The mist forestfly, Lednia tumana, is a tiny stonefly whose habitat is limited to cold water streams fed by snowmelt from the glaciers of Glacier National Park. It's so obscure that I can't find a picture of it anywhere on the world wide web. Yet it's going to create a massive political headache for the Obama administration. Along with the polar bear and the pika, it's another endangered species to be protected by regulation of greenhouse gases. The Bush-era polar bear rule, continued by Obama, manufactured from whole cloth one exception to the Endangered Species Act.
As the world warms and habitats disappear, Obama has a choice: to take swift, bold, and decisive action by using the EPA to regulate carbon emissions; or to urge the Senate to pass the American Clean Energy & Security Act (Waxman-Markey), which is neither swift, bold, nor decisive, but is democratic. Obama has already continued one piecemeal exception to the Endangered Species Act of dubious legality. He'll likely face at least two more, raising the query: how many piecemeal exceptions can be made to the Endangered Species Act, and to our planet?
Why is the mist forestfly being endangered? Any critter whose habitat is limited to glaciers in The Park Formerly Known As Glacier National Park has a problem, as all 150 27 26 of them are predicted to decay into snowfields by 2030. Grinnell Glacier (large river of ice covering most of the bottom of the picture) in 1938:
By 1981, it was a large river of ice (bottom left of picture) and a small pond:
1998:
and 2005:
WildEarth Guardians, a small but litigious environmental group, asked the US Fish & Wildlife Service to study 206 potentially threatened species. Yesterday, the F&WS agreed to study 29 of them -- the first step on the road to an endangered/threatened listing. From the Missoulian:
"What I'm cheered by in today's finding is the Fish and Wildlife Service didn't seem to shrink in identifying climate change as a threat to habitat," said Nicole Rosmarino, wildlife program director for the WildEarth Guardians, which sought endangered species status for 206 plants and animals. "Mixing the Endangered Species Act with climate change is pretty controversial. With the mist forest fly, it's important to call attention to the fact our nation's iconic park for glaciers may lose its glaciers."
That presents a challenge to the Fish and Wildlife Service, which would be charged with finding a way to restore the fly's habitat if it were deemed endangered.
"It's going to be very difficult to ever recover a species threatened by climate change," FWS spokeswoman Ann Carlson said. "We may have an invertebrate facing loss due to increasing temperatures that is warranted to be listed. That doesn't mean we can regulate coal mining."
Wrong, Ms. Carlson. You can, and you must, regulate coal mining. Once an animal is listed, the FWS must protect it -- unless it's a polar bear being threatened by greenhouse gases, in which case the Bush administration carved out a special "polar bear rule" that effectively forbade the EPA from regulating carbon emissions, and Obama elected to follow on May 8, 2009.
The American pika (pronounced PIE-ka) is neither a kind of font nor a yellow Pokemon, but a hamster-sized small mammal that roams the Sierra mountains at about 8,000 to 13,000 feet. It likes cool temperatures so much that it dies after one hour at 75 degrees. Which makes it poster child #2 for global warming (#1 being large, white, and furry).
On May 6, 2009, the US Fish & Wildlife Service agreed to study whether the pika should be considered endangered; a final decision is due February 1, 2010. If it's listed, the pika would be the second animal to be listed as endangered specifically by global warming. Last month I wrote a diary on the pika, predicting that the Obama administration would follow the Bush-era polar bear rule, create a pika rule, and wait for a third animal to appear...and voila!
I confess to possibly playing a very small role in this political drama. At a NN09 panel, Phil Radford, Greenpeace's director, harshly criticized the Obama administration for choosing to follow the polar bear rule. Afterward, I suggested to him that Greenpeace find another animal in the continental United States being endangered, beyond the pika...and four days later, the mist forestfly popped up on the national radar. Greenpeace, meet WildEarth Guardians -- you two need to talk.
Action Alert!
Comments and information will be accepted until Oct. 19 and can be submitted electronically via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at: www.regulations.gov, or can be mailed or hand delivered to Public Comments Processing, Attn: FWS-R6-ES-2008-0111, Division of Policy and Directives Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 4401 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 222, Arlington, VA 22203.
Obama can choose to take swift, bold, and decisive action by reversing the Bush-era polar bear rule and ordering the EPA to regulate carbon emissions on its own. Or he can urge the Senate to pass the climate change bill known as ACES -- it's neither swift, bold, nor decisive, but it is democratic. Or he can choose the cowardly way of making more piecemeal exceptions, kicking the political football down the road, as more and more pieces -- more animals being threatened by global warming -- appear on our planet.
Although I favor reversal of the Bush-era polar bear rule, I also recognize that the Senate needs to be given a chance to act on ACES, and thus am organizing Adopt A Senator For ACES. If you're interested in writing diaries on the most important issue of our day, you can even adopt Max Baucus -- he's more concerned about the tourist dollars natural resources of Glacier National Park than, apparently, about health care reform.