CITIZEN GROUPS FILE SUIT TO ENFORCE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT
AGAINST TWO FEDERAL AGENCIES

(Cincinnati, OH) A coalition of citizen conservation groups Monday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the Forest Service for failing to adequately protect the critically endangered Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) as required by law. The population of the Indiana bat, identified by the government as endangered in 1968 before passage of the current Endangered Species Act, continues to decline in the face of measures that the government claims will protect them.

Included in the government's measures are provisions allowing logging on national forests, highway construction, strip mall development, oil and gas development and many other projects that impact the habitat of these bats, regardless of the fact that the population continues to crash toward extinction.

While such provisions are being approved, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continues to downplay the impacts, determining in every case that the projects are not threatening the species. This lawsuit challenges those determinations and asks the court to order the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect this species as mandated by the Endangered Species Act. This lawsuit also asks the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to designate summer habitat as "critical" for the survival of the species.

"If the current management practices are allowed to continue, it is likely that the Indiana bat will go the way of the Carolina Parakeet and the other regional species now extinct due to the loss of habitat," says Jim Bensman, a representative for Heartwood, a Midwest based environmental organization. "The Endangered Species Act is supposed to stop this from happening, not sanction it."

"This little bat is the modern 'canary in the mine.' It indicates a serious ecological imbalance in our forests that is tied to a management bias towards commercial logging," says Chris Crews, from the Buckeye Forest Council, an Athens, Ohio organization. "The bat needs large trees in the forest, and they are being cut down."

Buckeye Forest Council and Heartwood won a preliminary logging injunction last year against the two agencies involving a plan to log in documented Indiana bat habitat in the Wayne National Forest.

"The national forests in our region provide the best opportunities for protecting these species' habitat," says Tracy David, Director of the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project, (SABP) from Asheville, North Carolina. "We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to be good stewards of these lands and leave behind a legacy of protecting endangered species and the special places they call home."

The Indiana bat's home range includes over a dozen states in the Midwest and South. Official population estimates show a decline of over 60% since being listed as endangered in 1968.

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More info: Complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Ohio, Western Division