LAWSUIT CALLS FOR RARE PLANT TO BE PROTECTED.Byline: Staff and Wire Services SAN FRANCISCO - Environmentalists have sued the federal government over its failure to investigate whether a rare desert plant that grows at Edwards Air Force Base Edwards Air Force Base, U.S. military installation, 301,000 acres (121,805 hectares), S Calif., NE of Lancaster; est. 1933. It is one of the largest air force bases in the United States and has the world's longest runway. should be put on the endangered species list. The Center for Biological Diversity The Center for Biological Diversity combines conservation biology with litigation, policy advocacy, and an innovative strategic vision to secure a future for animals and plants hovering on the brink of extinction, for the wilderness they need to survive, and by extension for the and the California Native Plant Society The California Native Plant Society (CNPS) is a California not-for-profit organization that seeks to increase understanding of California's native flora and to preserve that flora. The CNPS was formed in 1965 in the East Bay. sued in federal court in San Francisco, alleging the Bush administration failed to respond to a citizens' petition to safeguard the desert cymopterus, a perennial herb in the carrot family, also known as desert spring parsley. The petition was filed a year ago, but the Department of Interior has yet to begin a mandatory 90-day review of the request, the groups say in their lawsuit, filed Friday in San Francisco. The groups ask the court to order the department to act. The plant has a distinctive spherical flower that looks like a dark-purple drumstick drumstick /drum·stick/ (-stik) a nuclear lobule attached by a slender strand to the nucleus of some polymorphonuclear leukocytes of normal females but not of normal males. but actually is composed of hundreds of tiny florets. The plant lives in Mojave creosote creosote (krē`əsōt), volatile, heavy, oily liquid obtained by the distillation of coal tar or wood tar. Creosote derived from beechwood tar has been used medicinally as an antiseptic and in the treatment of chronic bronchitis. bush scrub, desert saltbush saltbush a widespread forage or browse plant on extensive range in Australian arid zones. Called also atriplex spp. Strictly a maintenance feed. scrub and Joshua tree woodland where it shares the habitat with the desert tortoise and the Mojave ground squirrel. The desert cymopterus ranges from the Cuddeback Lake basin, southeast of Ridgecrest, to the Rogers and Buckhorn buck·horn n. 1. The horn of a buck. 2. The material of such a horn, used especially to make handles for knives and tools. dry lake basins on Edwards Air Force Base, according to the Desert Tortoise Preserve Committee, whose work acquiring preserves for the tortoise also saves habitat for the plant. Most of the known plants are on Edwards Air Force Base, the committee says. The plant's habitat elsewhere in the Antelope and Victor valleys has been lost to urban sprawl, off-road vehicles and livestock grazing, according to the Center for Biological Diversity and California Native Plant Society. Existing and proposed land management plans for Bureau of Land Management territory in the desert don't include protections for the plant, the groups contend. More than 14,000 desert cymopterus plants were found on Edwards in a 1995 study for the Air Force. The survey came in a year of higher-than- average rainfall and contrasted with one in 1977, the second year of a severe drought, when fewer than 100 of the plants were found. |
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