New Mexico's Jumping Mouse Now an Endangered Species

New Mexico's meadow jumping mouse as of Tuesday is officially on the endangered species list, and conservationists are urging government agencies to do more to protect the rare animal.

As ordered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), New Mexico's meadow jumping mouse - also found along riverbanks in Colorado and Arizona - is now protected under the Endangered Species Act. The agency says the mouse is at "elevated risk of extinction" due to cattle grazing, wildfires, water management and drought, Cronkite News reported.

The FWS has yet to designate a critical habitat to protect the mouse, but said doing so would be "prudent." Last year, FWS officials proposed elevating the mouse's status to endangered, and began studying more than 14,000 acres of land along the banks of streams and rivers in its three home states to find suitable critical habitat. About 6,000 of the acres examined were in the White Mountains of Arizona's Greenlee and Apache counties.

It seems the only unhappy parties as a result of this move are cattle ranchers, who claim fencing off thousands of acres of grazing land for a single species will force them to abandon their livestock.

"Once again, the US Fish and Wildlife Service chose to cater to big-city radical special interests instead of protecting our jobs, and ignored the fact that conservation and economic growth are not mutually exclusive," Congressman Steve Pearce said in a statement. "FWS failed to recognize that its own policies - which have stopped timber harvesting and forest thinning - are to blame for the raging wildfires that threaten the mouse."

Conservationists argue that letting the poor critter go extinct would be a huge mistake, and will disrupt the overall food chain.

"Mice are part of the food chain across the entire ecosystem," Jay Lininger, senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, explained in a news release. "They're a highly sought-after food source for a variety of snakes, foxes, and birds like redtail hawks. The entire food chain suffers if the jumping mouse blinks out."

Linger also added that the meadow jumping mouse and ranchers can live in harmony, because they can easily pipe water from the mouse's riverbank environment to outside the critical habitat where the cattle can water.

To further complicate the issue, the mouse - which currently occupies only 12 acres of land - has "exceptionally specialized" habitat requirements, Linger says. Nourishment is critical to the mouse, feeding off of insects and seeds in riparian environments, given that it hibernates eight to nine months out of the year, according to Cronkite News.

Coupled with its long hibernation period, short three-year lifespan and threats from drought and wildfires, it's clear that this mouse needs all the help it can get.