Species politics - As politicians and environmentalists battle over protection policies, a small black-and-brown rattlesnake struggles to survive

Species politics

As politicians and environmentalists battle over protection policies, a small black-and-brown rattlesnake struggles to survive

By Alex Rodriguez

The Eastern massasauga may be a rattlesnake, but it's hardly menacing. The brown-black mottled rattler only grows to about two and a half feet and steers clear of humans, instead spending its days quietly foraging for field mice amid the sedge and grassland surrounding Carlyle Lake in Clinton County.

Still, the docile reptile managed to send a shudder through a group angling to build a 100-room lodge and conference center on the banks of that lake at the northern edge of southern Illinois.

The massasauga is one of the 147 animal species on Illinois' endangered list. This poses a potential roadblock to the project, headed up by Sportsman's Park president Charles

Bidwill III, so a local lawmaker introduced legislation in Springfield that would have plucked the reptile off the state's list.
"It so happens that the Eastern massasauga is one of the most endangered species in North America," says Sue Lauzon, executive director of the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board, which oversees the state's list of endangere and threatened species. "It's being reviewed for possible listing on the federal [endangered] list."

The Eastern massasauga

Carlyle Lake, Lauzon says, is one of the massasauga's last strongholds. As recently as the mid '60s, a biologist reported seeing as many as 30 to 40 snakes in the bottomland forest along Courtesy of Chris A. Phillips the Sangamon River at Robert Allerton Park in east central Piatt County But the last siting there was five years ago. The rattler once thrived to the south of Chicago in Will County, too, but it has not been spotted there for four years.

Carlyle Democratic state Rep. Kurt Granberg's proposal to take the snake off the state's endangered species list has since been modified: Construction would be allowed on an endangered species' habitat, as long as developers abide by restrictions that protect most of the animals in question, as well as other endangered species at the site.

That idea is at the heart of the debate over how Illinois and the federal government should protect endangered species as the new millennium approaches. The old way

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can be summed up in three words: Northern spotted owl. More than any other species, that variety of owl came to symbolize the rancorous standoff between environmentalists, who argue species protection should not be compromised no matter how obscure the creature, and business leaders, who howl at the very idea that a small bird could bring the logging industry to its knees.

By 1995, the debate peaked, as Congress agreed to place a moratorium on listing new species. That moratorium was lifted a year later.

Out of that imbroglio came a new approach to balancing the sometimes conflicting needs of development and habitat preservation. President Bill Clinton's administration began applying a little-used provision of the nation's Endangered Species Act that allowed development, even when it threatened the habitat of an endangered species, as long as a landowner drafted a longterm plan to protect animals and plants on the national list.

Those plans are known as habitat conservation plans, and once the landowner submits one, he or she receives an "incidental take permit" allowing development, even though it may harm the habitat of a particular endangered species. The trade-off lies in the landowner's promise that the conservation plan will provide measures to protect other endangered

What they are
There are 147 animal species and331 plant species on Illinois' endangered list. In this state, a species is considered endangered if it is under threat of extinction as a breeding species in the wild within its range. If a species is threatened, its population is low enough that it will likely become endangered.

Last year, the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board, which decides whether species get added or removed from the list, released its latest changes.

Additions to the endangered list:
• Pink mucket. A mussel believed to have disappeared from Illinois, but recently found in the Ohio River.
• Flathead chub. Formerly common, now restricted to the region below the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Additions to the threatened list:
• Purple wartyback. A once common mussel now limited to the Kankakee, Iroquois, Ohio and Vermilion rivers.
• Black sandshell. A mussel in the Mississippi and Ohio rivers being nudged out by the zebra mussel.
• Regal fritillary. A butterfly with small and isolated populations.
• Jefferson salamander. Only recently discovered in Illinois, in Edgar and dark counties.
• Bird-voiced tree frog. Declining due to habitat loss, and found mostly in cypress-tupelo swamps in southern Illinois.
• Blanding's turtle. Dwindling because of loss of marsh habitat.
• Flathead snake. Now found only on bluffs along the Mississippi River.

Removed from the endangered list:
• Tennessee riffleshell, clubshell. Mussel species no longer found in Illinois
• Sharp-shinned hawk, long-eared owl. Two bird species no longer ¦ threatened.
• Bachman's sparrow, yellow rail. No longer a breeding species in Illinois.

Removed from the threatened list:
• Great egret, veery, double-breasted cormorant. Birds with improving populations.
• Bobcat. Now seen in 90 Illinois counties.

Moved from endangered to threatened status:
• Slippershell. A mussel recently found in new locations.
• Red-shouldered hawk. No longer at risk of extinction.
• Sandhill crane. Now found in seven counties.
• Bald eagle. They have recently nested at two dozen Illinois locations.
• Least bittern. A bird species that is more common than recently thought.
• Eastern sand darter. Fish that has increased its population in parts of the Wabash River basin.
• River otter. Numbers improving thanks to the state's river otter recovery plan.

Moved from threatened to endangered status:
• Alligator snapping turtle. Now found in only one location in the state.
• Coachwhip. Snake now limited to just three locations in Illinois.
• Yellow-crowned night heron, king rail. Surveys show significant drops in population.

Alex Rodrigue.

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species in the long run.

Before 1992, only about a dozen habitat conservation plans had been approved by the federal government. Between 1992 and March 1998, more than 200 were granted, according to the National Audubon Society.

The problem with the way the plans are administered, according to the Defenders of Wildlife environmentalist group in a report released last year, is that they're often approved "without scientific information or public input."

"Even if there is scientific information indicating the need for extra conservation measures, none of the plans we reviewed provided a way to pay for them," says Laura Hood, the Defenders biologist who wrote the report. That leaves the responsibility up to the federal government, which is unlikely to have funds for conservation.

The National Audubon Society is a bit more optimistic. Its Web site calls the habitat conservation plan a potentially "efficient tool for species conservation, but only if underlying policies ... are reformed to ensure that plans support the recovery of endangered and threatened species."

Still, incidental take permits and habitat conservation plans seemed the right antidote to supporters of the Illinois legislation, which had initially proposed to "delist" the massasauga and two other endangered creatures, the least brook lamprey and the Indiana crayfish, that were holding up a 1, 200-acre reservoir project in downstate Marion.

Granberg and state Rep. Larry Woolard, a Carterville Democrat, advanced the idea earlier this year. Environmentalists and state conservation officials were stunned.

"Placement of an endangered species on the list is based on scientific

'Placement of an endangered species on the list is based on scientific evidence. Just the idea of bypassing that system was horrifying.'

evidence," Lauzon says. "Just the idea of totally bypassing that system was horrifying."

Ironically, Illinois' Endangered Species Act wouldn't have had enough teeth to stop either project anyway, Lauzon says. The federal Endangered Species Act, which is itself up for review this year, can thwart a development to save a species, but Illinois' version can't. Illinois' law only prohibits hunting, trapping or killing endangered species. "We can't tell a landowner that they can't develop on their land," Lauzon says.

For his part, Granberg says neither he nor Woolard actually wanted to delist the crayfish, lamprey or massasauga, which he asserts is "plentiful" around Carlyle.

Chris Phillips, herpetologist for the State Natural History Survey, has stationed himself at a 30-acre site at the south end of Carlyle Lake in hopes of gauging the impact the proposed lodge might have on the rattlers. Phillips says he believes the Carlyle Lake area, where at least 40 of the snakes live, is the only place in the state where the species has a chance of surviving just 30 years.

If the species disappears, so will a part of Illinois' natural heritage, he says. In the middle of the last century, before the then-new state was settled, the rattler was abundant in the savanna, prairie and lowland forest that once comprised the northern two-thirds of Illinois. But as the state's population grew and its wetlands were siphoned off by development, the snake's numbers dwindled to the point of near extinction.

Phillips says he needs $70, 000 for a comprehensive study aimed at tracking the snake's movements before he can determine how severely the massasauga population would be affected by a lodge. If he gets the money, he plans to implant radio transmitters in 10 snakes, which would then be followed by a crew of biologists. Money for the proposed two-year study could come from federal, state and private sources, but scraping funds together has been tough. So far, Phillips has only had enough to conduct a pilot study.

"It's hard. It's not a glamorous animal. It's not cute and fuzzy," Phillips says, noting that at one time many states, including Wisconsin, paid bounties to residents who killed rattlers. "It's actually hated by most people. Now I'm asking for money to protect it."

Granberg says he's trying to respect the views and needs of his constituents. "Sometimes you have to send a message that we will be a voice for our constituents," he says. "That's what the initial legislation was all about."

He argues that, along with the lodge, the project calls for a new sewage treatment plant that would help about 500 low- and moderate income homeowners plagued by septic sewer backups during heavy rains.

The compromise proposal called for the state's Department of Natural Resources to oversee the program. That made Granberg and the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board happy, but environmentalists worried about the potential for politics to seep into habitat conservation plans that should, they argue, be based solely on science.

Jack Darin, president of Illinois' Sierra Club, says the natural resources department ultimately answers to the governor, and there's no way of knowing whether future administrations will be friend or foe to creatures perilously close to extinction. "We'd like to see the process of protecting endangered species be based on scientific criteria rather than political dealing."

Alex Rodriguez is a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times.

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