Springsnails of The Blue Ridge

Editor’s Note – This essay was subsequently published as: Dillon, R.T., Jr. (2019c) Springsnails of the Blue Ridge.  Pp 211 - 215 in The Freshwater Gastropods of North America Volume 3, Essays on the Prosobranchs.  FWGNA Press, Charleston.

I was born and raised in Waynesboro, Virginia, where the Chamber of Commerce likes to advertise that “The Skyline Drive meets the Blue Ridge Parkway.” The Skyline Drive runs 105 miles north from Waynesboro through the Shenandoah National Park to Front Royal, generally at 1-2,000 ft. elevation. South from Waynesboro the Blue Ridge Parkway extends another 412 miles through the mountains to Asheville, North Carolina, at elevations rising to 6,000 feet.
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I spent many a lazy summer day in my youth picnicking with family on the SKD and the BRP, and not a few warm evenings at the overlooks with my girlfriend. One of my favorite spots was the visitor center at Humpback Rocks (BRP mile 5.8), where latter-day pioneers live in an authentic log cabin and farm the rocky hillside (Photo above). The tiny, hand-hewn springhouse on that property must have stood unchanged for 200 years (Photo below).

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No surface water enters or leaves the springhouse at BRP mile 5.8. Water seeps up through the rocks, travels in complete darkness for about 3 feet, then seeps back into the earth and disappears. (A narrow PVC pipe has been installed to keep the path from becoming muddy.) But if you crawl through the door, grab a wet rock, pull it out into the sunlight and turn it over, you may be lucky enough to discover a scattering of tiny white hydrobiids, Fontigens orolibas (Hubricht), the spring snail of the Blue Ridge (The white snail below).

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My attention was first called to this remarkable animal by the wonderful 1990 monograph of Hershler, Holsinger, and Hubricht, “A revision of the North American freshwater snail genus Fontigens” (Smithsonian Contrib. Zool. 509). To tell you the truth, I don’t know which is more amazing – the fieldwork of Leslie Hubricht, the scholarship of Bob Hershler, or the biology of the snails they have teamed up to document. The authors reviewed nine Fontigens species in their work, including four species from the Commonwealth of Virginia, meticulously documenting hundreds of remote and scattered populations.

So one fine morning not too long ago I set off up the Skyline Drive in my pickup truck, HH&H monograph in my lap and topo maps on the seat beside me, determined to visit as many populations of F. orolibas as I could before the sun went down. The habitats I sampled ranged from proper springs with good water flow down to wet seeps in grassy or marshy high meadows many miles from the nearest permanent water. The photo below shows a typical spring, at a visitor cabin operated by the National Park Service down the mountain below SKD mile 81. I found snails only on the underside of rocks very near such springheads, never in any abundance.

The animals themselves are typically no more than a couple millimeters long and essentially colorless. The figure above shows a 2.9 mm F. orolibas (below) crawling with an individual F. nickliniana, a widespread species found throughout the eastern U.S. in valley springs and spring runs. Fontigens nickliniana does not share the retiring habit of F. orolibas, and seems unafraid to crawl about quite brazenly on the open streambed. The body color difference is striking.

I was ultimately able to visit seven of the sites listed by HH&H as habitats for Fontigens orolibas – a pretty full day, but only 20% of the total sites they recorded. And I’m pleased to report successful collections of F. orolibas from five of them. The other two sites had been capped and the water diverted. But given the ephemeral nature of natural snail populations and their habitats, I think the confirmation of 5/7ths of any list of historical freshwater snail records is reassuring.

The little boy from Waynesboro who played hide-and-seek in the springhouse at Humpback Rock forty years ago knew, even then, that he wanted to be a professional biologist when he grew up. I’m not sure why, but a combination of “Wow, how interesting!” and “Man, that’s pretty!” played a big role. Spending a warm summer day hunting tiny populations of mysterious animals, scattered across the crest of the ancient Blue Ridge, it’s not hard to feel the wonder again.

Keep in touch,

Rob

Freshwater Gastropods in State Conservation Strategies - The West

To the FWGNA group:

As most of you will recall, last month I surveyed a set of 10 comprehensive wildlife conservation strategies recently published by states of the southern U.S. I ranked each state by the number of freshwater gastropods on its list of species "prioritized for conservation," relative to its total number of priority species. The resulting ratio, it seems to me, might give some measure of the importance of freshwater gastropods to the overall conservation efforts of each state, and hence (perhaps) the likelihood that grant funding might be available.

This month I've done an identical survey for 12 states of The American West. But before reading any further, I'd challenge each of you to make a prediction. Clearly there is more fresh water in the South than in the West. In which region do you think freshwater snails will attract greater conservation concern?

The answer is in the West, by far. The list below shows that two of the 12 western states did not include any freshwater gastropods in their conservation plans: Montana and Washington. This is identical to the south, where two of 10 states excluded the freshwater snails: Louisiana and Mississippi. But three western states listed eye-poppingly large numbers of freshwater gastropods - 74 (28.1% of all species!) in Nevada, 45 (16.1%) in Wyoming, and 23 (11.7%) in Utah. Among southern states, only Alabama hit the double-digits (11.1%). The average percent freshwater gastropod species on state lists of special conservation concern was 0.070 in the West but only 0.026 in the South.

The difference is largely attributable to endemic hydrobiids. Nevada's 74 freshwater gastropod species of special priority included 61 Pyrgulopsis and 11 species of other hydrobiid genera, almost all narrowly restricted to individual desert springs. Utah's 23 species included 14 hydrobiids, California's 35 included 21 hydrobiids, and hydrobiids comprised all 14 of Arizona's freshwater gastropod species of greatest conservation need.

Many of the lists of the western states also included pulmonate snails, which are rarely mentioned in the south. Idaho and Oregon, for example, were both about equally split between prosobranchs and pulmonates.

A most interesting contrast emerged between the states of Wyoming and Montana. According to the authors of Wyoming's Conservation Strategy, only 44 of that state's 279 species (of all taxa) were listed because of specific, known conservation needs. They stated, "The remaining 235 have been included primarily due to a lack of key data necessary to assess their conservation status." That subgroup of 235 taxa included essentially the entire freshwater gastropod fauna of Wyoming, 45 species in total. In striking contrast, Montana listed only 60 species of all taxa, including no freshwater snails at all. By way of explanation, the authors of the Montana Strategy wrote, "Most invertebrates were not included in the assessment due to lack of data.

"Below are the 12 states of the American West, ranked by the conservation concern they directed toward their freshwater gastropod faunas. As I mentioned last month, some states do appear to be accepting outside proposals for grants to study their species of greatest conservation need. Good luck to all of you!

And keep in touch,
Rob

• Nevada Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy Species of Conservation Priority: 74 freshwater snails / 263 = 0.281
• A Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy for Wyoming Species of Greatest Conservation Need: 45 freshwater snails / 279 = 0.161
• Utah Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy Species of Greatest Conservation Need (all tiers): 23 freshwater snails / 196 = 0.117
• The Oregon Conservation Strategy Strategy Species: 18 freshwater snails / 286 = 0.063
• Idaho Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy Species of Greatest Conservation Need: 13 freshwater snails / 229 = 0.057
• Arizona's Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy Species of Greatest Conservation Need (Tiers 1a, 1b, 1c): 14 freshwater snails / 310 = 0.045
• California Wildlife: Conservation Challenges Special Status Species: 35 freshwater snails / 824 = 0.042
• Colorado's Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy Species of Greatest Conservation Need: 7 freshwater snails / 205 = 0.034
• Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy for New Mexico Species of Greatest Conservation Need: 14 freshwater snails / 452 = 0.031
• The Texas Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy Priority Species: 10 freshwater snails / 733 = 0.014
• Montana's Comprehensive Fish and Wildlife Conservation Strategy Species of Greatest Conservation Need: 0 freshwater snails / 60 = 0.0
• Washington's Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy Species of greatest conservation need: 0 freshwater snails /200 = 0.0

Freshwater Gastropods in State Conservation Strategies - The South

To The FWGNA group,

A bit over five years ago the U.S. Congress created the State Wildlife Grants Program, charging every state in the union to develop a "Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy" by October, 2005, as a condition for claiming a share of the money. All 50 states did, in fact, meet that deadline, and the CWCS documents that resulted are now available on state DNR web sites around the nation. They present an interesting study in contrasts.

I don't think that the federal government provided any formal definition of the words, "comprehensive" or "wildlife." But I've just completed a brief survey of the CWCS documents published by ten southeastern states, and I'm pleased to report that eight of the ten included freshwater gastropods among wildlife species considered worthy of special conservation concern.

In my review I recorded the total number of all species in all taxa listed by each state, as well as the number of freshwater gastropod species singled out for conservation priority. It seems to me that the ratio of freshwater gastropods-to-total-species might provide some estimate of the importance each state accords to its freshwater gastropod fauna, and perhaps, the likelihood that one of us might win some funding.

Here are the ten southeastern states, ranked by the conservation concern they directed toward their freshwater snails. The number in bold is the number of freshwater gastropod species listed, with total species (of all taxa) in the denominator that follows. I've also provided links to the relevant sites on the web pages for all ten state wildlife agencies:

• Alabama Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy Species of greatest conservation need: 35 freshwater gastropods / 314 = 0.111
• Tennessee's Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy Species of greatest conservation need: 32 freshwater gastropods / 664 = 0.048
• A Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy for Georgia High priority species: 19 freshwater gastropods / 619 = 0.031
• North Carolina Wildlife Action Plan Prioritized for conservation: 10 freshwater gastropods / 371 = 0.027
• Virginia's Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy Species of greatest conservation need (all tiers): 17 freshwater gastropods / 925 = 0.018
• Florida's Wildlife Legacy Initiative Species of greatest conservation need: 15 freshwater gastropods / 974 = 0.015
• Arkansas Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy 5 species of greatest conservation need: 5 freshwater gastropods / 369 = 0.014
• South Carolina Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Plan Species of conservation concern: 4 freshwater gastropods / 1240 = 0.003
• Louisiana Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy Species of concern: 0 freshwater gastropods / 240 = 0.0
• Mississippi's Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy Species of greatest conservation need: 0 freshwater gastropods / 297 = 0.0

As one might have predicted, the state of Alabama leads Dixie with freshwater gastropods accounting for a whopping 11.1% of all that state's "species of greatest conservation need." I think the total of 4.8% for Tennessee is also eye-catchingly high. South Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi are notably low, but this should not be taken as any slight toward the conservation agencies of those states. The South Carolina situation, for example, is complicated by the inclusion of marine species (including many mollusks!) which inflated the numerator.

It is interesting to note that fully half of the ten states I surveyed were cited as "Leaders" in the state wildlife conservation planning process by the Defenders of Wildlife, in an independent review commissioned by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Of the 12 states earning such recognition nationwide, five were in the South: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. See the report:
http://www.defenders.org/statewildlifeplans/

I would encourage each of you to contact whoever has been involved with developing the CWCP in your state to see what sort of funding opportunities might be available. Although many states are earmarking their State Wildlife Grant money for within-agency use, I do know that some states have been accepting outside proposals.

So good luck, and keep in touch!
Rob

Surveying the Heartland

Editor’s Note. This essay was subsequently published as: Dillon, R.T., Jr. (2019d) Surveying the Heartland.  pp 207 - 209 in The Freshwater Gastropods of North America Volume 4, Essays on Ecology and Biogeography.  FWGNA Press, Charleston.

If you had to pick one state to represent the entire freshwater mollusk fauna of North America, how about Iowa? Bounded by the Mississippi River on the east, with its western third in the Missouri drainage and its northern half pocked by prairie potholes of glacial origin, I can't think of a better place to sample the American heartland. And so the article by our colleague, Tim Stewart, in the most recent American Malacological Bulletin (21:59-75), "The freshwater gastropods of Iowa (1821 - 1998): species composition, geographic distributions, and conservation concerns" arrives as a most welcome contribution.

Tim did an extraordinarily thorough job of surveying both the published literature and the electronically-available museum collections in compiling the data for this paper. Lumping several nominal Campeloma species and several nominal species of the lymnaeid subgenus Fossaria into single categories, as well as combing the various synonyms of Physa acuta, Tim documented 49 freshwater gastropod species in Iowa. He also eliminated 6 species that seem to have been reported falsely.

It is interesting to compare Tim's list to the only other previously-existing database of which I am aware, that of NatureServe. My query to the NatureServe Explorer database this morning returned a list of 44 freshwater gastropod species from in Iowa which, paring down the Campeloma, Fossaria, and Physa and eliminating dubious entries, reduced to just 38. The 11 species missed by NatureServe appear to be a random subsample of the fauna: 2 Valvata, 3 lymnaeids, 2 physids, 2 planorbids and 2 ancylids.

Tim briefly reviewed the natural history of Iowa, as it has been developed from a tallgrass prairie to a breadbasket 95% under cultivation. Broadly examining collection records for trend, he found evidence that as many as 25 of the 49 Iowa freshwater snail species may warrant some conservation concern.

The problem with a literature-based approach is, admittedly, the difficulty of controlling for trends such as a decline in the publication or curation of malacological collections. What is needed, of course, are fresh data, and not just in Iowa. Tim concluded his discussion with a call for a "comprehensive field survey to determine which species are truly endangered in this state." And in fact, he assures me personally that such a survey is already underway. Amen, brother!

Keep us posted,
Rob

Subject: Reasonable expectations for NatureServe
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006
From: "Dillon, Robert T. Jr."
To: FWGNA group

I might need to correct a misunderstanding from my message of 4/20/06, "Surveying the Heartland." I did not mean to imply anything negative regarding the on-line database maintained by NatureServe. Science is the construction of testable models about the natural world. The NatureServe database constitutes such a model, where essentially no other models exist, and thus makes a valuable contribution.

Any biologist with a minimum of field experience will understand, I hope, that continent-scale distribution maps such as those provided by NatureServe must be based on the broad ranges of the organisms involved, which come from general reviews, large monographs, and regional surveys. Such maps cannot possibly duplicate the precision of a more finely-detailed inventory, such as that for an individual state. So I should hope that nobody would be surprised to read that the results of Tim Stewart's intensive survey of Iowa didn't precisely match expectation from NatureServe's broadly-drawn national ranges.

Nor in fact is it reasonable to expect that the NatureServe database will be kept meticulously current. In addition to his freshwater snail duties, our good friend Jay Cordeiro of NatureServe is also in charge of freshwater mussels, terrestrial gastropods, crayfish, fairy shrimp, clam shrimp, tadpole shrimp, mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies, and odonates. I myself can't update the freshwater gastropods of South Carolina any more than about annually. Jay is doing a great job. And hey, we're snail people - we can wait.

Finally, it is not reasonable to expect that the NatureServe list (or the list Tim Stewart developed from his more detailed study, for that matter) will accurately reflect the true freshwater snail fauna of Iowa. Neither estimate has been confirmed by any recent field work. And there are some systematic biases in literature review as a method of biotic inventory - removing a dubious record is more difficult than adding one, for example.
Philosophers of science tell us that the true number of freshwater gastropod species is everywhere either trivial or unknowable. But certainly, all the models we've got today can be refined.

So let's get busy!
Rob

Pacific Northwest Gastropod Workshop

To the FWGNA group,

I'm pleased to report that The Xerces Society has organized a workshop on the freshwater gastropods of the Pacific Northwest at the University of Montana, Missoula, coming up right around the corner May 11 - 14. The leader will be yours truly! See their website for further details.

Jeff Adams of The Xerces Society really twisted my arm to become involved with this workshop. I think the idea is a great one, but I personally have zero field experience in that part of the world. I'm hoping that the participants will bring lots of specimens, locality data, and field observations with them to Missoula. Perhaps we can learn something together.

The registration fee is just $100, and will include an identification manual currently under development. I'd encourage any of you interested in northwestern freshwater gastropods to consider attending.

And I'll see you in May!
Rob

When Pigs Fly in Idaho

Editor’s Note – This essay was subsequently published as: Dillon, R.T., Jr. (2019d) When Pigs Fly in Idaho.  Pp 149 - 158 in The Freshwater Gastropods of North America Volume 4, Essays on Ecology and Biogeography.  FWGNA Press, Charleston.

Thanks to all of you who responded to my post of 23Dec05, "Idaho Springsnail Panel Report." My message seems to have been circulated widely through the US Fish & Wildlife Service, at least in the Pacific Northwest, which I consider to be a compliment. Ultimately I received about 10 - 12 replies and comments, all positive and supportive.

Here's an especially thoughtful message I received from a fairly high-placed manager in the FWS, followed by my reply:

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Dr. Dillon -- I was forwarded a few of your FWGNA postings concerning the Idaho springsnail science team process. I found the postings quite enjoyable.

I'm not sure what you are suggesting, however. Here we often experience some of the difficulties you imply in the relationship between science and policy, yet is there another option? Science holds a unique position in the implementation of natural resources policy, unlike religion or worldviews (though these obviously can play a role, though usually an unstated one), as it ostensibly supplies the terra firma from which we make our policy calls. Yet, science alone does not lead us. Policy is not strictly the morphing of science to fit regulations; rather it involves filtering science through political, ideological, even religious lens.I know this type of thinking doesn't often endear me to my Service or academic colleagues, yet it seems to me an obvious truth. The mix of science and policy is messy, but what other choice do we have?

(signed)
Searching in Oregon

Dear Searching,

Good to hear from you. And you make an excellent point. In retrospect, my essay of 23Dec05 looks like a lot of undirected fussing. Shame on me for complaining so loudly about a problem, while at the same time offering no solution!

Well, I do have a "solution." I put quotes around that noun because I fear that my solution is not practical in the real world. In offering it I am assuming, for five zany paragraphs, that science might indeed "supply the terra firma from which we make our policy calls," as you so poetically put it.

I would suggest a biotic survey, right now, quit screwing around. I don't know about any other organisms, but the freshwater snails of the United States can be completely surveyed, catalogued, and ranked by their abundances in ten years, for just some thousands of dollars per state.

Are you familiar with the "Freshwater Gastropods of South Carolina" web site? I put that site up all by myself, with essentially zero financial support. I paid (out-of-pocket) about $500 to an adjunct faculty member here for the GIS work, and $500 to my daughter's college roommate for the web design. Table 1 (view from the Discussion page) shows the entire fauna completely ranked by abundance.

In 2005 I completed North Carolina, and at this point Virginia and Georgia are mostly surveyed. I've had a couple thousand dollars of support for this expansion, and I do have several colleagues helping me. We're in a holding pattern web development for the NC site right now - integrating it with SC is going to take some doing. I've paid the husband of one of the faculty members here $300 out-of-pocket to get started, and he's made some progress. He will need another $300 soon, and I'm tapped out from Christmas. Anyway, most of the North Carolina maps are currently viewable from the South Carolina site - check out the individual species pages.

So you can sense my frustration. For the amount of money it took to put on that Boise conference, fly us all to Idaho and set us to jabbering in a room for five days, my colleagues and I could have completely prioritized the entire freshwater gastropod fauna of the American west.

And I strongly suspect that P. robusta wouldn't even rank in the top 50% of the western species for conservation concern. There are dozens, maybe scores, of freshwater gastropod species much more deserving of protection than P. robusta. The current system is just a terrible waste of money, resources, time, energy, and effort - a crying shame.

In conclusion, I feel compelled to repeat a joke I heard during my year as a AAAS fellow on Capitol Hill. A Pig and a Butterfly wanted to get married, but there were obvious problems with the union. So they went to the Wise Old Owl for advice. The Owl heard their story, thought about it very deeply for many hours, and then said to the pig, with a grave and serious voice, "You must learn to fly." The pig replied, "But Mr. Owl, how can I fly? I have no wings!" To which the Owl replied, "Sorry, I only deal in policy options."

Cheers,
Rob


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The proposal of a national biotic inventory I offered to "Searching in Oregon" earlier this month was obviously nothing new. But from a policy standpoint, I might as well have suggested that pigs fly. "Searching" wrote me a nice reply, confessing that the FWS has no money for general surveys, but rather must focus on species of conservation concern, like P. robusta, which of course is where we got on this merry-go-round.

Again I insist, science and public policy are incompatible - "nonoverlapping majesteria." And the only solution I can think of comes by analogy from that third majesterium, religion. Science and Religion must leave each other alone. And so must Science and Policy.

Heaven help us,
Rob

Idaho Springsnail Panel Report

Editor’s Note – This essay was subsequently published as: Dillon, R.T., Jr. (2019d) Report from the Idaho Springsnail Science Panel.  pp 141 - 147 in The Freshwater Gastropods of North America Volume 4, Essays on Ecology and Biogeography.  FWGNA Press, Charleston.

As most of you are aware, 2005 has seen a great deal of attention focused on the conservation status of the west American hydrobiid, Pyrgulopsis idahoensis. Although the “Idaho Springsnail” was placed on the federal endangered species list in 1992, a recent taxonomic reappraisal by Hershler & Liu (Veliger 47: 66-81) prompted the state of Idaho and Idaho Power to petition the US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS), for delisting earlier this year. Several non-governmental conservation groups have lodged a competing petition, and the battle lines are now drawn. See my essay of April, 2005 on the “Idaho Springsnail Showdown” for a brief review.

On October 18 & 19 the FWS convened a “Springsnails Science Panel” at the Statehouse Inn in downtown Boise, Idaho for the purpose of making recommendations regarding the conservation status of the Idaho Springsnail. The panelists were Joe Bidwell (Oklahoma State University), Greg Clark (USGS), Stephanie Clark (University of Alabama), Billie Kerens (Montana State University), Leslie Riley (Washington State University), and myself. It occurs to me that the members of the FWGNA group might be interested in a brief report of these proceedings, with a complimentary side-salad on the relationship between science and public policy.

The basis for our two day discussion was an 82-page document from the FWS entitled “Best Available Biological Information for Four Petitioned Springsnails in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.” We were also given 34 pages of peer review comments on this document, offered (doubtless) by many of you. My main impression was simple amazement that such a tremendous amount of information might be available on any single species of North American freshwater snail. My main recommendation (upon initial review) was simply that the title of the document be changed to better reflect its content, “Absolutely Every Scrap of Data that has Ever Been Collected, and Every Word that has Ever Been Written, about the Idaho Springsnail, Regardless of Quality.”

The most contentious issue was taken off the table before the October meeting even began. On page 9 of the “Best Available” document, the FWS reported its determination that the Idaho Springsnail is not endemic to the Snake River, as previously believed, but also inhabits Washington, Oregon, and Wyoming, as concluded by Hershler & Liu.

The most surprising tidbits of information in the report were, to me, the data on the population size of P. idahoensis in the Snake River. Studies by the Idaho Power Company have found an average snail density of 130 snails / m2 over 80 linear miles. This average includes the 32% of the sites where no snails were present, presumably uninhabitable. I think that the snake river Pyrgulopsis may constitute the largest single population of freshwater snails ever documented. Can anybody on this list think of a larger one?

The panel meeting itself was moderated by Mr. Phil Carroll, a professional facilitator, who favors the “modified Delphi method” of problem-solving. This approach carries a group of experts through a series of discussions and polls to a final vote where each participant invests some standard number of figurative chits to indicate his certainty regarding possible answers to the central question.

I found the entire two-day process intellectually nauseating. On the one hand, most of the questions we entertained were not scientific, nor framed in a way that could be answered by science. And in fact it was clear to me that the entire process was designed and controlled by well-meaning and hard-working people who nevertheless have no clue even what science is.

For example, we panelists spent most of the first afternoon discussing “How intrinsic factors (or extrinsic factors) contribute to population resiliency and vulnerability.” The units in which “population resiliency and vulnerability” might be measured never seemed to be at issue.

Some of our colleagues wrung their hands, saying “If we only had more information, these decisions would be so much easier!” Nonsense. We have more information on the Idaho Springsnail than any other freshwater gastropod in the world, except the medically-important species of the tropics. The questions we were asked in Boise were simply not answerable.

But on the other hand, I understand why the FWS would very much like to have information on “population resiliency and vulnerability” if such statistics could be calculated, to make the decisions it must make on endangered species. And I honestly can’t think of a better method to obtain such information other than asking for gut-level guesses from as large a sample of knowledgeable people as possible. So when I placed myself in the intellectual mindframe of a natural resources manager, or some similar public servant (as opposed to a scientist), the process ongoing at the Statehouse Inn was not uncomfortable.

For me the two-day meeting was like an intellectual roller coaster, periods of relative calm being followed by vertiginous drops, during which I desperately tried not to vomit.

But unlike the typical roller coaster, alas, the ride got worse as it proceeded. In the early afternoon of the second day we took a series of votes designed “to express [our] belief about what is the most likely timeframe for extinction and what is [our] confidence level in this specified timeframe.” We were each given a ballot with boxes labeled 1- 20 years, 21 – 40 years, 41- 60 years, 61- 80 years, and 100+ years, and asked to cast 100 chits into these boxes according to our judgments of when P. idahoensis might go extinct. These ballots were collected, tallied, discussed, and second and third rounds of voting ensued.

I was genuinely surprised by the time frames nominated, which seemed designed to bias our judgments quite low. I would have voted for “a million, billion, zillion years” or perhaps, “a ton of years” had those options been available.

Much to my dismay, this particular series of votes did not constitute the end of the matter. After tabulating the last round of ballots, our facilitator calmly informed us that the specific language of the endangered species act refers not to the simple extinction of a species, but to extinction “in a significant portion of its range.” Further, the date of that extinction has no absolute boundary, but is specified only as “the foreseeable future.” So we six scientists had been packed into a tiny windowless room in downtown Boise, Idaho, for two days and the entire discussion finally boiled down to “what fraction of a range is significant, and what length of time into the future is foreseeable.” At least we could agree on units of measurement.

And it could have been worse. Also present in the room, occasionally asking questions and making comments, was a second “Manager’s Panel” comprised of six middle-level FWS field supervisors, division heads, and so forth. We six scientists were allowed to leave on the afternoon of the 19th, but those poor souls were condemned to two additional days of discussion and voting.

I have no idea what recommendation emanated of the Boise meeting. I will observe that among all six of us on the science panel, nobody placed his modal expected extinction date to the left of the foreseeable future. From Boise, however, the decision-making process proceeds through the regional and national Fish & Wildlife Service offices, ultimately to appear in the Federal Register as a ruling by the Secretary of the Interior. Until then, the process is cloaked in secrecy.

For myself, I emerged from the meeting with a renewed conviction that science and politics don’t mix. Steven Jay Gould coined the term, “nonoverlapping majesteria” to describe the relationship between science and religion, but I think the description is just as apt for science and public policy. We have different languages, values, and worldviews. It is quite clear to me that science was horribly corrupted in at The Statehouse Inn in downtown Boise October 18 & 19, invoked to answer questions it could not answer, and to justify decisions it could not justify.

I imagine that most of you reading this essay will disagree with me. In fact, I myself wish I were wrong. Your comments and replies are always welcome!

And we’ll keep in touch,
Rob


Historical Note:

The Idaho Springsnail was removed from the US Endangered Species List in August, 2007
[Press Release]