This story is an excellent example of the best trick environmentalists have discovered for ravaging private property rights. A "species" is no longer a particular kind of animal. A "species" can be an animal that lives in a particular place. It's not the "pygmy rabbit." It's the "Columbia Basin population" of pygmy rabbit. It's not the cave snail. It's the "Tumbling Creek" cavesnail. It's not the skipper butterfly, it's the "California wandering" skipper butterfly.

This weapon has been made possible by Mother Nature. It requires only a few generations of isolation to cause a particular species to diversify slightly in color, size, or something else. Bingo! A new "species!"

A closer look (I'll just do the first three of the huge list in the article. Hell, I'm not getting paid for this):

• In Washington state, the Columbia Basin population of pygmy rabbits has plummeted, and fewer than 50 such rabbits remain. They are threatened by lost habitat, disease and predators.

According to this reference:

The pygmy rabbit (Brachylagus idahoensis) is the smallest rabbit in North America; an adult rabbit can fit in the palm of a hand. It is
patchily distributed in sagebrush-dominated areas of Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Washington.
It is uniquely dependent on sagebrush for food and shelter, digging burrows in the deep, loose soil in which dense stands of
sagebrush thrive.



Washington populations are separate from the core of the species' range and were historically found in sagebrush habitat in Benton,
Adams, Grant, Lincoln and Douglas counties. Currently, fewer than 100 pygmy rabbits are known to survive in isolated fragments of
suitable habitat in Douglas County. Loss of sagebrush habitat to agricultural conversion has been the primary factor in the decline.



So this rabbit is protected not because it is disappearing, but because it is disappearing from a particular county. The rabbit itself is widespread throughout the West. And according to this reference:

The currently accepted scientific name for the pygmy rabbit is
Brachylagus idahoensis (Merriam). Some authorities have placed the pygmy rabbit in the genus Sylvilagus subgenus Brachylagus. Pygmy rabbits are in the family Leporidae. There are no recognized subspecies or races. (boldface added)

• In Missouri, the Tumbling Creek cavesnail lives in a single cave, its numbers dropping 82 percent from 1973 to 1995, an apparent victim of worsening water quality.

More on the Tumbling Creek cave snail.

I have not found enough information to be able to discern whether this is an actual species, or simply a particular color of cave snail that happens to live in this particular cave. I do know that a search of cave snails in general reveals huge populations all over the world.

• In California and Nevada, a butterfly called the California wandering skipper has shrunk to two small populations, its habitat damaged by agriculture, livestock grazing and development.

Behold! The skipper butterflies of America!

It is unclear exactly which skipper they are referring to here. There is no "California" wandering skipper per se. I have found a Carson, or alkali wandering skipper (called that since, of course, it is the skipper that lives near Carson) that held up development of a highway for a time.

* * *

In any case, you get the idea. As seen in this ranking of biodiversity, location is now as important as the actual species involved. Note the phrase under "G3-Vulnerable:" "...found only in a restricted range (even if abundant at some locations)" (boldface mine). This essentially leaves every square foot of America vulnerable to destruction of property rights, if the environmentalists choose to fix their attention on it.

In other words, that's not just a squirrel out there. That's a "Brosz's Back Yard Squirrel!" Oh, God, the neighbor's cat! An ecological disaster in front of my very eyes!