2 Arizona endangered species up for review

Federal officials Tuesday rejected a request to remove the acuna cactus from the endangered species list, but said they will give further consideration to a petition to delist the Southwestern willow flycatcher.

Those were two of eight species in Arizona that were part of a batch of preliminary decisions released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on 29 species across the country.

The service said there was enough evidence to advance 16 of the 29 to a “rigorous” 12-month review process to see which ones will be added to, stay on or fall off the list.

“The petition is the first step in evaluating whether something warrants protection under the Endangered Species Act,” said Jeff Humphrey, a Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman for the Southwest region.

Six species in Arizona did not make the cut for further consideration – which is what saved the acuna cactus – but the service said it will review the petition to add the Western bumblebee to the endangered list.

Acuna cactus stays on endangered list

Tierra Curry, senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said it’s not surprising that the acuna cactus will stay on the list, noting that climate change has made the desert hotter and drier. The cactus was only recently added by the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2013, when the known population of the small, barrel-shaped plants had dwindled to just 3,600.

The acuna cactus was added to the Endangered Species List in 2013, by which time its numbers has dwindled to about 3,600 plants, documents say.  (Photo: Barry Rice)

Curry said the Center for Biological Diversity was “definitely going to oppose” the delisting of the Southwestern willow flycatcher during an upcoming public comments period. The bird that has been listed as endangered since 1995.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said it received a petition from multiple groups seeking to delist the bird, and decided that there were substantial challenges to the bird’s scientific classification that merited another look. The flycatcher is found in the Southwest and breeds in trees and shrubs by rivers, swamps and wetlands, according to the service.

“I think that’s definitely a bad decision,” Curry said of the plan to move forward on the flycatcher.

“Rivers in the Southwest have never been more threatened,” she added, noting dropping water levels and high demands from a growing human population.

The requests on the cactus and the flycatcher were the only ones to delist species in Arizona – the other six all sought to put plants, animals or insects on the list.

Western bumblebee might be endangered

The service rejected five of those six, but agreed to consider the petition for the Western bumblebee. The bee was once one of the most common bumblebee species, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service, but its populations have declined in the past 20 to 30 years, especially in the West.

The service said there were substantial findings that disease, pesticide use and climate change, among other factors, have impacted the species.

Petitioners sought emergency listings for the Arizona wetsalts tiger beetle and the MacDougal’s yellowtops shrub, amid fears that proposed development near the Grand Canyon threatened to destroy their habitat. But the development was rejected, putting the beetle and shrub out of harm’s way, Curry said.

She said that the service’s decision to not move forward on petitions for two lizards and a silkmoth was likely due to inadequate information to prove they were threatened.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has been deciding the fate of more and more petitions in batches in the past two years in an effort to increase efficiency, Humphrey said. Additionally, environmental and advocacy groups have been filing petitions in batches, he said.

He said the service is trying to release results three or four times a year, with the next set of petition decisions likely to be released around May.

Orangutans interbreeding in Indonesia are threatening the already endangered species

Endangered species such as orangutans are often taken to sanctuaries and rehabilitation centres across the globe, with the ultimate aim being to reintroduce them into the wild.

But it appears that reintroducing these endangered species can sometimes have unwanted effects.

A group of researchers has discovered that a non-native subspecies released into a national park in Indonesia has since bred with the park's apes - creating a hybrid the scientists dubbed 'cocktail'.

Orangutans are the two exclusively Asian species of extant great apes.

Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, they are currently found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra.

When the orangutans were first taken to the Camp Leakey in the Tanjung Puting National Park, Indonesia, in 1971, it was thought all orangutans were the same species.

It has only been since 1985, after around 90 of the great apes were released into the park, that advances in genetic studies have revealed two different species of orangutan – Bornean and Sumatran.

Orangutan subspecies diverged 176,000 years ago, according to researchers, and breeding between the two subspecies could have negative impacts on the populations of the great apes that are already under threat.

Their forest habitat in Indonesia and Malaysia is rapidly disappearing, putting the future of Asia's only great ape in peril.

The Bornean species can be split into three genetically different subspecies that were geographically and genetically isolated from each other.

The researchers, Dr Graham Banes and Dr Linda Vigilant from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, used 44 years of data and worked with Biruté Galdikas, who had originally released the orangutans in the 1970s, to determine the extent to which she had released non-native apes into the park.

They found that two non-native females had been rescued from the pet trade, Rani and Siswoyo. 

They were originally captured from Borneo.

Since they were released they have interbred with the native males and produced 22 'hybridised' descendants, who inherited a cocktail of genes that would not have otherwise occurred in the wild. 

Breeding between animals that are genetically different can sometimes be successful if the offspring inherit the benefits of both parents' individual qualities.

But Vigilant said 'offspring born to parents from two genetically distinct populations, which have not been in genetic contact for significant periods of time, have also been shown to suffer poor health and reproductive success in a range of different species.'

One of the orangutans, Rani, had a successful family with 14 descendants. Two died in infancy but the rest are thought to still be alive and healthy.

But in contrast, Siswoyo had fewer surviving offspring than any other female in the park. 

The researchers think this could be because of the interbreeding causing 'outbreeding depression' - when offspring from individuals from different populations have lower fitness than those from individuals from the same population.

Siswoyo only had five first-generation and three second-generation offspring. Two of her offspring died when they were young, while an infection following her last pregnancy meant Siswoyo's died ten days after the birth.

Her only daughter, Siswi, has frequently required care from the vets, including major surgery to treat a perforated intestine. 

She also gave birth to a stillborn offspring, a daughter that died in infancy, and a son that often needed medical interventions.