Can Endangered Species Act help Joshua trees?

Quick quiz: What do Joshua trees and polar bears have in common?

The answer: They’re both threatened by climate change. And at least one environmental group thinks both should receive federal protection as rising temperatures make their habitats increasingly uninhabitable.

WildEarth Guardians, an advocacy group based in New Mexico, petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday to list Joshua trees as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. That’s one step down from “endangered.” The agency now has 90 days to respond, either by rejecting the petition or agreeing to study the issue.

“Climate change is going to make it a lot harder to be a Joshua tree,” said Taylor Jones, an endangered species advocate for WildEarth Guardians.

Only one species has received Endangered Species Act protection primarily due to climate change: polar bears, which federal officials listed as threatened in 2008, citing melting sea ice. But it’s possible climate-related protection will become more common in the coming decades. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature reported last year that 1,400 endangered species are threatened by climate change.

Species in extreme environments like deserts and the Arctic are particularly vulnerable, said Zak Smith, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Marine Mammal Protection Project.

“There are plants and animals that have done a very good job of adapting to those extreme environments, but they’ve done so in a way that doesn’t leave a lot of room for maneuver when the environment changes,” Smith said.

Smith has an especially good reason to care about Joshua trees, which are formally known as Yucca brevifolia. He grew up in Yucca Valley, just north of Joshua Tree National Park, and his uncle’s grandfather was rancher Bill Keys, namesake for the park’s iconic “Keys View” overlook. Smith remembers spending time in the park as a kid.

“I knew about Joshua trees. We would hit them with sticks, practice our nerd swordplay on them and other cacti,” he said. “That was before I was aware of the looming threat, and before a lot of people really understood the challenges faced by a lot of plants and animals in the Southwest.”

For Joshua trees, that challenge is immense. Yucca brevifolia is already dying out in parts of the national park as temperatures rise, and researchers have found that it could lose 90 percent of its current habitat in the park by century’s end.

Some plants and animals would be able to adapt to those kinds of changes, but Joshua trees aren’t among them: They will almost certainly move too slowly to escape the heat.

“They take a long time to migrate. The trees don’t disperse very far, even under the best of circumstances,” Jones said. “It’s very difficult for the next generation of Joshua trees to be established.”

Before petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, WildEarth Guardians consulted with Cameron Barrows, a UC Riverside ecologist who has studied Yucca brevifolia’s decline. Barrows said he advised the group to petition for “threatened” rather than “endangered” status, because the species isn’t at risk of extinction within the next century.

Still, Barrows is skeptical an Endangered Species Act listing would help Joshua trees cope with climate change. The threat to Yucca brevifolia, he noted, is a global problem requiring a global response.

“I don’t know whether on a global scale or even a national scale, it’s dramatically affected our climate policy,” Barrows said, referring to polar bears being listed as threatened. “Our climate policy is getting better all the time, but I don’t know if polar bears have anything to do with it.”

Jones and Smith said federal protection under the Endangered Species Act could lead to short-term benefits for Yucca brevifolia, possibly including new habitat conservation and more rigorous environmental analyses of projects that could harm Joshua trees. Jones also hopes that if enough species are listed as threatened or endangered for climate-related reasons, the federal government will be compelled to take stronger action to curb human-caused global warming.

Sammy Roth writes about energy and water for The Desert Sun. He can be reached at sammy.roth@desertsun.com, (760) 778-4622 and @Sammy_Roth.