ABQJOURNAL: Federal Officials Seek Critical Habitat for Pecos Sunflower Associated Press

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to designate as critical habitat nearly 1,600 acres for the Pecos sunflower — a native plant protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The showy plant survives in fewer than two dozen locations in the desert wetlands of New Mexico and West Texas. The critical habitat include areas of Chaves, Cibola, Guadalupe, Socorro and Valencia counties in New Mexico, and Pecos and Reeves counties in Texas.

“The future of this plant can be secured through habitat protection, restoration projects and maintenance of core populations,” said Benjamin Tuggle, Southwest regional director for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Public comments on the proposal are being accepted until May 29.

In designating an area as critical habitat, the Endangered Species Act requires that economic and other impacts be considered. If the benefits of excluding an area outweigh the benefits of including it, the U.S. Department of Interior may exclude an area from critical habitat, unless that would result in the extinction of a threatened or endangered species.

The Pecos sunflower was added to the federal list of threatened and endangered species in 1999. It’s similar in appearance to the common sunflower, but it has a cluster of smaller sunflowers at the tip, which are slightly reddish in color. It grows only in saturated soils such as desert wetlands and flowers from August to October.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said the Pecos sunflower’s survival is vulnerable due to aquifer depletion, diversions of surface water, filling of wetlands for conversion to dry land and potential competition with nonnative invasive species.

[mjh: if you want to comment, you’ll have to visit:

The New Mexico Ecological Services Field Office Home – USFWS – Region 2
http://www.fws.gov/southwest/es/NewMexico/]