Protect the Venus Flytrap - Endangered Species Petition

Protect the Venus Flytrap - Endangered Species Petition

Despite being widely known, highly popular, and widely cultivated in captivity, wild populations of the Venus flytrap are geographically highly restricted and have declined steeply in extent and numbers in response to illegal poaching, development pressures, and the loss of habitats experiencing suitable fire regimes. Given these declines and many direct and indirect threats to this species' persistence, we petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list this species as Endangered under the Endangered Species Act. To support this petition, we emphasize that:

➢ The Venus flytrap is a highly localized plant with a specialized and taxonomically distinct evolutionary history.
➢ The Venus flytrap has lost >95% of its original total abundance by losing many of its populations and having many others decline in size and viability. This has shrunk its range, isolated populations, leaving only 42 populations >500 individuals and 9 fully viable. Few of these most critical populations are adequately protected.
➢ Although the Venus flytrap has been listed as "Vulnerable" (IUCN), a "Species of Concern", etc., these designations do not provide protection under the Endangered Species Act and have failed to protect this species from continuing declines in population number, extent, and viability since the USFWS considered this species for listing in 1993. Existing regulatory mechanisms have failed to protect this species and the habitats it depends on.
➢ The Flytrap's unique adaptation – aerial snap traps – have made it a widely celebrated carnivorous plant. This has added to the threats it faces by making it vulnerable to poaching and overexploitation. Without a program to certify seedlings as coming from legitimate sources and regulations on trading this species, economic pressures to poach wild populations continue. Listing the Venus flytrap as federally Endangered or Threatened would enhance efforts to restrict this illegal poaching and trade in illegally collected Venus flytraps.
➢ The Venus Flytrap is losing habitats and habitat conditions critical to sustaining its populations. Rapid economic development, shifts in hydric and fire regimes, and insufficient active management of its habitats all threaten to reduce or eliminate remaining populations. Listing the Venus flytrap as federally Endangered would protect remaining extant populations from development and ensure suitable active management to sustain their viability. Actively managing remaining habitats and working to protect and restore additional unoccupied habitats would protect both the flytrap and other rare species that depend on these habitat conditions.
➢ Climate change and rising sea levels further threaten Venus Flytrap populations by modifying or removing otherwise suitable coastal plain savanna habitats particularly in low-lying areas. Populations may also be vulnerable to genetic threats that have not yet been assessed.
➢ Listing the Venus Flytrap as Endangered would strengthen efforts by scientific and conservation organizations and many individuals to conserve Venus flytrap populations.

Because of the perilous status of the plant’s populations and the drastic decline in recent years, we ask the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service protect the Venus flytrap on an emergency basis while undertaking its status review. It deserves our protection