The Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan is an increasingly rare sight near the treelines of Cascadian slopes.
Despite their hardiness in cold, they’re poorly-adapted to warm weather, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. The Mount Rainier subspecies of the bird lives in the North Cascades, Goat Rocks Wilderness, Alpine Lakes and Mount Adams. Before the 1980 eruption, the bird also lived at Mount St. Helens.
This week, the center filed a lawsuit against U.S. Fish and Wildlife over the Mount Rainier ptarmigan, seeking protections for it and other species under the Endangered Species Act. The organization, in a news release, said the Biden administration is “moving slowly to protect endangered wildlife.”
“It uses snow roosts in soft snow to stay warm,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If we lose the ptarmigan, it means we will have lost much of our alpine glaciers and meadows, which would be truly sad as well as have many downstream effects on other species like salmon.”
The center first petitioned for the ptarmigan to be listed under the Endangered Species Act in 2010. U.S. Fish and Wildlife initially considered the listing in June of 2021, as previously reported by The Chronicle.
At the time, the Lewis County Commissioners were weary that protections for the bird could impact timber harvest near the foothills of Mount Rainier. But the topic was buried locally as protections were never finalized. The center’s news release states the 2021 consideration triggered a one-year deadline Fish and Wildlife never met.
“Fish and Wildlife Service’s program for protecting plants and animals is badly broken and the Biden administration is doing nothing to fix it,” Greenwald said. “It shouldn’t take 13 years to protect such a clearly imperiled species.”
The center’s lawsuit, filed on Thursday, includes 12 species the news release says have been “unduly waiting for protection.” Also included in the suit is the tall Western penstemon, a wildflower with just a handful of known populations in Oregon and Southwest Washington.
The lawsuit claims Fish and Wildlife violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to issue timely final listing determinations for the 12 species. If the center wins, it could force Fish and Wildlife to make listing determinations and pay for the center’s legal fees.
Just one day before the center announced its lawsuit, The New York Times reported the Biden administration was looking to make the Endangered Species Act more strict and protective after changes in the previous administration loosened the act’s applications.
Greenwald said the changes won’t address the center’s concern, however, because it won’t speed up the process.
“That will require reform of the agency and more funding from Congress, neither of which is forthcoming,” he said.
Greenwald said the bird was denied critical habitat designation under the Trump administration, which relaxed the act’s applications.
Fish and Wildlife reportedly decided it wasn’t prudent to provide the designation, Greenwald said, because the ptarmigan’s main threat is climate change, rather than human encroachment.
The center disagrees and may challenge that decision, too. Greenwald said recreation is a threat to the ptarmigan.
“Fish and Wildlife won’t reconsider unless we sue them,” he said. “Which is something we’re considering.”
