ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— The Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal notice today of its intent to sue the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to protect riparian areas and meadows in New Mexico’s Sacramento Mountains from cattle. The areas are critical habitat for the endangered New Mexico meadow jumping mouse and Mexican spotted owl.

“The jumping mouse and these spotted owls will only survive if the meadows and streams they rely on in the Sacramento Mountains are healthy, but cattle are wreaking havoc here,” said Robin Silver, co-founder of the Center. “Federal officials have a years-long pattern of failing to control destructive cattle grazing. It’s immoral and illegal for the Forest Service to neglect its responsibility to protect this critical habitat, and that failure will cause a local extinction.”

The Sacramento Mountains, a sky island rising a mile above the vast deserts of southern New Mexico, are home to the highest density of Mexican spotted owls in the country because of an abundance of large, old conifer trees. Protection of the owl’s preferred old-growth forest habitat is essential for its recovery, as is the protection of streams that sustain New Mexico meadow jumping mice.

Today’s notice lists multiple ways that the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are violating the Endangered Species Act. Most recently, the agencies concluded in a biological opinion that allowing cattle to graze in the jumping mouse and Mexican spotted owl habitat in the Lincoln National Forest would not harm the mouse while leaving 42% of the designated critical habitat unprotected on the Sacramento Allotment and 74% unprotected on the adjoining Agua Chiquita Allotment.

The agencies are failing to keep the cattle from trampling riparian areas and devouring grasses that the dwindling numbers of jumping mice need to survive. The Center previously took legal actions to protect these areas in 2019 and 2021.

The New Mexico meadow jumping mouse was listed as endangered in 2014, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service protected nearly 14,000 acres of critical habitat for the species in 2016.

The species was once found from southern Colorado to central New Mexico and eastern Arizona but has been lost from most of its range because of loss and degradation of streamside habitat.

The mice hibernate for up to nine months a year, leaving a narrow window each summer to mate, reproduce and gain enough weight to survive their long hibernation. They have highly specialized habitat needs, such as tall, dense grasses and forbs found only in riparian areas along perennial flowing streams.

Cattle concentrate in these riparian areas during the summer months when the jumping mice are active. Intensive grazing destroys the habitat and has resulted in isolated, fragmented populations that are highly vulnerable to occasional yet inevitable events such as wildfires and flooding.

“The Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service need to do their job and protected these fragile animals,” Silver said. “Taxpayers are already subsidizing cattle grazing on public lands, and they sure shouldn’t be paying to destroy these beautiful meadows and streams or to wipe out an entire species.”

If litigation is necessary again, the Center will be represented by Eubanks and Associates, LLC.