ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— The Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today for failing to protect riparian areas and meadows from cattle in New Mexico’s Sacramento Mountains. The areas are critical habitat for endangered New Mexico meadow jumping mice, whose survival is tied to the health of upper-elevation streams and meadows.

Today’s lawsuit is the third filed in the past five years to safeguard these rare animals, following federal agencies’ repeated violations of legal agreements to protect them and their habitat. Population numbers for the species, and several others in New Mexico and Arizona, are declining despite the agencies vowing in legal agreements to take steps to protect them.

“It’s infuriating that we have to go back to court to force federal officials to do their jobs and protect animals from extinction,” said Robin Silver, cofounder of the Center. “Cows continue to denude the meadows and trample the streambanks that endangered jumping mice rely on for survival in the Sacramento Mountains. Many other rare plants and animals across the Southwest are slowing going extinct because of this long pattern of neglect, with agencies hiding behind recycled old studies and meanwhile failing to control destructive cow grazing in designated critical habitat. It’s immoral, it’s illegal, and if it keeps going on like this more species will disappear forever.”

The Sacramento Mountains, a sky island rising a mile above the deserts of southern New Mexico, are home to the highest density of Mexican spotted owls in the country because of an abundance of large, old coniferous trees. The mountains are also home to an isolated, remnant population of New Mexico meadow jumping mice that has survived there since the end of the Ice Age. Protecting the streamside meadows and streams are essential for the species’ recovery and survival.

Today’s lawsuit lists multiple ways the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service continue to violate the Endangered Species Act. Most recently, the agencies concluded in a biological opinion that cow grazing in jumping mouse habitat in the Lincoln National Forest would not harm the mouse while leaving up to three-fourths of its habitat unprotected.

The Center previously took legal actions to protect these areas in 2019 and 2021.

In 2014 New Mexico meadow jumping mice were listed as endangered, and in 2016 the Fish and Wildlife Service protected nearly 14,000 acres of critical habitat for the animals in the Lincoln, Santa Fe and Apache-Sitgreaves national forests.

The jumping mice were once found from southern Colorado to central New Mexico and eastern Arizona but have been lost from most of their range because of loss and degradation of streamside habitat from cattle grazing.

The mice hibernate for up to nine months a year, leaving a narrow window each summer to mate, reproduce, and gain enough weight to survive their long hibernation. They have highly specialized habitat needs, such as tall, dense grasses and forbs found only along streams that flow year-round. Protecting these streams doesn’t benefit the mice alone; it also benefits people and other wildlife that depend on clean, healthy streams.

Cows concentrate in these riparian areas during the summer months when the jumping mice are active. Their grazing destroys the habitat and has resulted in isolated, fragmented populations that are highly vulnerable to wildfires and flooding.

“The federal agencies’ actions mean the difference between survival and extinction for these animals,” Silver said. “Cow grazing on public lands may be subsidized by taxpayers, but people sure as hell don’t want to see their money spent on destroying mountain meadows and streams or driving species to extinction.”