Judge gives ultimatum for endangered Arizona squirrel protections
Joe Duhownik
TUCSON, Ariz. (CN) — Federal officials have less than two years to decide whether to expand critical habitat for what some call the most endangered terrestrial animal in the U.S.
After a 2017 petition, three lawsuits and more than 30 years of existential peril, a federal judge gave the Trump administration until January 30, 2027 to act on the petition to expand critical habitat protections for the Mount Graham red squirrels — which live on the eponymous peak in Arizona’s Pinaleño Mountains.
U.S. District Judge Raner Collins says that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “unreasonably delayed” its decision on the December 2017 petition submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Bird Alliance, formerly known as the Maricopa Audubon Society.
“Given that it has been nearly four years since the 12-month report, and the service has not been able to complete either the species status assessment or the revised recovery plan, it is unlikely the service can finish the peer review for the species stats assessment, create a new revised recovery plan, open it to comment, and finalize the plan within the center’s proposed four-month deadline,” Collins wrote.
The nonprofits sued the feds over their inaction in 2019, 2020 and again in March 2024, the last of which resulted in Collins' Monday order.
Though the Endangered Species Act includes no time requirement for answering critical habitat petitions, the Administrative Procedures Act requires petitions to be resolved within a “reasonable timeframe,” subject to judicial review.
A fall 2024 census found only 233 Mount Graham red squirrels in the Pinaleño Mountains — a positive change from the mere 35 found in 2017, and 109 found in 2020, but still critically endangered.
Originally thought to be extinct by the 1950s, the squirrels were added to the endangered species list in 1987 after their rediscovery in the 70s, but human development, fires and competing squirrels have pushed most of them outside the designated critical habitat set aside for them in 1990.
“This ruling is a victory for the squirrels and more evidence that the Fish and Wildlife Service has been failing miserably at its job to protect them,” Center for Biological Diversity cofounder Robin Silver said in a press release. “It’s pathetic that these folks couldn’t be bothered to save a species they’ve known for 30 years has been hanging on by a thread. The squirrels were forced out of their original homes while federal officials have been asleep at the wheel, but hopefully this ruling forces them to get back to work and save these animals before it’s too late.”
One of the most prominent peaks in the state, the ten-thousand-foot Mount Graham is home not just to squirrels but to a University of Arizona observatory, a telescope owned by the Vatican, an abandoned church camp and 14 privately owned summer cabins — all of which threaten the Mount Graham red squirrel, according to the center.
Use of the cabins and observatory, along with wildfires and prescribed burns, and the introduction of the invasive Albert’s squirrels in the 1940s destroyed nearly all of the red squirrels’ critical habitat, which only includes spruce-fir forests above 9,200 feet elevation.
Living on a “sky island” — a mountain range isolated by lowlands of a different environment, in this case desert — the squirrels can’t just escape to another mountain range, because doing so would require them living at a much lower elevation than they’ve evolved to survive at. However, the squirrels have begun to move down the mountain where there’s more consistent forest canopy.
The 2017 petition asked Fish and Wildlife to update critical habitat for the squirrels to include lower-elevation, mixed-conifer forests where the squirrels are now living. Although leading scientists said 35 years ago that these forest areas were essential to the squirrel’s survival and recovery, Fish and Wildlife didn’t include them in the original 1990 critical habitat designation.
“Thirty years ago Fish and Wildlife officials acknowledged that the squirrels were in jeopardy, but now with fewer squirrels and much less surviving habitat these same officials refuse to even recognize that the squirrels are in even more jeopardy,” said Charles Babbitt, Maricopa Bird Alliance conservation chair. “These officials now see their job as protecting the status quo instead of protecting endangered species and their habitat.”
Four months before their decision, Collins ordered Fish and Wildlife to complete an updated recovery plan for the squirrels by September 30, 2026.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.