(CN) - The government and three California developers must provide more information to determine whether a rule designating 57 acres of critical habitat for the endangered Riverside fairy shrimp will stand, a federal judge ruled.
Riverside fairy shrimp are tiny freshwater crustaceans native to Southern California and Baja California in Mexico that typically grow to ½ inch to almost one inch long. Identified as a new species in 1985, these rare shrimp are found in vernal pools, temporary wetland ponds that fill up after rainfall or snowmelt in spring.
Adult fairy shrimp have 20 body segments, two sets of antennae, 11 pairs of swimming legs, and a flexible exoskeleton. They swim "upside down" and use their legs to scrape algae from surfaces and collect organic particles like protozoa and bacteria from the water.
Male fairy shrimp die hours after mating, while female fairy shrimp can produce several clutches of 10 to 150 eggs during a lifetime. Eggs can tolerate extreme temperatures and dryness, going dormant until exposed to water. Some have been hatched in a lab after 15 years in the mud.
Found only in five areas in Riverside and San Diego counties and two pools in northern Baja California, habitat loss and degradation from urban sprawl, off-road vehicle use and overgrazing of livestock pose the biggest threats to the species, which was listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1993.
In December 2012, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service promulgated a rule that designated 1,724 acres of critical habitat for the Riverside fairy shrimp. Fifty-seven acres of this land in San Diego County belong to developer Otay Mesa Property, which wants to build a recycling facility and landfill to "address projected landfill capacity issues" in the county, according to the 62-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The land at issue includes a vernal pool approximately one acre long, as well as a small stream and 56 acres of adjacent watershed. Though the service previously declined to include the land in past critical habitat designations for the Riverside fairy shrimp, it changed course in 2012 after refining the criteria for the physical and biological features necessary for species' survival.
During the public comment period on the proposed rule, plaintiffs Otay Mesa and fellow developers Rancho Vista Del Mar and Otay International complained their land should not have been designated as critical habitat because Fish and Wildlife had offered "no evidence that Riverside fairy shrimp were present" on the parcel when the species was designated as endangered in 1993.
The developers also noted the stock pond on the property was only wet two to three weeks out of the year - not enough time for the fairy shrimp to develop - and that their remaining 56 acres had no pools and therefore no shrimp at all.
Fish and Wildlife adopted the rule anyway, prompting the developers to sue claiming the designation of their land as critical shrimp habitat was arbitrary because the land does not qualify as such under the Endangered Species Act.
The developers also claimed the service's economic analysis was flawed and that it improperly neglected to formally study the environmental impacts of the rule under the National Environmental Protection Act, or NEPA.