The New Mexico meadow jumping mouse is a little creature with big friends.
The endangered species has advocates in environmental groups and protection provided by the federal government.
But the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity contends the federal government isn’t adequately defending the mouse and its habitat from cattle ranching, and has informed the government it intends to sue this summer.
Organization co-founder Robin Silver said federal agencies have done “an incredibly poor job” of protecting the species. The mouse’s numbers are too small to count in isolated pockets of New Mexico and Arizona, he said.
“Nobody knows for sure [how many are left] because the population is so fragile,” Silver said.
The mouse also has a muscular adversary. Cattle ranchers say the protections granted to the species have blocked their access to some prime grazing areas and streams. The tension is one of many examples of the conflicting interests of industries and those advocating for various endangered and threatened species.
...Kelly and Spike Goss, cattle ranchers in the Lincoln National Forest in Southern New Mexico, say they have fought the federal government for cattle grazing rights for years in battles centered on protected species.
Spike Goss said of federal government officials: “They break you mentally, physically and financially.” The Goss family, based in the town of Weed, clashed with the federal government in the 1990s over logging rights and protection of the Mexican spotted owl.
Since then it has been one fight after another over grazing, water rights, habitat and the mouse.
“They just keep taking and taking our most valuable water and forage,” Kelly Goss said.
The family grazed about 550 cattle on the property 20 years ago but have been squeezed to about 410 now, they said.
The Gosses said they are willing to settle for a price, perhaps $12 million, with the government and give up.
“This is our culture, but at this point we’re just spent,” Kelly Goss said.
The couple said there is no way they would pass their rights to a roughly 120,000-acre grazing area down to younger relatives because they wouldn’t inflict the headaches on them.
...Silver of the Center for Biological Diversity said there have been many dozens of situations over the past four years in which ranchers have committed federal grazing violations in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico’s Lincoln National Forest.
Silver said the cattle are entering forbidden, supposedly fenced-off areas and grinding down the mouse’s habitat.
2 comments:
Are there any endangered fleas or ticks? This jumping mouse has been causing headaches ever since the late 1980's. Just because a couple of loons want to preserve a mouse they get to destroy a way of life for the ranchers who use that supposed habitat. I say let the mouse lovers take some home with them and raise them there. They can purchase land with suitable habitat which they can call their own and turn out the mice. They can sleep with the mice. They can organize mice parties to count the mice. They can supplicate for donations to support their mice (of course taking a percentage of the funds for their own use). This way the mouse lovers with have mice to love, to count, to promote to others who also love mice.
Forgive me for the rant but this is nothing compared to Critical Race Theory and all the rest of the crap floating around in this country. WAKE UP AMERICA YOU ARE LOSING YOUR FREEDOMS!
AMEN!!!
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