|
Though tiny and delicate looking, Riverside fairy shrimp are spectacularly adapted to living in vernal pool habitats, able to hatch, grow, breed, and lay eggs in a single wet season — usually only three to four months long. Their eggs are extremely hardy, encased with a thick, protective shell that lets them withstand long dry periods and extreme temperatures, hidden dormant in the soil until adequate rainfall give them a proper pool to hatch in. But what happens when the fairy shrimp’s unique home turf is paved over, farmed on, or churned up by vehicles’ wheels? Its populations plummet. Now, with just 25 suitable vernal pool complexes left on the planet, even this tough little crustacean can’t withstand human impacts much longer.
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE
PROTECTION STATUS: Endangered
YEAR LISTED: 1993
CRITICAL HABITAT: Approximately 306 acres in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, and Ventura counties, California designated in 2005
RECOVERY PLAN: 1998
RANGE: California’s Ventura, Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, and San Diego counties; and Baja California, Mexico
THREATS: Urban sprawl, agribusiness, off-road vehicles, livestock grazing, wetland draining, invasion of non-native plants, pollution, fire, and fire-suppression activities
POPULATION TREND: The Riverside fairy shrimp is in decline, and it has the most limited range of any endemic California fairy shrimp. Sometimes Riverside fairy shrimp are overlooked during vernal pool surveys because they hatch out and swim later in the season than many other fairy shrimp, and if they aren’t detected, the pool they live in is often plowed up.
|
SAVING THE RIVERSIDE FAIRY SHRIMP
Because the Riverside fairy shrimp’s vernal pool habitat occurs on relatively flat land, it’s highly desirable for agriculture and housing development. In fact, of the four remaining pools supporting the fairy shrimp in Riverside County, only one is larger than an acre in size — and it lies directly within a planned development. Another pool is within an already-approved housing-development tract, and a third is on a parcel that has been proposed for development, adjacent to a golf course as well as a highway. And now, with the looming threat of global climate change and decreased rainfall predicted for southern California, not only the Riverside fairy shrimp but a suite of rare vernal pool species — as well as vernal pools themselves — could slip into extinction.
Despite the dangers of the fairy shrimp’s past and ongoing habitat loss, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been less than accommodating. The shrimp was listed as endangered back in 1993, but the Service declined to designate critical habitat until 2001 — at which point little more than half the acreage originally proposed was actually finalized. This critical habitat designation went counter to the Service’s own recovery plan, failed to protect currently occupied pools threatened with development, and excluded virtually all wetlands on the Marines’ Camp Pendleton and Miramar military bases, which threaten the shrimp with their activities. In 2005, under direction from corrupt former Interior Department official Julie MacDonald, the Service illegally and without explanation slashed critical habitat even further from 6,870 acres to a mere 306 acres — a 96-percent reduction. This decision contradicted the species’ recovery plan, scientific peer reviewers, and Service biologists.
The Center has been working to save the Riverside fairy shrimp since 1997, when we joined with allies to file suit against Steven Spielberg’s cronies to stop a massive development called “Dream Works’ Playa Vista” planned for one of Los Angeles’ last remaining wetlands, which threatened the Riverside fairy shrimp and nine other imperiled species. We were instrumental in first obtaining habitat protections for the fairy shrimp, filing suit in 1999 to force the Service to designate critical habitat. And in 2007, we filed notice of intent to sue the Bush administration over its appalling reduction in the fairy shrimp’s critical habitat, along with its failure to grant proper Endangered Species Act protection to 54 other imperiled species. We continue to help the fairy shrimp by defending California wetlands against urban sprawl, overgrazing, off-road vehicles, and other threats to nature.
ACTION TIMELINE
+ CAMPAIGN LINKS
NATURAL HISTORY
+ MEDIA
Contact: Ileene Anderson
|
