations. Science 193: 10.30-10.32. Williams, C. B. 1964. Patterns in the balance of nature. Academic Press, New York. Williams, N. H., and C. H. Dodson. 1972. Selective at- traction of male euglossine bees to orchid floral fragrances and its importance in long distance pollen flow. Evolution 26: 84-95. Wilson, E. O., and E. O. Willis. 1975. Applied biogeo- graphy, pp. 522-534. In: Ecology and evolution of communities, M. L. Cody and J. M. Diamond (eds.). Belknap Press, Cambridge, Mass. ENDANGERED SPECIES: COSTS AND BENEFITS' Edwin P. Pister- .\bstract.— Biologists are often placed in the difficult position of defending a threatened habitat or animal with vagiie reasoning and faulty logic, simply because they have no better rationale at their immediate disposal. This places them at a distinct disadvantage and literally at the mercy of resource exploiters and their easily assignable dollar values. Although the initial dollar cost of delaying or precluding "developing" may be significant, the long- term benefits of saving the biological entities which might otherwise be destroyed are likewise great and are measur- able in concrete terms which society is only now beginning to appreciate. Case histories are presented, a more pro- found rationale is explained, and the environmentalist is challenged to make his case sufficiently effective to reverse the current exploitive trends which threaten so many of earth's life forms. The land and water developers, mineral extractors, and other resource users which burgeoned nationwide (especially in the West) following World War II placed agency resource managers in a new and uncomfort- able position. Whereas there once had been sufficient land and water for everyone, in- cluding our plant and animal species, we sud- denly found ourselves entering into what seemed (on the surface, anyway) an "us or them" situation. Backed into a corner, biolo- gists and administrators found themselves searching frantically for values with which to defend their trust against the hard dollar fig- ures of the exploiter. Nowhere has this concept been more ap- parent than in our efforts to preserve threat- ened and endangered species. When pitted against a potential development project in- volving the expenditure of millions of dollars, the environmentalist has been forced to bol- .ster his innate sense of doing what he knows is right with whatever biological rationale might enter his mind. Often his reasoning proves biologically unsound, reducing his changes of success and injuring his profes- sional credibility. A ray of hope has been noted recently through the presentation of a new rationale, one which bolsters valid existing arguments with profound .spiritual values. This paper presents a brief history of recent preservation efforts, summarizes the new rationale, and of- fers the hope that newly defined goals, al- though lofty, are by no means unattainable. Acknowledgments It would be ungrateful of me to prepare a paper on endangered species, especially one involving fishes, without acknowledging the enormous efforts of Professor Carl Hubbs of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Dr. Robert Rush Miller of the University of Michigan. Many others, agency biologist and academician alike, have made great contribu- tions to the cause, especially in recent years. Special thanks are due Dr. David W. Ehren- feld of Rutgers University, Dr. Hugh W. Nib- ley of Brigham Young University, and Mr. Jimmie Durham of the International Indian Treaty Organization, whose works I have re- ferred to and quoted extensively in the prep- aration of this paper. Background My first real involvement with endangered species began in July 1964 during a field trip with Bob Miller and Carl Hubbs in Califor- nia's Owens Valley. Bob suspected that the Owens pupfish {Cijprinodon radiosus) was ex- tinct when he described it (Miller 1948), but he felt it worthwhile to make one final effort 'Initially presented at a symposium. Fishery Benefits to Society and Industry, as part of the joint annual conference of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and Western Division American Fisheries Society, San Diego. California, 17-20 July 1978. ■California Department of Fish and Game and Executive Secretary, Desert Fishes Council, 407 West Line Street, Bishop, California 93514. 151 152 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 to locate a remnant population. My interest in endangered and nongame fishes was min- imal at that time; yet, when exultant voices resounded through the marsh, a strange feel- ing came over me. My conversion to the cause of nongame species was instantaneous and dramatic. Fish Slough on the floor of Owens Valley was my Road to Damascus (Miller and Pister 1971), and I have been an active crusader for the past 14 years, almost to the day. Sympathy for the cause was rare within my agency, and time and funds were vir- tually imavailable for anything but the man- agement of game species. What work we were able to accomplish was generally done on our own time and expense. Yet somehow the movement grew. Support was excellent from the academic community; and the Fish and Wildlife Service, which found itself less encumbered by politics and tradition than those of us in state agencies, also offered good assistance, often to cries of anguisH concerning the "Federal Octopus" from within Great Basin state directorships. Sadly, this point of contention still precludes optimum interagency management program- ming, and we still eagerly await the day when welfare of the resource will overcome agency jurisdiction as the primary point of concern. The initial meeting of the Desert Fishes Council, formed in desperation in 1969 to stave off the almost certain extinction of sev- eral fishes within the Death Valley drainage system, drew 44 individuals, primarily with federal or academic affiliations (Pister 1974). The 1978 Council membership approaches 300 and is growing rapidly as public recogni- tion of the need for desert ecosystem pro- tection increases. My involvement in endangered species work (and colleagues often state the same motivation) stems from a desire to leave something significant as a mark of my having been here. Somehow, in my advancing ca- reer, the idea of providing a bunch of game- fish for people to catch simply was not suffi- ciently fulfilling. It became apparent to me that if man were ever to exercise his domin- ion (a term which until recently was disturb- ingly vague) in an acceptable way, he was going to have to turn a new leaf and face a new set of problems. Discussion At a recent symposium on endangered spe- cies held at Yale University, Dr. Lee Talbot, vice-president of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, said that even obscure endangered species can serve as in- dicators of large environmental problems that may have major adverse effects on people who could not care less about the ani- mal in question. In this context, let us consid- er the following examples: Devils Hole East of Death Valley, Nevada, is a lime- stone cavern with a tiny pool containing the entire world population of the Devils Hole pupfish (Cyprinodon diaholis). Extensive and indiscriminate agricultural development and irrigation in the late 1960s was rapidly lowering the aquifer system supplying the pool, and it was apparent that, unless some- one did something to stop it, a full species (the most highly evolved of the Death Valley cyprinodonts) would soon become extinct. This actually was the cause celehre which motivated us to form the Desert Fishes Coun- cil. We fought long and hard in behalf of De- vils Hole and its inhabitants and found, in the process, that the State of Nevada, with the exception of its Department of Fish and Game, was often uncooperative and even an- tagonistic when asked for assistance in stop- ping the deadly water table drawdown. This seemed particularly true of the state engi- neer's office. Nevada is very development oriented and, despite a rather paradoxical state endangered species law, generally viewed as highly undesirable a tiny fish of no economic value which seriously threatened a multimillion dollar ranching operation. Federal law seemed to offer our only salva- tion in this matter, so in July 1972 the People of the United States, through the Department of Justice, went to court against the land de- veloper and the State of Nevada as codefen- dants. Interestingly, the case was not argued on the basis of the Endangered Species Act, but on a point of water law. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposiui 153 Initial judgment was favorable, and after a siege in the appellate court the case was heard (amidst the strong desire of western congressmen to reverse the earlier decisions) by the U.S. Supreme Court. In June 1976 the court ruled unanimously in favor of the People of the United States (and the fish), and we began to regain some confidence in "the system." It was encouraging to know that the Equal Justice under Law inscription over the entrance to the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., applies to fish, too. Probing deeper into the matter, we found that the Ash Meadows ranching operation was only a symptom of a much greater envi- ronmental threat. A report by a consultant to the Nevada State Engineer (Nevada State Engineer's Office 1971) to locate and eval- uate future water sources for Las Vegas ear- marked underground supplies around Devils Hole to provide 3 million acre feet over a 30- year period. At this time, the report in- dicated, it would no longer be feasible to nm the pumps, and the deteriorating quality of what remained would make it unsuitable anyway. However, that 3 million acre feet would allow a sufficient increase in popu- lation to facilitate acquisition of water from more permanent sources farther away (such as the Columbia or Snake rivers). In this case the Devils Hole pupfish proved to be an indicator organism which led, even- tually, to a discovery of the underlying poli- tics of the entire matter. Would it be to man's long-term benefit to destroy a spring ecosystem unique in the United States and equaled only in one location in Mexico sim- ply to provide short-term water to a city which must very obviously someday curtail its growth? At least we now have the chance to take a harder look. Tellico Dam and the Snail Darter In a related situation, news media through- out the United States have recently been dis- cussing a situation on the Little Tennessee River wherein the tiny snail darter {Percino tanasi) has essentially stopped completion of the $116 million Tellico Dam following a 6-3 Supreme Court decision affirming the provi- sions of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Reaction by the media has been mixed, with some lauding the decision and others con- demning an action that, in their estimation, would waste $116 million simply to save a fish of no known economic value. In the wake of this. Congress (with many members in an election year asking themselves "What if Tellico were in my district or state?") is now debating whether or not the Endangered Species Act should even be renewed and, if so, what amendments should be made to "al- low greater flexibility." Again, a look behind the scenes is reveal- ing. First off, TVA (the sponsoring agency) failed to discuss the snail darter problem with the Fish and Wildlife Service until the proj- ect was nearly finished, and greatly accelera- ted the construction schedule to create a stronger case for completing the dam. Sec- ondly, a General Accounting Office study (U.S. General Accounting Office 1977) imple- mented by Congress revealed a cost-benefit analysis so faulty that even after the expendi- ture of over $100 million taxpayers would be money ahead if the dam were torn down. In fact, this alternative was offered by TVA Chairman S. David Freeman before a House subcommittee following the Supreme Court decision and release of the General Account- ing Office report. Lastly, considering the widespread pressure to terminate or weaken the Endangered Species Act, it is significant to note that in all except one (Tellico) of more than 4,500 consultations between de- velopers and the Fish and Wildlife Service, both the project and the species in question were deemed able to coexist. Additional Benefits In addition to the above-listed benefits of revealing the political issues underlying vari- ous development proposals, concern over en- dangered species has resulted in beneficial philosophical shifts within many state fish and wildlife management agencies. Although the primary orientation of such agencies re- mains one of providing a harvestable product for hunters and anglers, changes are being noted through the implementation of non- game, endangered species, environmental, and land acquisition programs as the future 154 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 demands of society become increasingly ap- parent (Pister 1976). Costs What are the direct agency costs of rare and endangered species programs? Small, by most standards. In 1978, according to Fish and Wildlife Service figures, the cost of ad- ministering the Endangered Species Act, in- cluding aid to the states, was $16.2 million. A figure of $19.4 million is estimated for 1979. It is virtually impossible to accurately assess the dollar costs of delaying a development project during the discussion period with the Fish and Wildlife Service. A New Rationale Why do the people of the United States find themselves in the current dilemma? Per- haps Nibley (1978:85-86) says it best: "We have taught our children by precept and ex- ample that every living thing exists to be converted into cash, and that whatever would not yield a return should be quickly exterminated to make way for creatures that do." I cannot think of a better way to put it, and I am reminded of Paul's admonition to Timothy nearly 2,000 years ago: "For the love of money is the root of all evil. . . ." (I Tim. 6:10). In view of the increasing concern of vir- tually all segments of society over environ- mental matters generally, and noting this same concern within academic circles, it ap- pears to me highly appropriate that two of the most outstanding essays involving endan- gered species to emerge during the past dec- ade should be written by eminent scholars representing two very different disciplines. David W. Ehrenfeld, a Harvard M.D. with a Ph.D. in zoology and biochemistry from the University of Florida, is currently professor of biology at Cook College, Rutgers Univer- sity. Hugh Nibley graduated in history from UCLA and received his Ph.D. from the Uni- versity of California at Berkeley. Adept in 14 languages, he taught history and languages at the Claremont Colleges in California before moving to Utah. He is now professor of his- tory and religion at Brigham Young Univer- sity. Yet, although their academic disciplines may differ, their philosophies blend marve- lously well, complement one another, and lead to a logical and acceptable rationale for the preservation of all life forms. Ehrenfeld (1976), in a masterful essay en- titled "The Conservation of Non-Resources," does the biologist a great favor by critically analyzing the most popular (and frequently contrived) reasons advanced in defense of a favorite species or program. He defines a re- source as a commodity that has an appre- ciable money value to man and then lists sev- eral that do not. These he considers to be non-resources, without conjectural or demon- strated resource value to man. He utilizes the Houston toad (Bufo houstonensis) to exem- plify this concept and throws fear into the hearts of many zealots when he states quite accurately that certain species may even ex- hibit a negative value. Ehrenfeld warns against the dangers of prioritizing, or rank- ing, species or natural areas in a preservation program because of our categorical lack of knowledge about them, be it now or 100 years from now. He feels, further, that formal ranking sets natural area against natural area (and species against species) in an unaccept- able and totally unnecessary way, and em- phasizes that the need to conserve a particu- lar community or species must be judged independently of the need to conserve any- thing else (Ehrenfeld 1976:653). He then goes on (p.654) to state that only one account exists in Western culture of a conservation effort greater than that now taking place, where not a single species was excluded on the basis of low priority, and by all accounts not a single species was lost (Genesis 7:8-9): Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that creepeth upon the earth, There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God has commanded Noah. It is encouraging to note that even (or per- haps especially) the more sophisticated writers seem to be rejecting the classical, anthropocentric economic arguments for spe- cies preservation in favor of a religious con- cept presented by Elton (1958) 20 years ago and hirther developed by Ehrenfeld (1976:654-655), who states: 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 155 The non-economic value of coniniunities and species is the simplest of all to state: they should be conserved because they exist and have existed for a long time. Long-standing existence in nature is deemed to carry with it the unimpeachable right to continued existence. Existence is the onlv criterion of value, and diminution of the number of existing things is the best measure of decrease of value. This is, as mentioned, an ancient way of evaluating "conservability" and by rights ought to be named the "Noah Principle" after the person who was one of the first to put it into practice. In recent hearings on the Endangered Spe- cies Act held by the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, Jinimie Durham, director of the International Indian Treaty Organization, posed a very logical and per- tinent question: Who has the right to destroy a species? Because of Durham's eloquence, any attempt to paraphrase his statements would markedly reduce the feeling which his words convey. The following material has been extracted from his published address (Durham 1978): In Ani Yunwiijah, the language of my people, there is a word for land: Eloheh. This same word also means his- tory, culture, and religion.- This is because we Cherokees cannot separate our place on the earth from our lives on it, nor from our vision and our meaning as a people. From childhood we are taught that the animals and even the trees and plants that we share a place with are our brothers and sisters. So when we speak of land, we are not speaking of property, territory or even a piece of ground upon which our houses sit and our crops are grown. We are speaking of something truly sacred. There is no Cherokee alive who does not remember that Trail of Tears, as we call our march into exile in Oklahoma. There is none among us who does not re- member and revere that sacred land, Echota. Today, the Tennessee Valley Authority would like to flood the sacred valley that held our two principal cities, Echota and Tenasi, after which the state is named. The Tellico project would have destroyed an area of great re- ligious importance, many settlement sites, cemeteries, rich farmlands, forests and the river itself. This is an un- needed dam which can, at the whimsy of TVA, wipe out thousands of years of history of a great and currently op- pressed people. To do so would be an insult not only to the Cherokee, but also to all the people in the United States and to humanity. Yes, I am proud enough to state that the history and vision of my people are important to humanity. The flooding of our valley has been stopped temporar- ily because of a little fish that lives there and nowhere else. I have seen Atty. Gen. Griffin Bell, the New York Times and a national television network make fim of this little fish and I would like to ask why it is considered so humorously insignificant. Because it is little, or because it is a fish? It is this incredible arrogance towards other life that has caused such destruction in this countrv. Who is Grif- fin Bell or the U.S. government to play God and judge the life or death of an entire species of fellow beings which was put here by the same power that put us here? Who has the right to destroy a species of life, and what can assuming that right mean? Let me be emotional: To me, that fish is not just an abstract "endangered species" although it is that. It is a Cherokee fish and I am its brother. Somehow, it has acted to save my holy land, so I have a strong gratitude for that fish. The Cherokee people in Tennessee, Oklahoma, the Carolinas, Georgia and wherever we might be are of one voice and of one mind that this dam, this degradation, must be stopped. We want our universe, our Echota with all of its fish and all of its life to continue. We are sine that this cannot be against the interests and wishes of the American people. Definitions Although subdue and dominion as used in Genesis carry a religious connotation, vir- tually all environmentally oriented dis- cussions in which these words arise seem to end with everyone defining them to suit his own selfish purposes. We have long been in need of a clear and learned treatise on this subject, and the entire cause of species preservation is fortunate in- deed to have someone of Hugh Nibley's stat- ure and capability to provide one for us (Nib- ley 1978:85-99). His analysis of man's dominion borders on pure genius, and he log- ically asks in his preface (p.86): "If God were to despise all things beneath him, as we do, where would that leave us?" He then pro- ceeds typically to use a wealth of scripture, classical literature, and other references to develop his theme that "Man's dominion is a call to service, not a license to exterminate" (p.96), and provides an example from a pio- neer leader: "while 'subduing the earth' we must be about 'multiplying those organisms of plants and animals God has designed shall dwell upon it,' namely 'all forms of life,' each to multiply in its sphere and element and have joy therein." (p.87). This was indeed an inspired statement from the leader of a group of pioneers seeking to tame a desert wilder- ness. Nibley suggests an in-depth analysis of the derivation of "dominion," which clearly turns out to be the responsibility of the mas- ter for the comfort and well-being of his de- pendents and guests, "not a predator, a ma- nipulator or an exploiter of other creatures, 156 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 but one who cooperates with nature as a dih- gent husbandman" (p.88). Nibley continues: "The teaching of Israel laid the heaviest emphasis on responsibility. Since man is quite capable of exercising the awesome powers that have been entrusted to him as the very image of God, he must needs be an example to all, and if he fails in his trust, he can only bring upon himself the con- demnation of God and the contempt of all creatures." (pp.89-90). Nibley 's explanation of man's hostility is as logical and obvious as it is painful: "The ani- mal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms abide the law of their Creator; the whole earth and things pertaining to it, except man, abide the law of their creation, while 'man, who is the offspring of the Gods, will not become sub- ject to the most sensible and self-exalting principles.' (Journal of Discourses, 9:246). With all things going in one direction, men, stubbornly going in the opposite direction, naturally find themselves in the position of one going the wrong way on the freeway during rush hour; the struggle to live be- comes a fight against nature. Having made himself allergic to almost everything by the Fall, man is given the choice of changing his nature so that the animal and vegetable crea- tion will cease to afflict and torment him, or else of waging a truceless war of extermina- tion against all that annoys him until he ren- ders the earth completely uninhabitable." (pp.94-95). Summary The obvious benefits of endangered species programs may therefore be summarized as follows: 1. Endangered species generally serve as indicators of larger environmental prob- lems and, when detected, allow analysis and correction of more involved issues during the pursuit of a preservation program. 2. The "Era of Endangered Species" has initiated a process of maturation within state fish and wildlife agencies as they begin to consider all species in their program planning, not simply those with an obvious economic value. 3. By preventing the extinction of fish and wildlife species (and all life forms), we automatically preserve any anthropo- centric values which they may possess, but which research may not yet have discovered. 4. Perhaps the most important reason for preserving endangered species is the re- alization of the opportunity granted to man— the only species endowed with the capability of truly caring for his fel- low creatures— to exercise righteously the dominion granted him by his Crea- tor. Doing so will do much to preserve man's self-respect. The manifestations of this concept can be enormous, in- cluding peaceful coexistence with na- ture, other nations, and himself. Conclusion Considering our rather dismal record to date, including threatened changes in the En- dangered Species Act resulting from the Tell- ico Dam-snail darter conflict, the cynic would consider it quite improbable that man would ever categorically accept a religious (or morally based) reason for preserving other life forms. At this point I must assume the role of the optimist and state that a widely accepted nonresource rationale is not only desirable, it is absolutely mandatory if we are ever to gain the necessary political strength to assure adequate recognition of the biota in a proposed development project. It seems un- likely in the foreseeable future that, in terms of dollars, we will ever be able to place a higher value on the Devils Hole pupfish than on a section of resort condominiums in Las Vegas, or prove that the snail darter swim- ming above Tellico Dam has an economic worth in excess of the electricity produced by the water in which it lives. Ehrenfeld (1976) states quite correctly that if nonresource arguments are ever to carry their deserved weight, cultural attitudes will have to be changed. Tliis is a big order, but we have no alternative but to try. Henry Ford used to remind his plant managers: "You can say it can be done, or you can say it can't be done and be correct either way." An analysis of Section 2 (Findings, Pur- poses, and Policy) of the Endangered Species 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 157 Act of 1973 indicates that Congress appar- ently felt it was worth a try to implement such a cultural change, inasmuch as the states (often the hardest to sell in such matters) and other interested parties are encouraged to de- velop and maintain conservation programs which meet national and international stan- dards as a key to better safeguarding, for the benefit of all citizens, the nation's heritage in fish and wildlife. Further, the purposes of the act include providing a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered and threatened species depend may be conserved. Lastly, the policy of Congress is stated that all federal departments and agencies shall utilize their authorities in furtherance of the act. Although the act lists the physical means of achieving its purposes, it fails to address the matter of enlisting and sustaining philo- sophical support. Inasmuch as the long-term effectiveness of any legislation is dependent upon its acceptance by the people, it is im- plicit that the major responsibility for assur- ing this falls upon those of us who feel strongly about such things. Reflection Not long ago I arose early and went for a walk near my Bishop home. I glanced west- ward and watched the moon set just as the first rays of the rising sun began to tint the great peaks of the Sierra Nevada crest. The effect was spectacularly beautifid and, to me, illustrated the concept of "the beginning and the end. " The beginning was represented by an unprecedented degree of enlightenment within the American public and in our own philosophies, and a renewed ability as agencies and individuals to work together to- ward the management and preservation of all of the nation's (and world's) life forms; the end by a lessening and ultimate cessation of the anthropocentric attitudes within the pub- lic and ourselves which have in so many in- stances "come home to roost" and caused our current dilemma. The sun continued to rise and the red turn to gold as my thoughts went back to the early days of our desert fish programs. How utterly hopeless everything seemed then! I uttered a silent prayer that the insight, hard work, and example of the earliest workers in this field might inspire us to better serve the multitudes who will come after, and that we might provide them with a legacy reflecting not only our scientific competence, but also our practicality and philosophical maturity; and that this in turn would constitute a cross- roads in American thought concerning man's dominion over the earth, and recognizing the absolute truth that the glory of God is in- telligence, I ended my prayer with a plea that we might utilize our collective in- telligence to glorify Him by exercising a truly righteous dominion equally over His en- tire creation. It seems fitting to express here the thoughts of the late anthropologist and hu- manist Loren Eiseley (1962, preface): "I be- lieve in Christ in every man who dies to con- tribute to a life beyond his life." He continues: "I have been accused of woolly- mindedness for entertaining even hope for man. I can only respond that in the dim morning shadows of humanity, the in- articulate creature who first hesitantly formed the words for pity and love must have received similar guffaws around a fire. Yet some men listened, for the words sur- vive." And the Devils Hole pupfish and snail darter survive, too. Twenty years ago they wouldn't have had a chance. Literature Cited Durham, J. 1978. Who has the right to destroy a spe- cies? Los Angeles Times, 2 July 1978. Adapted from a statement delivered before House Mer- chant Marine and Fisheries Committee. Ehrenfeld, D. W. 1976. The conservation of non-re- sources. American Scientist 64(4):648-656. Eiseley, L. C. 1962. The immense journey. Time, Inc. Book Division, reprinted by Random House. 152 pp. Time, Inc., New York. Elton, C. S. 1958. The ecology of invasions by animals and plants: 14.3-45. London: Methuen. Journal of Discourses. Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, Utah. 27 volumes, 8th reprint, 1974. Miller, R. R. 1948. The cyprinodont fishes of the Death Valley systems of eastern California and south- western Nevada. Misc. Publ. Mus. Zool. Univ. Mich. 68: 1-15,5. Miller, R. R., and E. P. Pister. 1971. Management of the Owens pupfish, Cyprinodon radiostis, in Mono County, California. Trans. Amer. Fish. Soc. 100 (,3): 502-509. 158 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Nevada State Engineer's Office. 1971. Water supply for the future in southern Nevada. Special plan- ning report. Prep, by Montgomery Engineers of Nevada. 89 pp. plus references, bibliography, map and photographs. Nevada State Engineer's Office, Carson City. NiBLEY, H. W. 1978. On subduing the earth, pp. 85-99. In: Nibley on the timely and the timeless. Vol. 1, Religious Studies Monograph Series, Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University. Pub- lishers Press, Salt Lake City, Utah. 32.3 pp. PisTER, E. P. 1974. Desert fishes and their habitats. Trans. Amer. Fish. Soc. 103(3):531-540. 1976. A rationale for the management of non- game fish and wildlife. Fisheries (Bull. Amer. Fish. Soc.) 1(1);11-14. United States General Accounting Office. 1977. The Tennessee Valley Authority's Tellico Dam project— costs, alternatives, and benefits. Report to the Congress by the Comptroller General of the United States, October 14, 1977. Warren, C. 1978. Our economics is too small. Unpub- lished keynote address delivered at joint confer- ence of Western Association of Fish and Wildlife .Agencies and Western Division ,\merican Fish- eries Society, San Diego, California. 18 July 1978. ENDANGERED SPECIES ON FEDERAL LANDS PANEL: PART I, INTRODUCTION John L. Spinks' Since I've already spoken once during the symposium, I only have two brief points to make for my part of the panel presentation. One is in terms of public land. The Fish and Wildlife Service has about 35 million acres in the National Wildlife Refuge System. The management of those resources are sub- ject to the same Section 7 scrutiny as any other federal agency action. As a matter of fact, by policy from the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, it is our responsibility to make certain that we live up to the high- est expectations in compliance with Section 7. If there is a finding of either adverse modi- fication of critical habitat or a jeopardy find- ing, that activity will not be done by the Fish and Wildlife Service— and that is in writing from the director. The second point I would make is that, though the Fish and Wildlife Service has a lead agency role, as does the National Marine Fisheries Service, in administering the En- dangered Species Act of 1973 as amended, I hope all of you here can immediately grasp that the job of protecting endangered and threatened species and recovering these spe- cies is completely beyond the scope of any one agency. Were it not for the real dedica- tion and assistance that the service gets from folks like these up here and their agencies, not to mention all the 50 state agencies and the very concerned and dedicated private in- dividuals, we would never get to first base. As a matter of fact, on behalf of the service, I think all we can say is we appreciate the as- sistance we've gotten over the years— it has been continuous and is still forthcoming— and the interest that generates a symposium like this. We certainly appreciate the attendance of all those here. PANEL: PART II, FOREST SERVICE PHILOSOPHY OF ENDANGERED SPECIES MANAGEMENT Jerry P. Mcllwain' We have heard some excellent talks on en- dangered species philosophy here at this ses- sion, treating strategies, genetics, ecology, and some new techniques and concepts that are very interesting to me. Within the limita- tions that are placed on a federal agency, the Forest Service has been dealing with many of these philosophies and strategies for a long time. We have been trying to get them down to the ground level and convert these things that we have all been talking about for the last day and a half into on-the-ground man- agement, and that is basically what I am go- ing to talk to you about today. I will talk about the Forest Service philos- ophy of endangered species management and how this policy is being translated into poli- cies and procedures to get the job done, about the overall program to accomplish our endangered species job, land management on the national forest system, and how the re- search and state and private forestry arms of the Forest Service are affected by the Endan- gered Species Act. 'Chief, Office of Endangered Species, U.S. Fish and Wildhfe Service, Washington, DC. 20240. 'Endangered Species Speciahst, USDA, P.O. Box 2417, Washington, DC. 20013. 159 160 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 The Forest Service has been in the endan- gered species game for a long time. We set up the Sespe Condor Sanctuary on the Los Padras National Forest in 1946 and had been studying this bird for a considerable number of years before that. Programs to protect and manage bald eagles, ospreys, Kirtland's warblers, and sev- eral others were implemented on national forest system lands long before the Endan- gered Species Act was passed. Passage of the act in 1973 did give our program consid- erable impetus and made endangered species management an organic part of our agency responsibilities. The evaluation of policy and procedures for the management of endangered species is very dynamic at the moment because things are changing so rapidly. Knowledge of the bi- ology of listed species is being acquired rap- idly, Congress has recently amended the law, and Fish and Wildlife Service regulations are continually evolving. We have been trying to get a new Forest Service Manual chapter out now for almost three years. It was just about ready to go before the endangered species amendments of this year were passed which did away with some of our policies and pro- cedures, so we are back to the drawing board. The basic Forest Service philosophy of en- dangered species management is to meet both the letter and the spirit of the law by achieving the recovery of listed species on national forest lands, not jeopardizing listed species in our other programs, and assuring that Forest Service management does not contribute to a sensitive species qualifying for listing. The Forest Service moved out rather rap- idly in establishing a positive program after the 1973 act was passed. We feel that our programs are going a step further than the requirements of the law in many cases and are establishing a comprehensive endangered species program. Our program considers not only the feder- ally listed species, but also state-listed spe- cies, plus a third category we are calling sen- sitive species. Sensitive species are those which are proposed to be federally listed or species that are recognized by the Regional Forester to need special management in order to prevent the need for their placement on federal or state lists. All plants that have been officially proposed to be listed are considered sensitive and managed as if they were already listed. Some interpretations of the law are that the legal requirements exist only as long as a species is listed. If recovery were achieved for that species and it were removed from the list, there would be no more legal pro- tection for that species. The species could then decline to the point that it was relisted and the cycle would begin again. Our pro- grams are aimed at achieving recovery of a listed species and continuing that status in perpetuity. Endangered species program changes have outstripped the flexibility of our budgeting system. The Forest Service budget is gener- ated at the ground level and aggragated up- ward. It is also formulated two years ahead of time. The Endangered Species Act Section 7 regulations were just finalized this past Janu- ary and they impose a considerable number of requirements on the Forest Service and other federal agencies. Of course, our budget was already formulated and was not respon- sive to the increased work load brought about by the new regulations. Considerable budget adjustments made in the Washington office were necessary. To avoid this hap- pening in the future, it was necessary to pre- pare two national programs, one for plants and one for animals. The general thrust of these programs is in three phases: inventory, interim manage- ment, and recovery management. These three phases relate to each individual species of concern. We are in phase 1 for a certain group of species, phase 2 for another group, and phase 3 for others. Basically the first phase is analysis of the situation: identification of research needed, really finding out where we are on a species, and what we need to do. Then we move into the second phase, an interim management phase. This is the actual conducting of needed research relative to habitat require- ments, establishing management programs, and protecting the species while we are doing this. The third and final phase is recov- ery management. This final phase is initiated after recovery plans or other specific Forest 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 161 Service plans have been prepared to protect the species. The species and their habitats are managed to achieve recovery and prevent re- currence of endangernient. Because this is a panel on public land man- agement, we will now turn to some of the specific programs on the national forest sys- tem lands. Of the 236 domestic species currently on the federal list, there are about 70 species that occur on national forest system land. Of these 70, there are quite a few that occur only on Forest Service lands or Forest Ser- vice lands play an essential part of the total conservation effort for that species. The 1973 act considerably changed the way we do things in the national forests. The act re- quired us to evaluate all the Forest Service projects, decide whether or not they may af- fect a species, and, if so, enter into the formal consultation process with the Fish and Wild- life Service. This has been a considerable work load and will certainly grow larger in the future. We have had well over a hundred formal consultations since the regulations be- came effective in January of this year. Some of them have been very complex. Our field people are involved in several endangered species program activities as a result of na- tional direction from the chief's office. We have agreed with the Fish and Wild- life Service (as have all federal land manag- ing agencies) to a time frame for making rec- ommendations for the designation of critical habitat for those species already listed and for which no critical habitat was established. This job is in response to the president's request in his environmental message of 1977 that federal agencies speed up identification of critical habitats on public lands. Our regions have been directed to assure that threatened, endangered, and sensitive species are adequately covered in regional and forest land management plans required by the National Forest Management Act. Guidelines are being developed to determine which management direction should be ex- pressed in regional plans for wide ranging species and which direction should be left up to each individual national forest. The Forest Service will prepare action plans to accomplish activities identified in re- covery plans for our agency. Of course, a re- covery plan cannot commit another federal agency to the expenditure of funds. Also, many recovery plans do not provide suf- ficient details for on-the-ground management activities, so we must go a step further and prepare action plans to further refine those jobs most logical for the Forest Service to ac- complish, and to serve as our agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service to perform cer- tain tasks in the accomplishment of the re- covery plan. We are monitoring, in cooperation with the states, all populations of threatened and endangered species on the national forest. Another program thrust, which is a legal obligation I have already mentioned, is to re- view all of our programs and activities and decide whether or not they may affect a list- ed species. If the project or activities may af- fect the species, we formally consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service. The final item related to national direction is to survey listed or sensitive species to lo- cate populations and define habitat charac- teristics and biological needs. Before I talk about some specific projects for endangered species, I would like to men- tion our budget and personnel. As you are aware, the Department of Agriculture gets no appropriations through the Endangered Species Act as does the Department of the Interior and the Department of Commerce. We do have a specific budget item for en- dangered species that we make up out of our normal wildlife appropriations, and then we have an agreement with Congress about how much money will be spent on the endangered species program. This current fiscal year we are budgeting on the national forest system $5,223 million for endangered species pro- grams. I think that this budget is probably second in size to that of the Fish and Wildlife Service. I am not sure how large the BLM budget is. This sounds like a lot of money, but when you take that much money, allo- cate it to nine regions, 154 national forest, and umpteen ranger districts, it is not nearly as much as it .sounds. In fact, it is not nearly enough to accomplish a proper job. The Endangered Species Act, along with some other legislation, has really changed our personnel picture also. The Forest Service during the last four or five years has hired an 162 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 average of 15 to 20 wildlife biologists a year. This past fiscal year, we hired 123 biologists and much of this increased hiring was a di- rect result of the Endangered Species Act. I think that upped our total number of wildlife biologists to somewhere in the vicinity of 370 biologists in the national forest system. The Forest Service is involved in hundreds of projects around the country, but these ex- amples will give you some idea of the type of things that we are getting into, and some of the complexities of the situations that we are dealing with now. When the California Region began a proj- ect to identify and recommend critical habi- tat for bald eagles, they found that not enough information was available to accom- plish the job. We knew the habitat conditions where eagles presently occurred, but infor- mation was lacking on the criteria for suit- able imoccupied habitat. We wanted to designate not only the pres- ently occupied habitat, but also unoccupied habitat which was suitable or may be suitable in the foreseeable future. A program was started in northern California to gather the necessary information. A team consisting of a forester and a wildlife biologist evaluated every bald eagle nesting territory in the state, collecting information on such paramaters as size of tree, aspect, distance from water, dis- turbance factors, productivity of the nest, form of the nest tree, timber types immedi- ately under the nest tree, and timber types out a certain distance from the nest tree. A computer program then analyzed the impor- tant factors that went into making up the eagle habitat. This program is just being completed and we are now using the results of the survey to write criteria for the identi- fication of bald eagle habitat. Another proj- ect we are doing with eagles is experimental- ly improving eagle nest trees. Some trees have been pruned to improve them for nest- ing eagles. We have actually tried to encour- age some eagles to move by judicious prun- ing of trees and, in some cases, by constructing artificial nest platforms in the trees. This is only being done in those areas where the nest tree is dying or is in an area that is subject to a large degree of disturb- ance. Another project recently completed in California was the restoration of a peregrine falcon eyrie. An active nest site on the Men- dicino National Forest sluffed off of the cliff face. Climbers went up to the original nest ledge and made a pattern. The pattern was then used to preconstruct an artificial nest platform. Crews then drove metal rods into the cliff face, installed the artificial nest plat- form, and covered it with cement and natural materials to make it look essentially like the natural nest ledge. As far as we know this has not been done before, and we are anxiously waiting to see if the new ledge will be ac- cepted by the peregrines. Some interesting work on genetic analysis with some of the threatened trout and sala- manders is being done. The Little Kern gold- en trout occurs only in the Little Kern River drainage primarily on the Sequoia National Forest. Over the years, populations of this threatened species have interbred with in- troduced rainbow stock so that there are now very few pure strain Little Kern golden trout left. Through the use of the electrophoresis technique, done under contract with the Uni- versity of California at Davis, it was deter- mined exactly which streams within the wa- tershed contained the pure strain and which streams were genetically polluted, so to speak. With this information, agreement was reached between the California Department of Fish and Game, the National Park Service, and the Forest Service on a management plan for the watershed. This management plan calls for replacement of many of the genetically inferior populations with pure stock, installation of artificial barriers to pre- vent further interbreeding, and other stream improvement practices. The electrophoresis technique was also used on the shasta salamander, a species list- ed as rare by the state of California. This work showed that there were five distinct populations of this salamander, some of which had been genetically isolated for well over 4000 years; these were genetically more different than some of the full species of sala- manders were from each other. This brings up new questions of taxonomy and how spe- cies should be classified as threatened or en- dangered and legally protected. I am going to leave off some of these other 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 163 project examples so that we will have more time for questions. The Forest Service re- search arm is completely separate from the national forest system. It conducts research on any forest and range land, independent of ownership. We have 10 work units or work locations where endangered species work is going on. This covers about 38 different fed- erally listed species. The state and private forestry program is one which some of vou may not know about. This third arm of the Forest Service is in- volved in providing technical advice on re- source management to state foresters and pri- vate land owners and administering several federally financed forestry programs. Of course, this program is also subject to the En- dangered Species Act. It is very difficult to determine the impact of the act on programs of this type. Both actual and financial assist- ance and technical assistance given through the state and private forestry program are subject to the act. The National Forest Management Act is going to drastically change the planning pro- cesses of the Forest Service. Very briefly, some of the things that are going to be re- quired by law now are these: we will set wildlife goals and objectives, inventory all species by habitat types, monitor populations and habitat quantity and quality, quantify species and habitat diversity, prescribe pro- tection and management of critical habitats, and formulate and evaluate alternate man- agement regimes. These are things that must be done now by law, and, of course, endan- gered species management as well as all wild- life management is tied up in these require- ments. I will finish with the thought that as we start making forest plans under the new National Forest Management Act, we will most certainly be calling upon you for help. PANEL: PART III, THE BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT'S ENDANGERED SPECIES PROGRAM Richard Vernimen' Abstract.- It is the responsibihty of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to conserve plants and animals . . . and the habitat on which they depend . . . which are officially listed according to federal or state laws in catregories that imply significant potential for extinction. The BLM also provides for the conservation of the habitats of unlisted extinction-prone (i.e., sensitive) plants and animals. It also applies to all BLM programs and actions related to the public lands, the federal subsurface mineral estate, and the submerged lands of the Outer Continental Shelf (OSC). The BLM administers 448 million acres of land within the 11 western states and Alaska (U.S. Department of the Interior, BLM 1977). In addition, we are responsible for BLM— au- thorized actions taking place on the Outer Continental Shelf and federally owned sub- surface minerals, i.e., coal, oil and gas, etc. (hereinafter all of the above lands will be re- ferred to as BLM-admini,stered lands). Within these vast acreages and areas of re- sponsibility we must taken into consideration the welfare of 48 threatened and endangered (T/E) animals (U.S. Department of the Interi- or, BLM 1977) and 3 endangered plants (Fed- eral Reg. 6/20/78). The T/E plants and ani- mals occurring on the subsurface and Outer Continental Shelf (OSC) must also be consid- ered if BLM-initiated actions affect a T/E species or its habitat (i.e., oil and gas impacts on marine mammals). A third category of species we must take into account are state T/E species. Our 1977 statistical report listed 138 species of animals. With the recent passage of the 1978 amendments to the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA), proposed species must also be considered for formal consultation. A number of plants and animals fall into this category. 'Endangered Species Liaison Officer, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Washington, DC. 164 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 Land Use All actions that we allow on BLM-adminis- tered lands must be considered for impacts on threatened and endangered species (T/E), i.e., oil and gas leases, land exchanges, graz- ing permits, pipelines, etc.). The following figures were used for our fis- cal year 1979 and 1980 budget that shows ac- tions requiring Section 7 consultation as per ESA of 1973: Energy 2500 leases (oil /gas, coal, geothermal) Timber Sale of 1.25 billion board feet Grazing Issuance of 24,000 use authorizations Wilderness Completion of 55 studies State selections 502,900 acres (excluding Alaska) Rights-of-way 1700 applications Mineral leasing (other) 63 million acres private 290 million acres other federal lands Other land actions 8,000 cases The above are cases or actions readily identifiable. Each day we encounter new ac- tions that require review. Legislation and Authority Authority-Sources A. Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 use 1531 et seq.) as amended. B. Sikes Act, Title II (16 USC 670 et seq.). C. National Environmental Policy Act (42 USC 4321 et seq.) as amended. D. Tlie Federal Land Policy and Manage- ment Act of October 21, 1976 (P.L. 94- 579). E. Department Manual 231.1. LA., Gener- al Program Delegation Director, Bu- reau of Land Management. The above acts are our basis for developing and carrying out an endangered species pro- gram. The major thrust of our program is Section 7 compliance and inventory of habi- tat. BLM Program Coordination and Liaison, Section 7 Com- pliance Section 7 of the ESA of 1973 directs all federal agencies on how to comply with the act. Procedures for this cooperation and con- sultation can be found in 50 CFR 402 or in the Federal Register, volume 43, pages 869-876, 4 January 1978. The major contact on consultation for BLM is the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), but with our administrative responsibilities on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) we also consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service of the Department of Commerce. Since many of these OCS cases involve the high seas or foreign countries, we must also contact the State Department. As you can see, the Section 7 process can become ex- ceedingly involved and time consuming. Because of the mandate placed upon us by Section 7 of the ESA of 1973, major emphasis in work load has been shifted to meet it. Budget increases were added to meet the need. This is a start, but we are working un- der pressure to meet the demand because of other priorities placed upon us, such as the nation's energy needs. Critical Habitat Inventory Tlie president's environmental message of May 1978 requires that the identification and determination of "critical habitats" for en- dangered species be accelerated. The secretary of the interior is directing agencies to complete inventories and analyses for the determinations of critical habitats for species on their lands by 1 January 1980. We have 32 of the known species of ani- mals officially listed on public lands. We have been given increased funds to complete this job. Inventories for some species are fair- ly simple because their respective habiats are small and centralized. The work begins when we look at species such as the Bald Eagle or the American Peregrine Falcon. Habitats of these species are broad and expansive, requir- ing many man-hours to complete inventories. Our participation on recovery teams has helped to cut this work load down. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 165 Present Capabilities to Comply with the ESA of 1973 As of 11 November 1978, the BLM has 249 fisheries and wildlife biologists on board. The breakdown by numbers and areas is as fol- lows: Washington, D.C. Denver Service Center Alaska Arizona California Colorado Eastern States Idaho Montana Nevada New Mexico Oregon Utah Wyoming Outer Continental Shelf Total 6 5 9 18 23 22 3 22 26 22 15 35 22 18 3 249 Within the total 249 biologists, only 2 could be listed as working totally on endan- gered species, and that is stretching it. We all have other duties as assigned. I myself func- tion as the lead in Washington on nongame species as well as the endangered species liai- son officer. Mr. Ken Walker, endangered plant coordinator, will cover the number of botanists we have working on plants. Summary Intensified public concern for our environ- ment and the flora and fauna within it has created a demand for all levels of govern- ment to engage in active and positive pro- grams to stem the tide of wildlife extinction. We have embarked on an ambitious program to protect and benefit endangered plants and wildlife. Many of our avenues to success are clouded by complex, competitive demands on endangered species habitat by other re- source uses and the nation's need for energy. Unraveling ecological complexities to isolate and solve habitat-related problems is not a simple task. Funding and manpower are not available to meet all needs. Despite these dif- ficulties and constraints, we are devoting our best efforts trying to insure that no additional plant or animal become either endangered or extinct on public lands. Literature Cited U.S. U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic AND Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. 1978. Interagency coopera- tion regulations, Endangered Species Act of 1973. Federal Register 43(2):869-876. January 4. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management. 1977. Annual statistical wildlife report. Unpublished report. Washington, D.C. 1977. BLM statistics for 1976. Washington, D.C. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. 1978. Determination of five plants as en- dangered species. Federal Register 43: 44810-44812. PANEL: PART IV, SUMMARY OF THE ENDANGERED PLANT PROGRAM IN THE BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT Kenneth G. Walker' I'll explain very briefly our function in the Washington office. You may wonder why there are two of us here from the Bureau of Land Management. The primary reason is, because of the organizational structure at the Washington office, the responsibility for en- dangered species coordination is in the Divi- sion of Wildlife, with Dick Vernimen as the coordinator for the Bureau of Land Manage- ment. My function in the Division of Water- shed is to assist or carry on the coordinating role for endangered plant species. The sym- 'Endangered Plant Coordinator, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management. Washington, D.C. 166 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 posium, I feel, has been very enlightening. The scientific community in many instances seems to be at odds as to what really needs to be done for endangered species, what the needs are, and what the protection systems should be. We in the federal agencies do not have many options, although we have our opinions. Our options are limited to the methods for which we follow the dictates of legislation. Policy for endangered plant species is very similar to that described by the Forest Ser- vice. Our prime effort is not only to protect and conserve listed species, but also to carry it a step further and to protect and conserve the proposed species with the idea that if we can manage these species and their habitat the situation will be avoided where they will require official listing. We recently devel- oped a policy for endangered species which I will summarize. It is the policy to protect, conserve, and manage federally and state-list- ed or proposed listings of sensitive, endan- gered, or threatened plants and to use its au- thorities in furtherance of the purposes of the Endangered Species Act and similar state laws. The bureau, through its actions in all planning and management activities, will in- sure that the actions authorized, funded, or carried out will not jeopardize the continued existence of such species or result in the de- struction or modification of the critical habi- tats. To summarize the policy, as the Forest Service mentioned, our intent is to not only follow the letter of the law, but also the spirit of the law. We have issued several guidelines to our field office to follow this policy. In doing this, we have asked our field office to do two things: first, to add each candidate or listed species which is known or expected to occur within their area of responsibility to a list of these species that will be developed and maintained by our state directors within the area of jurisdiction. The area of responsi- bility in Utah, for example, would be the en- tire state, which in tvirn requires a lot of coordination with the universities, state agencies, private concerns, and others, wher- ever we can acquire the interest. A second appeal would be for state directors to deter- mine those species which are known or sus- pected to occur on bureau-administered lands or can reasonably be expected to be in- fluenced by bureau actions. The Bureau of Land Management has the responsibility for management of surface areas, but there also are many areas where we have responsibility for the subsurface minerals management. Coal, in Utah, is an example where we man- age the subsurface minerals but, we do not own the surface. This creates many problems. I will now summarize the program status for the endangered species program in the BLM. I feel almost embarrassed sitting by the Forest Service people when they talk about their funding levels. Our funding for endan- gered plant species has not been a direct fimding effort. We've acquired from other programs approximately $400,000. This in- cludes partial funding of about 40 personnel. Unfortunately, not very many of them are able to spend their full-time in the endan- gered species effort. We do have a few full- time botanists. The endangered plant pro- gram in this bureau is viewed as low priority because of its magnitude. On public lands, only three species have officially been listed. All three of them are in California. We have several hundred proposed species located on public lands. Our endangered plant species program is primarily, at least at this time, as Duane Atwood mentioned this morning, in the inventory stage. We're not yet to the point where we're really able to prepare or do active planning for a particular species or a particular group of species. Our efforts are tied rather closely to our Environmental Statement (ES) Program in the bureau, par- ticularly the range program, which is a mag- nanimous effort. We have several hundred environmental impact statements to prepare within the next few years. Our endangered species inventory efforts have pretty much centered around ES efforts. Our efforts and methods in conducting these inventories are varied. Some are done in-house by our own people. Many of them we are able to conduct through contracts with universities and oth- ers who have such capability. 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 167 Questions to the Panel Q. The Endangered Species Act is rather narrow about defining this problem. There are quite a few other programs that can be appHed. Many of the federal land agencies have natural area programs. There are also a number of wildlife programs that can be brought to bear on the question of peripheral species and their distribution. We have the same problem with plant distribution, so I'm not sure the endan- gered species program is the right place for that kind of program, depending, of course, on what hap- pens to the whole range. There are a lot of other programs that could help there. A. That particular problem is one of the things we are trying to address with our sensitive species category in our total endangered species program. We can take species like this and put them on our sensitive species list and then apply land management prac- tices or management practices in a special way. There won't be the legal requirements, but we would treat them for land management purposes the same way we would treat a legally listed species. (Mcllwain) Q. I have a correlary to this I need to address. I don't think it's been addres.sed to the extent that I need to understand it. Having worked for a private con- sulting firm, I've often been caught between two grist mills of state species lists and also federal spe- cies lists. Specifically, I'd like to know what your plans are for the future. I don't think I understand how you're going to correlate and work out these is- sues with the states. For example, the Hamper Proj- ect is not ad ministered by the state. It's a national environment research park. What if we have a spe- cies there that is peripheral and we want to protect it, but the State of Washington doesn't. The popu- lation is found in Washington and parts of Oregon, Idaho, and Utah, but in most areas it doesn't war- rant or merit consideration as a threatened species. How are you going to handle this conflict with the states? Will you be able to support it? A. Well, as a matter of fact, I don't see any conflict with the states at all in a situation like this. If a giv- en state has its own endangered species legislation, and if a particular species, be it a peripheral species or whatever, is in trouble in that state, I see nothing wrong with that state listing that species under its legislation as an endangered species and protecting it accordingly. (Mcllwain) Q. By a conflict, I mean to be able to fimd them and support them financially. Most of the states don't have an adequate threatened and endangered spe- cies program, especially from the standpoint of fimd- ing resources. You have infinite amounts compared to what most of them do. Will you be able to sup- port them on the basis of those peripheral popu- lations? A. We have two separate fimding resources in the en- dangered species program. One is the Section 1.5 monies, which our general appropriation authorizes, and the other is the Section 6 money, which is dedi- cated specifically to a grant and aid program through cooperative programs with the states. We have not, as a matter of fact, been able to obligate that money as quickly as we would like to— simply because there has not been enough demand in the states to really get with the program. I don't see any difficulty in fimding through a matching 66 percent federal share-.3.3 percent state share for state activi- ties. I don't think we're going to run out of money any time sooner. (Spinks) Q. Wouldn't those matching fimds work only for spe- cies that are listed as endangered species under the federal act? \. No, if they're considering it for listing under the state act. They would also be eligible for funding. (Spinks) Q. I've enjoyed very much your program, but you have not mentioned the aquatic forms. Now you take the fisheries on the North Atlantic, the whaling. They're vital problems with which we must deal. It seems to me that not only will we have to be financed, but it may even be we'll have to use a little military strength to restrain some of these people who say they have a right to hunt a particular species, the whale and so on. That is a major problem as I see it in connection with the immediate approach in deal- ing with these species. .\. Your point is well taken. I'm glad the National Ma- rine Fisheries Service is in this act with us. There is basically a division of responsibility in the act be- tween the Departments of Commerce and the Inte- rior, and the oceanic species are under the pro- tection and administrative authority of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Certainly we do not in any way want to diminish the value of those species, as vou point out, but that is again the prerogative of the National Marine Fisheries Service; and, as Mr. Vernimen mentioned, the Bureau of Land Manage- ment under the OCS leasing program does become involved with the National Marine Fisheries Service in the consultation process, like considering such species as the bow-head whale in Alaska, for in- stance. (Spinks) Q. I have a comment on a previous question. The State of Washington is being fimded now by endangered species dollars to come up with a list of the state's threatened and endangered species, so it is possible to do that. The state game department is involved in that. Q. My question to you managers is from the point of view of private industry. I'm a representative of Utah Power and Light Company, and I'm not a biol- ogist. I've learned a lot here in the last couple of days about biolog\'. Obviously, the vital question to us is this. We realize that recent amendments to the act have created a lot of work for you guys to do. .\re we going to have to wait for you to get all this work done before we can build any new plants, or will we have to provide some of the fimding to get some work done on a specific basis by ourselves? .\. No, you do not, as a matter of fact, have to wait un- til there are new Section 7 regulations promulgated, which could take some time. We are proceeding with the consultation process under the existing Sec- tion 7 regulations which Jerry Mcllwain alluded to as having been published in January 1978. The 168 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 world is not going to stop until we have the new regulations. (Spinks) Q. I want to ask a question concerning the program of the Forest Service people and the BLM in terms of the protective habitat, just to clarify what I'm con- cerned with. For a number of years I cooperated with some of the folks from California who were trying to preserve some sand dunes in southeastern California, southern Nevada, and perhaps other areas from dune buggies and off-road vehicles that just traversed the area without any concern for the animals or the plants that were there. Now I haven't heard from Bob Stebbins or Dave Wake or some of those folks for a few years as to whether or not they have succeeded in convincing the Bureau of Land Management that some steps should be taken to pro- tect those sand dunes habitats before the sand adapt- ed and a number of other forms are exclusively re- stricted to those areas. What has been done and what is the program of the Bureau now to protect habitat from these kinds of degradations? A. We do now have the three species in California that are officially listed. I believe two of them are in the sand dunes area. For one of them, specifically, the Eureka Sand Dune Grass, the Bureau of Land Man- agement has tried to close this area. We've received some criticism as to how effective the closure of these lands has been. Others say it's been very effec- tive. But, to go back to the other part of my answer, our planning process is to go through our inventories and identify critical habitats, sensitive species, pro- posed species with their habitats, and, through the planning process, tie these areas in with other pro- posed actions, one of which could be off-road vehicle use. Then, in the final recommendations through our planning process, the decision is made then as to what action will be taken in regards to that area— whether it be closure, restrictions from other uses, grazing, off-road vehicles, or other means to protect certain species. This is the process. Now the actual implications of success to this process we've yet to see in many cases, but we are making a sincere at- tempt. (Walker) 1 think the other area we can talk about, speaking of California, is the Desert Tortoise area, on which Dr. Kristine Berry and a team of other people have been working. We have fenced out most of that area. We have also posted signs, although I have heard recently that 400 signs have disappeared. We also have off-road vehicle regulations we are looking at, where we would close it to such vehicles. In- cidentally, one of the beetles proposed does occur right in the middle of an off-road vehicle area in Ne- vada. We also have authority for emergency closures if we want to use it. (Vemimen) Q. What I'm trying to suggest is that if the Bureau of Land Management or private industries, do not pro- tect the desert habitat, we stand to lose a lot of this very valuable material. Q. I'd like to bring up the controversy of reintroduction in an area of historic range, but not now pre.sent. We ran into it with the Colorado squawfish. I was wondering if the land management people would comment about taking an endangered species into a recovery plan, trying to get it off the list more or less by reintroduction into the historic range. Do you nm into the resistance of a local forester or a local dis- trict manager saying, "If I have to worry about that I won't be able to go into the campground"? A. That's a very difficult and subjective question, one which is extremely hard to formulate a policy on be- cause you have to adjust to the situation on some- thing like that. Certainly we're not going to reintro- duce grizzlies to the plains where they once occurred around the Denver area. That's completely unreasonable. On the other hand, in the process of identifying the essential habitats or the legally desig- nated critical habitats on the public lands, we found a lot of these that are historical into which we can logically expand species. Somewhere in the middle between the unreasonable and the feasible is the line, and how you define that line is very difficult. It's going to be a subjective decision. (Mcllwain) I'd like to cite an example. In Arizona they want to reintroduce the woundfin into historical habitat. At the same time, this habitat is the number one geothermal exploration area in Arizona. This is the type of administrative problem we get into, and I am to the point now where I tend to agree with a state director who says, "No, not until further stud- ies are completed." The problem is "Can we under the act say no? " So, right now that opinion is in the solicitor's office. These are the kinds of things you nm into. You've got to use some judgement. We have an area that's being managed for some specific resource and then all of a sudden we throw some- thing else in there that is going to change it. We're going to have to weigh that very heavily before we reintroduce it. (Vernimen) I'd like to make one more comment before we beat this question to death. Is this a situation where it is really necessary for the survival of the species, or is it something we would like to see for the pro- mulgation of the species? To me this is the big ques- tion, and it gets down to whether we really need to or just want to. I think reintroduction of a species should be considered as a last resort in the perpetu- ation of the species. We have to consider the prob- lems we nm into with reintroduction. Are we creat- ing more problems than we are solving? Q. In Utah we have watched the systematic destruction of the Lynndyl Sand Dune area, the Coral Pink Sand Dime area, and the Hurricane Sand Dime area, all of these under major control of the Bureau of Land Management. I am about to describe a new species of sunflower from the Lynndyl Sand Dunes, known in Utah by the misnomer. Little Sahara. It is not. It cannot be. It is systematically being destroyed. We're not talking about reintroducing something, but we're talking about protecting something the Lynndyl Sand Dunes have, among other unique spe- cies which Professor Stutz mentioned earlier today. The Coral Pink Dimes have still others. The ones at Hurricane are unexplored. We don't know what's on them. We may never be able to find out because of off-road vehicle use. What is the potential then, for a turnabout for at least a part of these areas? 1979 The Endangered Species: A Symposium 169 A. It just so happens that when I was in the Richfield district, as well as being a wildlife biologist I was a recreation specialist and I did have something to do with Little Sahara as you call it. I am not too famil- iar with the Hurricane area you talk about. Now the southern part of the Coral Pink Sand Dunes— correct me if I'm wrong— are managed by the state as a state park. My question is "Have you contacted the state office here and informed the Bureau of Land Man- agement that you have found those plants?" (Verni- men) Q. How does the BLM treat endangered or threatened species on subsurface land? By that we mean private ownership of the surface and someone else owns the minerals, oil, gas, coal, etc. A. First of all, the identification of the critical habitat and the inventories (unless we have an action taking place right at that time) is the responsibility of the Fish and Wildlife Service on the private lands. If you take the case of the Red Cockaded Woodpecker in Alabama, where the BLM has some subsurface coal, the BLM is doing the inventories. The BLM is also doing the inventories on the Eastern Cougar. We are in the process of contracting an individual to do the inventories on that. If we would let a lease go, we are initiating an action. We are responsible to see that that species is protected. Q. Is that also the case for critical habitat on state land for endangered plants and endangered plants on pri- vate lands? A. Are you saying designation of a critical habitat or protection of a critical habitat? (Vernimen) Q. Identifying of an endangered plant on private sur- face land but federal subsurface. Wouldn't the pri- vate landowner have the discretion of saving that plant? A. Well, no. If we didn't sell the coal in there, it wouldn't be mined. (Vernimen) Q. So you could deny the lease of such materials? A. That's correct. (Vernimen) A. May I address a couple of things that you said. Num- ber one, plants are not protected from being taken under the act. If the private landowner has a bunch of furbish louseworts or whatever and the man wants to go out there and chop them all down with a hoe, that's legal. The second point is that, in terms of having something protected by virtue of having critical habitat determined for it, it is protected from a federal action under Section 7, whether or not there is any critical habitat there. There is a bas- ic question of jeopardy, .\mong other things in Sec- tion 7, besides almost an affirmative action clause for federal agencies to do some good things for listed species, there is the no section that says they shall insure their actions do not jeopardize the continued existence of a species. So, with or without critical habitat designation, there would still be this respon- sibility to not jeopardize the species. (Spinks) Q. You said yesterday, when you were ennumerating the amendments to the act, that the application for critical habitat would be withdrawn. A. Our understanding at this point in time is that the outstanding proposals for critical habitat designation will be withdrawn and reproposed to bring them in compliance with the 1978 amendments. (Spinks) Q. In response to that, I'd like to ask Mr. Mcllwain what kind of protection will be given to the critical habitats of the grizzly bear, mainly because there is such a controversy over how much should be given them? A. As far as I'm concerned, critical habitat on forest service lands doesn't really mean very much because we're protecting that critter or the habitat of that listed species as a requirement of the law regardless of whether it is legally designated as critical habitat or not. We have management programs established now to protect grizzly bear habitat and we're estab- lishing others as time goes on. It really makes little difference whether critical habitat is legally desig- nated or not for the time being. (Mcllwain) Q. I'd like a little clarification with regard to the con- flict between the Endangered Species Act and min- ing development. Tliere seems to be a rather ne- bulous area. A. I know just what you're talking about. I have several memos in my office about people asking just where does the 1872 Mining Law and the Endangered Spe- cies Act fit in. As you know, they are both non- discretionary, and it's kind of like two penalties on a football field. They more or less nullify one another. I'm not at liberty to comment right now. The solic- itor is coming out with an opinion on the 1872 Min- ing Law and the Endangered Species Act, and I don't know yet what he is going to say. Right now they can go ahead with exploration and mining de- velopment for hardrock minerals, gold, silver, and so forth. There is nothing that the Endangered Species Act can do to .stop them. Nothing. (Vernimem) My only comment is that we may be finding out what happens in this regard before too long because we have two situations now on Forest Service land, two similar conflicts, one in Arizona and one in Cali- fornia, conflicts between the Mining Act of 1872 and the Endangered Species .^ct in relation to an appli- cation for mining within a bald eagle nesting terri- tory. Either or both of those may get to court before too long. (Mcllwain) Q. Would the Forest Service get a different opinion if you went through a different group as it were? A. Well, we go through a different solicitor. We go through the USDA Office of the General Council, which is the same as a solicitor. (Mcllwain) Q. Are you seeking an opinion also? A. No, we're not. (Mcllwain) The bottom line here on the opinion of a solicitor or the Office of General Council from the Depart- ment of Agriculture, as in the case of the U.S. Forest Service, is an internal guidance mechanism for that department or agency. The real bottom line is writ- ten through the development of case law, and, until there is sufficient litigation involving such conflicts as mining and the Endangered Species .Act, there will not be a hard and fast answer to that very good question. (Spinks) Q. Your statement puzzles me a little bit regarding con- flict between the Endangered Species Act and the mining law with respect to bald eagles, especially the protection of bald eagles is .so stringent with re- gards to nesting areas, etc. Isn't the Forest Service required to adhere to that? 170 Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs No. 3 A. Yes, we're required to adhere to that, but there is a question as to when you are really harrassing a bird. In the particular conflicts that I'm talking about, we have established a territory for a bald eagle nesting pair, and the mining people want to build a road through that territory and mine outside of it. We've told them no. We're set up to be sued any way we go. If we give a permit to the mining operation, we're going to be sued by the environmentalists un- der the bald eagle act or the Endangered Species Act or others. On the other hand, if we say no, we'll be sued by the mining interests. In this particular case we decided to remain on the side of the envi- ronmentalists. (Mcllwain) Q. The Fish and Wildlife Service just recently issued a proposal for critical habitat for the squawfish. Will you finalize that rule making, or are you still work- ing that thing over? What is that status. A. Like other proposed rule makings for critical habitat determination, that will have to be reproposed to comply with the 1978 act amendments. Q. It will be reproposed then at some future date? A. Yes it will. (Spinks) AUTHOR AND TITLE INDEX FOR THE ENDANGERED SPECIES: A SYMPOSIUM Atwood, Duane, article by, p. 81. Baumann, Richard W., article by, p. 65. Clement, Roland C, article by, p. II. Culture and species endangerment, p. II. Day, Douglas, article by, p. 35. Deacon, James E., article by, p. 41. Endangered and threatened fishes of the West, p. 41. Endangered and threatened plants of Utah: A case study, p. 69. Endangered animals in Utah and adjacent areas, p. 35. Endangered species: Costs and benefits, p. 151. Endangered species on federal lands. Part I: Introduction, p. 159. Endangered species on federal lands. Part II: Forest Service philosophy of endangered species management, p. 159. Endangered species on federal lands. Part III: The Bureau of Land Management's endan- gered species program, p. 163. Endangered species on federal lands. Part IV: Summary of the endangered plant pro- gram in the Bureau of Land Management, p. 165. Harper, K. T., article by, p. 129. Holmgren, Arthur H., article by, p. 95. Introductory remarks, p. 1. Lovejoy, Thomas E., article by, p. 5. Management programs for plants on federal lands, p. 81. Mcllwain, Jerry P., article by, p. 159. Murphy, Joseph R., article by, p. 1. Perspective, p. 17. Pister, Edwin P., article by, p. 151. Rare aquatic insects, or how valuable are bugs? p. 65. Rare species as examples of plant evolution, p. 113. Some reproductive and life history character- istics of rare plants and implications of management, p. 129. Spencer, Donald A., article by, p. 25. Spinks, John L., articles by, pp. 17, 159. Stebbins, G. Ledyard, articles by, pp. 87, 113. Strategies for the preservation of rare ani- mals, p. 101. Strategies for preservation of rare plants, p. 95. Strategies for preservation of rare plants and animals, p. 87. Stutz, Howard C, article by, p. 119. Tepedino, V. J., article by, p. 139. The epoch of biotic impoverishment, p. 5. The importance of bees and other insect pol- linators in maintaining floral species com- position, p. 139. The law and its economic impact, p. 25. The meaning of "rare" and "endangered" in the evolution of western shrubs, p. 119. Vernimen, Richard, article by, p. 163. Walker, Kenneth G., article by, p. 165. Welsh, Stanley L., article by, p. 69. White, Clayton M., article by, p. lOI. 171 NOTICE TO CONTRIBUTORS Original manuscripts in English pertaining to the biological natural history of western Jorth America and intended for publication in the Great Basin Naturalist should be directed 0 Brigham Young University, Stephen L. Wood, Editor, Great Basin Naturalist, Provo, Utah 4602. Those intended for the Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs should be similarly directed, lit these manuscripts are not encumbered by a geographical restriction. Manuscripts. Two copies of manuscripts are required. They should be typewritten, double paced throughout on one side of the paper, with margins of at least one inch on all sides. Use recent issue of either journal as a format, and the Council of Biology Editors Style Manual, Tiird Edition (AIBS 1972) in preparing the manuscript. 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