Actions needed to help recover the threatened eastern prairie fringed orchid are outlined in a recovery plan just released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This tall, graceful plant once found from the Mississippi River eastward across the Midwest, now occurs in Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Ontario, Canada.
The recovery plan is a blueprint for action by Federal and state agencies, as well as other organizations, interested in helping this threatened species. The goal of the plan is to address the threats that make this species likely to become endangered, and restore the prairie orchid populations to health so it can be taken off the list of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants. Actions needed include protecting and restoring habitats that support the eastern prairie fringed orchid, as well as reintroducing the plants into areas where it once lived but has since been extirpated.
The Service listed the eastern prairie fringed orchid under the Endangered Species Act in 1989. It once grew in tallgrass prairies and wetlands from Mississippi, eastern Iowa, Missouri, and Oklahoma eastward across the Midwest, but has declined by more than 70 percent from historic records. The species has been extirpated in Missouri, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Oklahoma, and New York. In the years since listing, a few additional populations have been discovered in Ohio, Wisconsin and Illinois; however other known populations have declined or have been extirpated. Only eight of the 59 United States populations are considered to have high viability, with potential for long-term persistence, and only four of these have full legal protection.
The eastern prairie fringed orchid grow best in habitats where it can colonize shifting patches of disturbed areas, such as prairies where small mammals expose the soil, or at the edges of marshes where changing lake water levels disrupt established plant communities.
Historic conversion of habitat for agriculture, drainage, fire suppression activities and the subsequent decline of prairie habitat caused the species decline. The greatest threats to surviving populations are the loss of remaining habitat from suburban development, habitat degradation due to lack of appropriate management, and invasive non-native plant species.
Many landowners who have the eastern prairie fringed orchid on their property have preserved their land and worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove invasive weedy plants and restore natural drainage patterns so that the prairie orchid can thrive. In preserves around Chicago, Ill., volunteers monitor the plants and hand-pollinate the orchids when their natural pollinators, night-flying hawkmoths, are absent.
Copies of the recovery plan are available from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Chicago Illinois Field Office, 1250 South Grove, Suite 130, Barrington, Illinois 60010, telephone 847-381-2253. TTY users may contact the Chicago, Illinois Field Office through the Federal Relay Service at 1-800-877-8339.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the principal Federal agency responsible for conserving, protecting and enhancing fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. The Service manages the 94-million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System which encompasses more than 535 national wildlife refuges, thousands of small wetlands and other special management areas. It also operates 70 national fish hatcheries, 64 fishery resource offices and 78 ecological services field stations. The agency enforces Federal wildlife laws, administers the Endangered Species Act, manages migratory bird populations, restores nationally significant fisheries, conserves and restores wildlife habitat such as wetlands, and helps foreign governments with their conservation efforts. It also oversees the Federal Aid program that distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in excise taxes on fishing and hunting equipment to state fish and wildlife agencies.
For further information about the programs and activities of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Great Lakes-Big Rivers Region, please visit our homepage at: http://midwest.fws.gov
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