The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the federal government on Tuesday, April 29, on behalf of a plant native to the Pacific Northwest that currently survives exclusively in the Willamette Valley in Oregon and in Lewis County.
The petition asks the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife to protect the thin-leaved peavine under the Endangered Species Act. The plant thrives in a very specific environment on the edge of forests where it receives particle sunlight and can climb shrubs and other small plants.
Environments that meet those characteristics, such as regional prairies or what the center calls oak savannas, are shrinking, often being lost to agricultural expansion or urban sprawl.
“These plants are ambassadors of some of the rarest ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest and thrive in harmony with other native species,” Gwendolyn McManus, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said. “Protecting them will help us ensure we’re conserving the endemic plants, native pollinators and wild spaces of the Willamette Valley.”
According to a news release from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Federal Bureau of Land Management and other organizations such as the Institute for Applied Ecology, have attempted to grow the plants in captivity, but nearly all of the new populations of the plants have failed.
The plants can often be found on roadsides or in fence rows, but they face major challenges to survival in these environments where they can be mowed, sprayed as a weed, damaged by vehicles or simply forced out by more aggressive invasive plants such as the Himalayan blackberry or Scotch broom.
The plants are also threatened by their own meek population sizes, with many groups numbering fewer than 10, and the decline of pollinator populations such as bees all over the region.
According to the petition, the state of Washington was home to two population groups of the thin-leaved peavine as recently as 2018; however, one of those groups was first weakened by pesticides and competition with the invasive Scotch broom plant before being wiped out by a farming expansion. Less than 30 of the plants now survive in the state.
“It’s past time for the federal government to recognize that these delicate flowers need strong Endangered Species Act protections for their dwindling populations,” McManus said. “The government has known for more than a decade that thin-leaved peavine numbers are declining. We can’t allow these stunning plants to be wiped out from all of their original habitat.”
The thin-leaved peavine is already included on Washington state’s Vascular Plant Species of Conservation Concern List, but protection by the federal government under the Endangered Species Act would help protect the plant when it grows on public land.
For example, new projects such as road grading or powerline installations could be required to take more steps to preserve the native plant wherever and whenever they run into it.
“It's really important to emphasize how every plant needs to be treated as an important and integral art of the ecosystem,” McManus said. “I think it's really easy to, when you're looking at plants and this species, to get caught up and be like it's only one species. What does it matter?”
