A new paper in the latest edition of the scientific journal of the American Ornithologist Union questions the validity of research behind the latest effort to remove the Coastal California Gnatcatcher from the Endangered Species List. Based on research that argues that the Coastal California Gnatcatcher is not a valid subspecies, a group of Southern California developers filed a delisting petition to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service suggesting that the species is plentiful in Baja, Mexico. Audubon California immediately joined a number of other conservation groups and scientists in asserting that the new study wasn't nearly enough to overturn a hundred years of research on the species, and called for the Service to reject the petition.

The new paper, authored by John E. McCormack and James M. Maley, challenges the validity of the earlier study, arguing that the "genetic markers they chose were not well suited to the question of distinctness and how they overinterpreted negative results in their genetic and ecological analyses." Further, the authors of the new paper found that a new analysis of the genetic data actually "shows significant differentiation in the Coastal California Gnatcatchers."

Tell the USFWS to reject this latest effort to delist the Coastal California Gnatcatcher.

(photo by Dinuk Magammana)