AUSTIN, Texas— In response to litigation from the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today proposed to protect the big red sage flower of central Texas as an endangered species.
The big red sage is a crimson and purple 5-foot-tall flower that lives in central Texas. Despite a steeply declining population, the flower has waited since 1975 for this decision, which by law should have taken only two years.
“I hope this prevents the looming extinction of the big red sage, which would be like losing the giant, flamboyant botanical soul of Texas,” said Michael Robinson, a senior conservation advocate at the Center. “Endangered Species Act protection means that this beautiful, irreplaceable plant will have an excellent chance of adding color to rocky streamside ledges for generations to come.”
Big red sages are pollinated by hummingbirds, primarily the black-chinned hummingbird.
Big red sages once lined many streambanks and seeps across the Edwards Plateau. But by 2016 only an estimated 654 individual plants survived in eight populations.
Their decline has been driven by being eaten by goats and native white-tailed deer, whose numbers were unnaturally inflated after their natural predators were killed. Residential and commercial development also wiped out big red sage populations.
The flowers’ populations have also suffered from people collecting them for ornamental or domestic use. With Endangered Species Act protection, it’s now illegal to collect wild big red sages. Added to these threats are the compounding dangers of heatwaves, droughts and severe flooding from global climate change.
The Service was notified in 1975 that the big red sage was in trouble but didn’t act to protect the flowers even as it repeatedly acknowledged that it should. The agency simultaneously delayed taking action to protect hundreds of other disappearing plant and animal species.
In 2007 WildEarth Guardians petitioned to list the big red sage under the Endangered Species Act, but the Service still refused to decide whether to protect the plant. In 2020 the Center sued to win protection for the big red sage.
