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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Invertebrates Get New Names, Listing, Habitat

WASHINGTON (CN) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has listed six invertebrates in west Texas as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and designated 450 acres of critical habitat for the rare freshwater shrimp and snails, in separate actions. The agency also changed the common names of the four snails to conform to standardized English names for North American mollusks, according to the listing.

The USFWS proposed listing the six species last year in response to a 2011 settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), a conservation group that had petitioned to have the species protected in 2004. "The animals have been on the waiting list for federal protection for many years," the CBD said. Two of the snails had previously been proposed for listing in 1976, listingg was prthe two shrimp, or amphipods, were proposed in 1984, and the other two snails were proposed in 1989, according to the CBD's statement. The 2011 settlement between the USFWS and the CBD resulted in an agreement to speed listing decisions for 757 species across the country.

The six aquatic species are found in only two spring systems, the San Solomon Spring and Diamond Y Spring, both in the Chihuahuan Desert. The spring-adapted species probably evolved from parent populations that were more widely distributed during the wetter, cooler climates of the Pleistocene epoch, from 10,000 to 2.5 million years ago. As the region became drier over the last 100,000 years, the populations of aquatic species became geographically isolated, according to the listing action.

"The natural spring systems that support the six aquatic invertebrates are declining, in both quantity and quality. The degradation and loss of these natural springs is not just a problem for the species dependent upon them but may also affect the water supplies of local communities," Adam Zerrenner, the USFWS' Austin Field Office Supervisor was quoted as saying in the agency's press release.

The species meet the definition of endangered due to the combined effects of habitat loss, degradation of aquatic resources, ongoing decline in spring flows, prolonged drought due to climate change, potential water contamination, pressure from nonnative species, and the severely reduced range of the species, the USFWS said in the listing.

All but 6.2 acres of the 450.6 acres of proposed critical habitat for the species are owned by The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit conservation group, with the rest owned by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and less than two acres owned by a private party, according to the designating rule.

In response to a comment regarding the proposed listing, the USFWS has changed the common names of the four snails in the final listing rule to maintain consistency with standardized mollusk names. The Phantom cave snail is now the Phantom springsnail, the Phantom springsnail is now the Phantom tryonia, the Diamond Y Spring snail is now the Diamond tryonia, and the Gonzales springsnail is now the Gonzales tryonia.

"We don't notice snails, but these minuscule creatures are true Texas natives. They've been here for eons, and they don't exist anywhere else on the planet," Michael Robinson of the CBD was quoted as saying in the group's press release.

Both the listing rule and the critical habitat designation are effective Aug. 8.

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