Peppergrass plant not endangered, agency says

BOISE – A plant that blooms with tiny white flowers in southwestern Idaho does not warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday.

The slickspot peppergrass grows almost exclusively in the Snake River Plain and the foothills in southwestern Idaho, with a separate population on the Owyhee Plateau.

The quality of some of the plant’s known habitat has decreased, but the current plant population does not appear to be impacted by habitat degradation, the Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement. Instead, the agency attributed less-robust plant population growth to a lack of spring rains, though new plants are still being discovered.

“This decision follows an extensive review of existing and new scientific information and data,” said Ren Lohoefener, Pacific Region director for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

A lawyer for the environmental group seeking to protect the slickspot peppergrass said the group would fight the decision.

“To say that this plant population is stable is as far from the truth as it could be,” said Todd Tucci, senior staff attorney for Advocates for the West. The group represents Western Watersheds, a Hailey-based environmental group that sued the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2004 after the agency withdrew a proposal to list the slickspot peppergrass under the Endangered Species Act.

The environmental group argued then that the Fish and Wildlife Service violated provisions of the law by not listing the plant after the agency determined the plant had a 64 percent to 82 percent chance of extinction in the next 100 years.

In 2005, U.S. District Court Magistrate Mikel Williams ruled that the agency should reconsider the plant for listing.

Western Watersheds will return to court, Tucci said, either to file suit again or simply inform the judge that the federal government is violating the order.

“I have no doubt that when a cool-headed mind gets involved and looks at the facts of the case, we’ll once again see that science has been stepped on by politics,” he said.

Jeff Foss, field supervisor for the Snake River Fish and Wildlife office, said efforts will continue to conserve the plant and reduce threats to sagebrush-steppe habitat, where the plants grow at elevations ranging from 2,200 feet to 5,400 feet in six Idaho counties.