Sacramento Fish & Wildlife Office
External Affairs
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Contacts:
Al Donner (916) 414-6566
al_donner@fws.gov
Steve Martarano (916) 414-6571
steve_martarano@fws.gov
2004 proposed critical habitat map (PDF 844 KB)
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced that a proposed settlement of a suit challenging the 2005 designation of critical habitat for the Buena Vista lake shrew has been filed with the U. S. District Court in Fresno. In the proposed settlement, the Service agreed to re-propose the same 4,649 acres in five areas of Kern County that it had first proposed for critical habitat in 2004. Its 2005 final rule reduced the protected area by 98 per cent from its original proposal.
In its 2005 final critical habitat rule the Service designated only one 84-acre parcel as critical habitat. The other four areas proposed in 2004 were excluded on the basis of commitments by landowners to provide significantly better protection for the shrew. At that time the Service said that, because most of the shrew’s occurrences were on private land, it was relying on commitments by those landowners to protect the species. The largest parcel is the 2,682-acre Kern Fan Recharge Area, used by the City of Bakersfield to recharge its aquifer. Other units include portions of the Kern National Wildlife Refuge and the Coles Levee Ecosystem Preserve.
Under terms of the proposed settlement, the Service must re-propose critical habitat within 90 days and complete the action by March 22, 2012. It does not specify how much land the final rule must designate as critical habitat.
The 2005 rule was challenged by the Center for Biological Diversity, which announced in August 2007 that it would sue over alleged political interference in 55 endangered species decisions.
Ironically, the Service’s 2005 critical habitat process was in response to a court order in an earlier lawsuit (Kern County Farm Bureau et al. v. Anne Badgley, Regional Director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Region 1) where the court in that action directed the Service to designate critical habitat.
At the center of the litigation is a shy little animal that has lost more than 95 percent of its historic habitat in the southern San Joaquin Valley. The shrew weighs less than a fourth of an ounce (about the weight of a quarter), and is only 5 inches long, including its tail. The shrew has a long snout, small eyes, and ears concealed by soft fur, predominantly black with brown specks on the back and smoke-colored gray underneath. The shrews benefit surrounding plant communities by consuming large quantities of insects and other invertebrates, influencing plant succession and controlling pest insects.
Biologists believe that historically the Buena Vista Lake shrew occurred widely in the marsh lands of the Tulare Basin. By the time biologists first discovered it in 1932 most of these marshes were drained or dried up by water diversions. Little, if any, cultivated land was included in the 2004 proposal because the shrew cannot live on regularly tilled land.
Remaining shrew populations are threatened by habitat alteration due to bringing new land into farming, modifications of local hydrology, uncertain water supply, possible toxic effects from selenium poisoning, and naturally occurring catastrophes, such as drought, that could wipe out the remaining animals. Water is a vital component of the shrew’s environment because of the moisture required to support the variety of insects that are its primary food source.
2004 proposed critical habitat map (PDF 844 KB)
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Last updated: July 9, 2009
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