Today’s column, I’m happy to say, involves good news about the environment. It’s not huge news, admittedly, and it’s not quite as exciting as I thought it was going to be, but in today’s world, I’ll take anything I can get.
The story concerns a wetlands plant called the northeastern bulrush that was listed as endangered in 1991 but doesn’t seem to be in danger anymore. Fourteen populations have been found in New Hampshire, mostly in the state’s southwest corner, and scores more are in other states. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to remove it from their list of endangered plants.
The northeastern bulrush (there are a number of different bulrushes) is a grass-like plant that isn’t exactly thrilling. Not to me, anyway.
“Quite a few people might disagree that the species is not exciting,” said David Simmons, supervisory fish and wildlife biologist at the New England field office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is proposing to remove the northeastern bulrush from the list of endangered plants. “It has an interesting life history that it uses to compensate for its narrow habitat needs.”
The northeastern bulrush can spread via roots that send up shoots but also reproduce sexually through flowers, pollination and seeds. This sort of double-barrelled approach is used by many invasive plants, so it’s nice to see it used by a native.
The coolest thing about the northeastern bulrush is that it can go dormant underground for years, waiting for the right conditions before it sprouts again. I like to imagine it dozing away, getting half-awake occasionally to test the soil moisture, saying “nope, not yet,” and going back to sleep.
Such dormancy is a big reason why the bulrush was thought to be endangered: It’s hard to find. “You can look for the plant in the right spot but if it’s dormant, you won’t know it’s there,” said Simmons.
The bulrush seemed a likely candidate for getting into trouble because, Simmons said, it is “picky about its water. It doesn’t like too much for too long but also doesn’t like drought.” It favors vernal pools and beaver ponds, two types of wetlands that aren’t dependable for long-term survival. A shortage of actual sightings – there were none in New Hampshire – made it reasonable to think that it was endangered.
Once a plant, animal or bug is listed as federally endangered, it draws more money and attention. Years of plant census work and some mitigation efforts, such as thinning trees near wetlands to let more light in, led to new findings of bulrush populations and the likely de-listing.
That’s why the news isn’t quite as exciting as I’d hoped. Other species have been brought back from the brink through major changes like banning DDT or preserving large chunks of land but most, if not all, of the current populations of bulrush were probably there all along. The change is that we’ve found them.
The northeastern bulrush story would be more exciting if the endangered listing had forced sweeping changes in land usage or done something like blocked plans to put an oil refinery atop Mount Monadnock. But it’s important for us to know what’s out there in the natural world if we’re going to try to protect it, or at least limit the damage done by humanity’s existence.
And even non-exciting (sorry!) plants like the northeastern bulrush are important. “Just the fact that a species exists is enough to value it and give it attention, even if we don’t understand exactly what its role is in an ecosystem,” said Simmons. And there are knock-on effects: “The work that has been done to protect and manage wetlands has helped other plants.”
Simmons noted that one of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s main functions is to try to recover species listed as endangered or threatened. And despite some successes like this one, “We’re adding more to the list than taking them off.
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