ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE

PROTECTION STATUS: Endangered

YEAR PLACED ON LIST: 2002

CRITICAL HABITAT: 84 acres in Kern County, California designated in 2005

RECOVERY PLAN: Included in Recovery Plan for Upland Species of the San Joaquin
Valley, 1998

RANGE: Formerly presumed to have occurred throughout almost one million acres of wetlands and riparian forests that ringed the massive Tulare, Buena Vista, Kern, and Goose Lakes in the southern Tulare Basin in California; now four remaining populations on 575 acres scattered along a 70-mile stretch of the basin’s west side

THREATS: Water diversion, agricultural expansion, pesticide spraying, selenium poisoning, and drought

POPULATION TREND: Historic population numbers are not known, but 1999 surveys found seven shrews in Kern National Wildlife Refuge, nine in Cole Levee Ecological Preserve, and five along the Kern Fan. Twenty-five individuals, comprising the largest known population, have been seen in a small pond without guaranteed water flow called Gator Lake.