In a September 13 article reporting on an upcoming congressional field hearing “initiated” by U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Fort Morgan), The Denver Post reported that “the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [USFWS] has been trying to determine whether” the Preble's meadow jumping mouse is a “specific subspecies.” However, the Post did not note that a report from an independent panel of scientists commissioned by the USFWS already has concluded the animal should retain its classification as a distinct subspecies. That report contradicts claims the mouse should not be protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) because it supposedly is not a distinct subspecies.

The Post article, by staff writer Kim McGuire, noted that the September 18 hearing in Greeley “is being billed as 'Abuses of the Endangered Species Act: the so-called Preble's meadow jumping mouse' ” and that it will be “overseen” by House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA), whom the Post identified as “a longtime critic of the Endangered Species Act.”

The government listed the Preble's mouse under the ESA as “threatened” in 1998. Critics have claimed that the mouse is not a distinct subspecies and should be delisted. The Post article quoted Jared Koch, director of national affairs for the Farm Bureau, as saying, “Our president will testify that we don't believe Preble's should be listed, and we don't believe that it was ever a subspecies.” However, the Post did not note the “unanimous” conclusion of a scientific panel commissioned in June by the USFWS that “the weight of evidence currently clearly supports” the mouse's classification as a distinct subspecies.

From McGuire's September 13 Post article, “Hearing slated in mouse fight”:

In 1998, the mouse was declared a “threatened” species in Colorado and Wyoming.

Since then, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been trying to determine whether the mouse is a specific subspecies and not a common jumping mouse found across much of the nation.

The tentative witness list for the hearing is filled with several opponents of giving the mouse federal protection - including a rancher, homebuilders, the Colorado Farm Bureau and Wyoming state officials.

“Our president will testify that we don't believe Preble's should be listed, and we don't believe that it was ever a subspecies,” said Jared Koch, director of national affairs for the Farm Bureau.

The assertion by Koch and others that the Preble's mouse is not a distinct subspecies echoes a study by biologist and former Denver Museum of Nature & Science curator Rob Roy Ramey. Ramey, as the Rocky Mountain News reported September 6, published an article in the journal Animal Conservation in 2005, in which he stated the following:

[T]he Colorado-dwelling Preble's mouse is nearly identical to other meadow jumping mice and doesn't deserve the special protections it enjoys as a “threatened” subspecies under the Endangered Species Act.

The News article noted that USFWS subsequently “cited Ramey's work last year when it proposed pulling Preble's from the federal list of threatened and endangered wildlife.” Similarly, the Associated Press reported in a July 24 article published on the Post's website that Ramey's “research was among the reasons cited by then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton in February 2005 when she proposed removing the mouse from the government's endangered species list.” As a July 25 Denver Post article by McGuire (updated August 3) noted, however, “In January, [Dr. Tim] King, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in West Virginia released a study rebutting Ramey's work. He followed up with a published report [in June] saying Ramey used flawed data to reach his conclusions.”

Citing “the apparent inconsistencies between [the Ramey and King] reports,” the USFWS announced that it had “contracted with Sustainable Ecosystems Institute (SEI) to organize an independent scientific review panel to analyze, assess, and weight the reasons why the data, findings, and conclusions of King et al. differ from the data, findings, and conclusions of Ramey et al." As The Denver Post reported on June 5, the USFWS “hired the Oregon-based Sustainable Ecosystems Institute to convene a scientific panel to evaluate the two studies in the next 60 days so the agency can make a decision on the mouse by August.”

In a July 20 letter conveying its findings, SEI noted that “taxonomy is a field undergoing evolutionary change of its own” and that “there will be many cases where expert opinion will be divided.” Nevertheless, SEI added, “In the case of the Preble's Meadow Jumping Mouse ... the panel unanimously conclude that the weight of evidence currently clearly supports retention of the subspecies as a valid taxon.”

The SEI letter also emphasized that “the science panelists have elected to write a joint report, reflecting their unanimous opinion on the scientific issues. No substantive disagreements in either substance or tone arose between the panelists. Hence this report reflects a true consensus.”

Despite the Post's omission of this information from its September 13 article, McGuire's July 25 article referenced the SEI report, noting that the “independent panel of scientists concluded that the mouse is its own subspecies -- not a more common mouse.” The article further reported:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday [July 24] that even though a report it requested says the mouse is a unique subspecies, that finding will not dictate the agency's final decision on whether to end federal protection for the rodent.

“We are looking at this report as well as all the peer-reviewed science and public comments, the whole body of information,” agency spokeswoman Diane Katzenberger said.

“One is not weighted over another,” she said.