Showy stickseed, a beautiful plant known from only one location on earth in Chelan County, Washington, has been moving towards extinction. Its number have declined from 1,000 individuals in the early 1980s to about 300 plants in a recent survey.
In February, 2000, the U.S. Fish And Wildlife Service proposed to designate the plant as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. A species is designated as endangered if it is at risk of becoming extinct in the near future. In October, 2000 a moratorium on any listing was imposed on the Service, except for court ordered actions, and the showy stickseed remained as a proposed species for listing but a final determination was never made.
As a result, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that they will reopen the comment period on the proposal to list the showy stickseed as an endangered species. The comment period will be reopened to accomodate the public notice requirement of the Act and to allow for further opportunity for all interested parties to submit comments on the proposal to list the showy stickseed as an endangered species. Any comments submitted during the initial comment period from February 14 to April 14, 2000 need not be resubmitted and they will be fully considered in the final determination. The new comment period will be open for 30 days, from November 7, 2001 through December 7, 2001.
"This beautiful flower is the rarest plant in the state of Washington, growing at one site west of Leavenworth on the Wenatchee National Forest," said Anne Badgley, the Service
