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The Huachuca water umbel has a unique ability to expand its population quickly after a flood, moving to disturbed habitat until competition with other species becomes too great. But to use this method, the plant needs refugia — places that let it escape the effects of floods — as well as an unaltered watershed flow system and a healthy riparian community. With suitable wetland habitat rapidly disappearing from the Southwest, this opportunistic herb is having trouble finding opportunities.
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE
PROTECTION STATUS: Endangered
YEAR PLACED ON LIST: 1997
CRITICAL HABITAT: 83.2 kilometers of streams and rivers in Arizona’s Cochise and Santa Cruz counties designated in 1999
RECOVERY PLAN: None
RANGE: The San Pedro River, Santa Cruz River, Rio Yaqui, and Rio Sonora
THREATS: Destruction, modification, or curtailment of habitat resulting from wetland degradation and loss, groundwater pumping and growing water demand, livestock grazing, wood cutting, mining, fire suppression, water diversion, dredging, rural and urban development, and recreation; as well as nonnative plant invasion
POPULATION TREND: The plant has been extirpated from six of 26 sites in its historical range. Individual plant numbers are difficult to determine.
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SAVING THE HUACHUCA WATER UMBEL
Once a flourishing part of extensive riparian habitats in southeastern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico, the Huachuca water umbel has been reduced to a handful of discontinuous clumps in a handful of Southwest wetlands. To ensure the plant didn’t dry up altogether, the Center petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the species under the Endangered Species Act in 1996. It was listed the following year. We’ve also challenged grazing allotments that threaten numerous obligate wetland species, including the Huachuca water umbel.
The San Pedro River, one of the water umbel’s main habitats, is drying up due to unplanned growth and lack of water-conservation planning. Largely to blame is Fort Huachuca, an Arizona military compound that shares its name with the Huachuca water umbel — but apparently doesn’t want to share the area’s water. To protect the San Pedro and its endangered inhabitants, the Center filed a lawsuit in 2001 and forced Fort Huachuca to improve its feeble water conservation plan the next year. We continue to help the water umbel through our San Pedro River Campaign, which seeks to reform water use in the river basin and ensure that water remains in the river’s tributaries.
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Contact:
Kierán Suckling
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