Current work in wildlife, rivers, public lands, and climate

Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will review the Rocky Mountain monkey flower (Mimulus gemmiparus) for potential listing under the Endangered Species Act. There are only seven known populations of this rare plant, occurring on 26 acres scattered across Rocky Mountain National Park and five Front Range counties in Colorado. Nearly 90 percent of documented plants, found on 54 percent of the known occupied habitat, are threatened by inadvertent trampling by humans during off-trail hiking, scrambling, and rock-climbing.

“We are pleased that the Service is taking action to review the status of this plant,” said Taylor Jones, Endangered Species Advocate for WildEarth Guardians. “It is a unique member of Colorado’s floral community and deserves federal protection.”

WildEarth Guardians requested protection for the monkey flower in 2007 as part of our petition to list 206 “imperiled”and “critically imperiled” species in the Rocky Mountains, as determined by Nature Serve. The Service did not consider the information presented to be sufficient to review the species for protection. However, presented with additional information in a new petition submitted September 30, 2011, the Service has now decided to initiate a 12-month status review to determine if the species warrants listing.

The Rocky Mountain monkey flower is a small annual herb measuring 1 to 10 centimeters tall. It grows in spruce-fir-aspen communities and inhabits moist, seepy environments,frequently on ledges or beneath overhangs at the base of cliffs. These areas are also popular with hiking and rock-climbing recreationists, who inadvertently trample the plant. The species is also vulnerable due to its short lifespan, asexual reproduction strategy, and small population size, combined with increasingly drier habitat conditions and threats from wildfires.

The Rocky Mountain monkey flower’s unique asexual reproduction strategy is not known to occur in any other flowering plant. The plant produces propagules, embryo-like growths with rudimentary leaves and roots, at the base of its leaves. When the mature plant dies at the end of the growing season, these propagules – called bulbils or gemmae – shear off and are carried by wind or water to a new site, where they overwinter underground and germinate like seeds the following spring.