Scientists study rare Glacier stonefly
A decision to preclude an obscure stonefly species from protection under the Endangered Species Act was announced this week, just as one of the first studies on the species was published in a journal on climate change.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday that the meltwater lednian stonefly, found only at high elevations in Glacier National Park, warrants protection but it is precluded from an federal listing because the species is not a high priority.
Very little was known and published regarding the stonefly when an environmental group petitioned it for listing until a study led by two U.S. Geological Survey scientists was published in the March issue of the Climatic Change journal.
The study says glaciers in Glacier National Park are predicted to disappear by 2030 and, as its name implies, the meltwater stonefly prefers to live in the coldest, most sensitive alpine stream habitats directly downstream from disappearing glaciers, snowfields and springs in the park.
“Our simulation models suggest that climate change threatens the potential future distribution of these sensitive habitats and the persistence of the meltwater stonefly through the loss of glaciers and snowfields,” said Clint Muhlfeld, the study’s project leader and a Geological Survey scientist based in the park.
“These major habitat reductions imply a greatly increased probability of extinction and/or significant range contraction for this sensitive species.”
Impacts are not expected to apply only to the stonefly.
“This isn’t about an obscure insect that most people will never see — it’s about an entire threatened ecosystem which harbors a whole suite of rare, poorly known, native species, the biology and survival of which are dependent on very cold water,” said Joe Giersch, a Geological Survey scientist and co-author of the study.
The Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledges that higher water temperatures, seasonal or permanent stream de-watering and changes in the timing and volume of snowmelt “are likely to change the stonefly’s habitat such that it no longer satisfies the species’ needs.”
But the service contends that there is little that can be done because “existing regulatory mechanisms do not address environmental changes due to global climate change.”