SILVER CITY, NM.— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today protected the swale paintbrush as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. This 19-inch-tall, yellow-reddish flower is only known to survive in one spot in southwest New Mexico.

“The disappearance of this ornate, almost luminous flower went unnoticed as cattle trampled our desert grasslands into a struggling remnant of what they once were,” said Michael Robinson, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Thankfully this beautiful desert gem will now get the scientific attention and help the Endangered Species Act calls for.”

In former times swale paintbrushes lived in 11 spots in the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Durango and two spots in the bootheel region of southwest New Mexico. Today they’re only known to survive in a single location in New Mexico; they haven’t been seen in Mexico since 1985. The remaining New Mexican population exists on a 28-acre swath of private land.

In addition to their extremely limited distribution, swale paintbrushes are imperiled by drought from climate change and potential trampling by livestock. Historically the plant was reduced through habitat loss and fragmentation, human alterations in the hydrology of the swales it favors, loss of natural fire that curbed the encroachment of woody vegetation and regenerated the grasses the flower’s roots parasitize, intensive grazing pressure, and nonnative plants.

The Service will develop a recovery plan for swale paintbrushes that will likely call for reintroducing them to other habitats to ensure the species survives if the current known population is wiped out.

The Endangered Species Act has been successful at preventing the extinction of 99% of the animal and plant species under its care, and it has put many species on a trajectory toward recovery. But chronic delays in providing protections imperil many other deserving species.

The swale paintbrush was first petitioned for protection in 2007 by WildEarth Guardians, but it took a 2020 lawsuit by the Center to ensure a deadline by which today’s protections were enacted.