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Conservationists Sue To Protect Snails, Shrimp And Water Quality in New Mexico and Texas – Rare Animals at Risk from Oil and Gas
The listing of these animals will eventually lead to a recovery plan. Critical habitat designation will block developments that adversely effect the creatures, including reckless expansion of oil and gas drilling on public lands in southeastern New Mexico. Drilling and associated operations such as exploration, storage and refining can deplete groundwater supplies and pollute both ground and surface water with oil and other contaminants.
The subjects of the litigation are the Roswell springsnail, Koster’s tryonia, Pecos assiminea and Noel’s amphipod. (See species’ descriptions below.) The first three are snails and Noel’s amphipod is a crustacean (also known as a freshwater shrimp).
Each lives in and depends on one or a small handful of springs and associated streams in the Pecos River basin of New Mexico and Texas. Those clean waters are at risk to depletion and pollution, which would doom these rare animals. Already, some have disappeared from other springs that have dried up or become contaminated. The only known surviving populations are in Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Chaves County, New Mexico and in two properties managed by the Nature Conservancy in Pecos and Reeves County, Texas.
The snails and crustacean are so small they are barely visible through the naked eye. But they are indicators of the purity of the ground water that they depend on and that they have evolved to live in over tens of thousands of years.
“These tiny creatures have been anonymous spring-dwellers for millennia, but now they need our help,” said Michael J. Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity in Pinos Altos, New Mexico. “They signal to us that we still have clean groundwater in the Pecos River basin. Our world is diminished when even the smallest of animals goes extinct, and the contamination of groundwater threatens our health as well.”
Long history of administrative neglect preceded the suit
The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish originally petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect these invertebrates under the ESA in 1985. Although the ESA gives the Service two years to decide and act on such technical petitions, the agency failed to act.
After sixteen years of delay, in August, 2001, the Center for Biological Diversity and Interior Secretary Gale Norton settled a series of lawsuits over imperiled species with an agreement that the Service would prioritize listings for some of the most endangered of them all, including these four.
The next year, in February 2002, the Service proposed listing them as endangered and designating 1,127 acres at Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge and 397 acres of Nature Conservancy land in Texas as critical habitat. However, the agency failed to finalize that proposal and thus left these creatures and their habitats in limbo, in violation of the law and the agreement.
Because each of these four species is isolated and separated from other populations by large areas of unsuitable habitat, they are very vulnerable to localized extinctions. Endangered listings for them will lead to recovery plans that might include measures such as reintroduction to suitable sites. Critical habitat designation limits the authority of the federal government to authorize developments that would adversely effect their survival.
“The Center and WildEarth Guardians would rather not go to court, but these creatures are running out of time and the Secretary of the Interior has refused to comply with her duty to protect them under the Endangered Species Act,” said the groups’ attorney, Robin Cooley, who represents the parties with the help of law students in the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Denver College of Law.
Oil and gas drilling threatens purity of water
Toxic chemical spills from oil and gas drilling and dried up springs from groundwater depletion for agriculture threaten these four rare aquatic creatures, even on the national wildlife refuge and the Nature Conservancy lands (the latter of which include active drilling sites). As of February 2002, there were at least 190 oil wells in the area surrounding Bitter Lake NWR and since that time, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has sought to authorize 91 more wells in this area. (This proposal is currently under appeal by WildEarth Guardians.)
The Harvey E. Yates Company or “HEYCO,” which is pressing for increased oil and gas drilling adjacent to the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge despite the probable impact to the imperiled snails, freshwater shrimp, and endangered fish, is also at the forefront of efforts to open Otero Mesa up to drilling under a BLM plan which has drawn wide-spread criticism from New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and conservation groups. Despite the outcry, BLM has not wavered from plans to allow leasing on Otero Mesa. The Yates family is among President Bush’s and Vice-President Cheney’s largest campaign contributors.
“If the federal government cannot protect endangered species which primarily reside on a national wildlife refuge, the outlook for endangered species everywhere is bleak,” stated Dr. Nicole Rosmarino of WildEarth Guardians. “Endangered Species Act listing is the last line of defense against irresponsible politicians beholden to oil and gas companies such as HEYCO.”
The four invertebrates live in rare wetlands in a region where the Chihuahuan Desert merges with the southern Great Plains. Bitter Lakes National Wildlife Refuge contains numerous water-filled sinkholes in a gypsum karst topography.
“These animals are tiny canaries in the coal mine,” said Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Ignoring their dependence on pure water puts our future at risk also.”
The Endangered Species Act was proposed by President Richard M. Nixon in February 1972 and signed by him into law on December 28, 1973, with the explicit intent of conserving threatened and endangered species and the ecosystems on which they depend. The mandatory deadlines for the Fish and Wildlife Service to list species and designate their critical habitats – as well as the citizen suit provision on which this litigation is based – were put into place by Congress in 1978 in response to agency intransigence and refusal to comply with the intent of the law.
Descriptions of the species
Photographs of the four invertebrates can be sent via email upon request.
The Roswell springsnail (Pyrgulopsis roswellensis) is 3 to 3.5 mm long with a narrowly conical shell that is tan in color and can have up to five whorls or twists. In the past the snail lived in various springs in the vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico. However, several of these habitats have completely dried up due to groundwater pumping, eliminating these populations. Currently, the only known populations of the Roswell springsnail live within three discrete areas of Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Chaves County, New Mexico.
Koster’s tryonia (Tryonia kosteri) is 4 to 4.5 mm long, with a narrowly conical tan colored shell with 4? to 5? whorls. Although it was historically found within the Bitter Lake NWR and other springs in the Roswell area, much of its habitat has dried up due to groundwater pumping, leaving only two known populations, both within the refuge.
Pecos assiminea (Assiminea pecosensis) is the smallest of the snails, 1.55 to 1.87 mm in length. It has a regularly conical shell that is chestnut-brown and nearly transparent with as many as 4? whorls. Pecos assiminea prefers habitats where it is not completely immersed in water, such as wet mud or beneath vegetation mats, typically within a few centimeters of running water. Historically, this species occurred in Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico, but now it only survives at two sites within the Bitter Lake NWR and in two properties managed by the Nature Conservancy in Pecos and Reeves County, Texas.
Noel’s amphipod (Gammarus desperatus) is a freshwater crustacean ranging in size from 8.5 to 14.8 mm long with the males slightly larger than females. This freshwater shrimp is brownish green with kidney-shaped eyes and red bands along its body. It is very sensitive to light and thus dwells at the bottom of water courses, where it is darker. As its scientific name (desperatus) suggests, it is in dire peril. Historically found within the Bitter Lake NWR and other springs in the Roswell area, it has been extirpated outside the refuge and its habitat on the refuge was severely damaged by a 2002 fire. That fire reduced the population to just four organisms, due to deposits of ash and sediment and loss of vegetative cover which previously sheltered them from light.