Editorial: Unlike In Aesop’s Fable, Mouse Is Burr Under Saddle

Scientists agree that the qualifications of an Endangered Species Act-protected Preble’s mouse are inaccurate. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service agrees that Colorado landowners could suffer losses of up to $183 million because of an endangered-species listing error.

The roaring of a lion in Aesop’s fable brought aid from a tiny mouse that he had earlier befriended. The mouse chewed through a rope that held the lion trapped, and thus cemented their friendship.

Colorado landowners are roaring like lions in an attempt to get the Department of Interior to take the eight-inch Preble’s meadow jumping mouse off the endangered species list, which would open up for development some 31,000 acres of local government and privately owned land.

The story surrounding the mouse is just one more example of how scientists can be wrong and how perpetuating their “wrongness” can be financially devastating to thousands of people. (How often do we read that a medical remedy, promoted for decades, suddenly is found to be of little or no value, and focus centers on a new remedy?)

One would think that roar of Colorado landowners would convince the federal government that the Endangered Species Act is in need of modification. The WJ has highlighted this need for decades. As Stephen Moore, writing in the Wall Street Journal of March 23, wrote, “If anything good can come out of the Preble’s mouse fiasco in Colorado, it will be that it has awakened Congress to the reality that the ESA isn’t just failing property owners but the very irreplaceable species it was designed to protect.” The missteps recorded in our handling of wildlife protection and restoration are many.

Moore says that the man who is almost single-handedly responsible for exposing the truth about Preble’s mouse is Rob Roy Ramey, a biologist and lifelong conservationist, who used to serve as curator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Ramey’s research concluded that the Preble’s mouse “is not a valid subspecies based on physical features and genetics.” Scientists who defend extending the mouse’s “endangered” status admit that it is 99.5 percent genetically similar to other strains of mice, Moore reported.

When scientists are wrong in evaluating species for the endangered list, their “wrongness” brings about all kinds of actions and reactions that ultimately end up costing money we can ill afford. Sadly, when the wrongness of scientists is discovered, there is not always a reaction devoted to correcting the situation. As in the case of the Preble’s mouse, the same scientists who recognize that the mouse is most likely not deserving of protected status want to keep it on the list.

And as for Ramey—and “Not surprisingly,” writes Moore—he has been accused of “being dishonest, a whore of industry and a shill for the Bush administration.” Under intense political pressure from environmental activists, he was removed from his curator’s job at the museum.

Does this mean that the Department of Interior and Congress have to go along with them? Admittedly a lot of their own mistakes have been swept under the rug, but wouldn’t fixing the Preble’s mouse situation gain them a little good PR for a change? If government would start looking after people more than other species, it would be surprised at the friends it could make. (What a discovery to make prior to an upcoming election!)

Remember when the snail darter was “discovered” in streams near the Tellico Dam in eastern Tennessee? Multimillions of dollars went “down the drain” before it was realized that there were 77 varieties of darters, that they were plentiful and didn’t need “endangered species” protection.

The fiasco over the spotted owl resulted in the shutdown of more than 200 lumber mills and the loss of thousands of jobs in the Pacific Northwest. The owl, too, was found to be plentiful and spread over a large geographic area.

Continued scientific investigation of the mouse reveals that there are more of them and that they inhabit twice as many distinct areas as once thought. Ramey says that the full species of the meadow jumping mouse is far from being rare and that it can be found over half the land area of North America. And like all mice, they reproduce rapidly.

The environmentalists have had their way for more than 35 years now. It’s time that Congress took a good look at these “misbehaving children of the times” and took some of their toys away from them—at least as those toys relate to endangered species. Too many rights of individuals and businesses have been trampled upon because of their actions and scientific mistakes.

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