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Wednesday, July 16, 2008 11:57 PM PDT

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has completed a second status review of Peirson’s milk vetch and concluded the plant should remain listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, it was announced Wednesday.

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s 12-month status review will be published in today’s edition of the Federal Register.

In the U.S., the plant’s only known population is in Imperial County in the Algodones Dunes. Most of the Algodones Dunes is managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management as part of the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area. The milk vetch is responsible for the closure of tens of thousands of acres of the dunes.

Fish and Wildlife was originally petitioned by the American Sand Association and other off-highway vehicle groups to delist the plant in 2001. In 2004, the agency completed a 12-month status review of the 2001 petition and determined the plant should remain listed under the ESA.

The 2005 petition to delist the plant was also submitted by the ASA and other OHV groups, and asserted that based on additional data collection Peirson’s milk vetch is more abundant than was reported in the 2001 petition, and the plant’s population and reproductive capacity are so stable and strong as to warrant delisting. After determining the petition provided substantial information a second status review was initiated.

Based on Fish and Wildlife’s review of all information provided in the petition, additional research and input from peer reviewers, the agency determined that Peirson’s milk vetch is threatened by habitat destruction and modification from OHV use, predation by beetles that likely exacerbates other existing threats and inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms to protect the plant because of uncertainties regarding future management of the ISDRA.

Although the petition asserted the population of Peirson’s milk vetch is more abundant than in 2001, this claim cannot be supported by the available survey data due to differences in rainfall amounts, survey methodologies and variations in climatic conditions between the survey years, Fish and Wildlife said in a press release.

The ISDRA is one of the most heavily used off-highway vehicle recreation areas in the U.S. Although more than 27,000 acres is a designated wilderness area permanently closed to OHV use, this area supports less than 9 percent of the U.S. population of Peirson’s milk vetch. More than 65 percent of the plant’s population within the ISDRA is located in temporary closure areas. Depending upon future management decisions by BLM these closure areas could reopen to OHV use, leading to an estimated 41 percent reduction in the plant’s population.