Protecting the Preble Mouse could cost local governments, landowners and others $183 million each decade
The government’s effort to protect the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse will cost the state’s economy hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming decades, Colorado home builders and developers said Monday.Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the mouse will be delisted from the Endangered Species Act in Wyoming but will remain listed in Colorado. In a 2003 economic impact study, the fish and wildlife agency estimated that protecting the mouse could cost local governments, landowners and others $183 million each decade, Holsinger said. And the added costs come at a time when building permit activity in the Denver area is at a 15-year low, he added.
Environmentalist Josh Pollock agreed that “it is odd that they would argue the species is threatened with extinction in one area but not protected across its entire range.”
Expensive rodent
State and federal governments are spending more on the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse than they do on each of 1,135 species of wolves, whales, bighorn sheep, trout, tortoises, squirrels, snakes, birds, beetles and butterflies listed under the Endangered Species Act. Some examples of government spending on endangered species:
$624,996 Preble’s meadow jumping mouse
$66,594 Blue whale
$339,545 Greenback cutthroat trout
$101,100 Snail darter
