WASHINGTON (CN) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that a petition to list the southern hickory nut mussel as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act does not contain substantial information indicating that listing is warranted.
The petition, submitted by the WildEarth Guardians, argued that the mussel is in decline across its range, but the agency found countervailing evidence that populations of the hickory nut mussel have been found outside their original range.
In addition, the agency found that the sampling method used in determining the pervasiveness of the species did not draw from a large enough number of native streams to be representative of the species' survival rate.
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