Federal Officials Say an Endangered Wetland Plant Is Recovering. Not Everyone Agrees.
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When the northeastern bulrush joined the ranks of federally endangered plants and animals in 1991, the perennial, grass-like sedge teetered on the edge of extinction with just 13 known populations scattered across six states.
More than 30 years later, that number has ballooned elevenfold: 148 plant populations have been found in Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia. Given this increase, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced this month that the northeastern bulrush has recovered and will be delisted as a federally endangered species on July 10. Yet researchers who study the plant questioned the delisting decision, noting that the northeastern bulrush faces ongoing threats from climate change, habitat loss and a lack of genetic diversity.
Complicating matters further, this tough-to-find wetland plant has a life cycle that’s not yet fully understood. “To delist it completely is premature,” said Kendra Cipollini, a plant biologist at Wilmington College and one of the leading experts on the northeastern bulrush. “I just don’t think they did enough systematic study.” Since it was first classified as endangered, state agencies and FWS partners conducted surveys for the plant—which lives around the edges of vernal pools and beaver ponds—in every state within its known range.
Identification is a challenge for the untrained eye, though it is usually easiest when the plant is in bloom, producing droopy clumps of chocolate-colored, spiky flowers. Cipollini noted that the growth in recorded populations likely reflects improved survey efforts, rather than true recovery. “It’s not a very charismatic plant, so not many people noticed it,” she said. “Once it became endangered, everybody started to look for it, and they found more populations.” According to Cipollini, the species could still be in decline even as new populations are recorded.
She said many of the sites she first studied in the 1990s “are all gone or barely hanging on,” and many sites were lost before the species began receiving federal protections. Cipollini said the endangered species listing for the northeastern bulrush made it “a good umbrella protector” for seasonal wetlands, shielding these fragile ecosystems—and the frogs and salamanders that live there—from development.
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