The mouse that won't stop roaring

Why did the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service waste over 100 million taxpayer dollars to save the Preble's meadow jumping mouse from extinction when the little critters are alive and well from Colorado to Alaska?

The Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest law firm based in California, has asked FWS that question by filing a delisting petition to remove the mouse from the "threatened" list of the Endangered Species Act. New scientific findings confirmed that the mouse, far from being "threatened," is not meaningfully different from other populations of jumping mice with healthy populations in a huge swath of Western North America.

PLF senior attorney Damien Schiff said in a statement that the Preble's mouse is a small rodent that FWS bureaucrats listed as a "threatened" subspecies in 1998, based on a 1950s study and an unpublished 1997 review.

FWS scientists welcomed the familiar mouse as a "subspecies" since each new slice of an ordinary species into "subspecies" or "populations" counts as something new to regulate that comes with a budget increase and expanded regulatory power.

The Endangered Species Act does not regulate species but habitat, which is land-use control. The Fish and Wildlife Service uses its power to separate land from use. The Preble's mouse listing prohibited public and private landowners from disturbing its "habitat" in any way, costing landowners about $18 million each year, which ignited endless rancorous debates. Fish and Wildlife would not relent.