Enviros Sue Feds Over Salamanders
By John Driscoll, Eureka Times-Standard
August 24, 2005

Environmental groups have sued the federal government for ignoring their petition to protect two species of salamanders found in the Klamath River basin and Siskiyou Mountains.

One of those species was discovered to be distinct just recently, as scientists noticed small physical and mitochondrial differences among populations all thought to be Siskiyou Mountain salamanders. The new species is called the Scott Bar salamander.

The groups that sued the government also stopped a timber sale on the Klamath National Forest in June, claiming habitat for the Scott Bar salamander would be damaged. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center and the Environmental Protection Information Center are among those pressing for the salamander’s protection.

”The Siskiyou and newly discovered Scott Bar salamanders need the safety-net provided by the endangered species act to survive,” said Center for Biological Diversity conservation biologist Noah Greenwald. “Without protection from further logging of their habitat, we may lose these unique salamanders forever.”

The Siskiyou Mountains salamander was discovered in 1963 and is related to the Del Norte salamander. Scientists heralded the Scott Bar salamander’s discovery as indicative of the biodiversity of the region and evidence of evolution.

The discovery prompted the state Department of Fish and Game to review its suggestion to take the Siskiyou Mountain salamander off the state’s endangered species list. Despite the new species, the Siskiyou Mountain salamander does not require protection, it found.

The Scott Bar salamander remains unprotected under state endangered species law.

Last week the department went ahead with its original recommendation. The Fish and Game Commission will consider the recommendation in September.

With dozens of petitions to list species every year, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service routinely takes no action until taken to court.

”We have so much litigation regarding petitions that at this point our opportunities to set priorities are pretty much hijacked,” said Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Alex Pitts.

She said the two species of salamander aren’t even candidates for listing. The government hadn’t seen the lawsuit Tuesday, Pitts said.

Lowell Diller, a herpetologist with Green Diamond Resource Co., questioned the wisdom of managing ecologically very similar species differently. The company has neither species on its property.

”Depending on how fine you want to cut it, you could identify all kinds of different species,” he said. “Does it make sense from a management perspective to separate them out?”

But Hartwell Welsh of the U.S. Forest Service’s Redwood Sciences Lab said Fish and Game’s delisting effort is of “questionable merit.” The move is premature until it’s found that self-sustaining populations of the species are thriving on commercial timberlands in its range, he wrote to Fish and Game in July.

”I believe we should make every effort to protect this heritage so that both we and future generations might benefit from observing, studying and deciphering the mysteries present in these unusual and poorly understood taxa,” he wrote.

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