Why, oh why did Babbitt swallow the fly?

by Leeona Klippstein

"Do you think some endangered species could be cloned?" asked US Representative George Brown. "We have a problem with an endangered fly in my district of California." It was the most ridiculous question posed during congressional hearings on cloning ethics to Ian Wilmut, the geneticist who cloned the world-renowned ewe, Dolly.

Considered an ally by the conservation community, Representative Brown's line of questioning revealed a common wise-use sentiment. Portrayed as a common house fly by some anti-environmentalists, the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly is a unique, inch-long insect that looks like a hybrid of a dragon-fly, wasp and hummingbird.

If Congressman George Brown really understood the "problem" faced by the endangered fly, he would have asked, "Can we clone an ecosystem?" The Delhi Sands flower-loving fly is endemic to the Colton Dune System in northwestern Riverside and southwestern San Bernardino Counties in southern California. The once 40-square miles of Delhi Sands habitat has been reduced to a mere 49 acres.

When the fly was listed as endangered in September of 1993, the US Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that 97 percent of the Delhi Sands ecosystem had been destroyed and converted to agricultural, residential or commercial urban uses, including sand and gravel mining operations. Recreational activities, such as off-road vehicle use, caused further stress on the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly population, which deposits eggs and establishes larval growth beneath delicate layers of crusting fine sands.

The flower-loving fly is a strong, fast flyer and is capable of stationary hovering flight. It has a long tubular proboscis that may be used, as with butterflies, for extracting nectar from flowers. A rather large insect with an orange-brown elongated body, the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly has a freckled abdomen. The adult female is able to elongate and wave the lower portion of her body in a mating ritual while perched upon various plants of the Delhi Sands community. Her spine is stronger than the males' and enables her to bore through the crust of fine sands to deposit eggs.

Recent taxonomic studies of federally endangered species indicate that it belongs in the midas flying family (Mydidae) rather than the flower-loving fly family (Apioceridaue). Regardless of how this species is categorized, it is quite simply a miraculous winged creature on the brink of extinction.

As of fall of 1995, there were only six known sites on 45 acres of relatively pristine habitat inhabited by the fly. With an estimated 120-300 individual breeding adults, the distribution of the flower-loving fly has been restricted to less than two percent of its former range. Regardless, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) field supervisor of the Carlsbad, California office have continued to issue incidental take permits through Habitat Conservation Plans, licensing corporations to kill species for private-profit activities.

Between the time of listing in 1993 and the date that the draft recovery plan was published in 1996, Dr. Rudy Mattoni, an entomologist at UCLA, found that two of the six known sites were no longer extant. In the draft recovery plan, it was also assumed that two other sites may support the Delhi fly, but they have not been surveyed to support that conclusion. The USFWS recovery plan only identified three recovery units and did not protect habitat areas zoned for residential and commercial development or areas permanently altered by human actions.

The USFWS estimates that it would cost $1,596,000 to implement the recovery plan. These costs do not include land acquisition and operational costs for management of lands.

Few conservation organizations have come forward to defend the Delhi Sands ecosystem of the flower-loving fly for many reasons. Since the proposed listing of the species, the wise-use movement has adopted it as the poster child of what is wrong with the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

There has been little to no support from the public to protect the species because the media has been completely unsympathetic. Industry groups have strategically used the flower-loving fly to successfully persuade Congress that the ESA has gone too far. Obviously industry groups and their National Endangered Species Reform Coalition sought out the most "uncharismatic" species to launch their ESA attack.

Unfortunately for the flower-loving fly, the county of San Bernardino wants to build a new medical center adjacent to one of the six remaining habitat sites. The medical center itself would not "take" (kill) any of the flies, but the proposed parking lot would. When the USFWS requested that the County redesign the parking lot to avoid and minimize the take, all hell broke loose.

The local wise-use group Inland Action Inc., "a non-profit, non-political corporation of public spirited citizens who are banded together to aid in the economic development of the Inland Empire," hired scientists to assist in the defamation of the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly's importance on Earth. In 1994, scientist Stephen T. Lilburn, who is also the environmental co-chairman of Inland Action Inc., prepared a report and comparative analysis of conservation costs per fly versus inpatient and outpatient costs. "Based on the amount of money spent for mitigation, our county could have treated 494 inpatients or 23,644 outpatients." But, property values had been speculated by developers in the area to the point that the per-acre price was based on an approved development, as if the medical center had already been built.

In addition, Steve Lilburn and other consultants on the project charged such high fees when the medical center parking lot had be modified to mitigate impacts that it cost over three million dollars to conserve eight Delhi Sands flower-loving flies.

In the end, the eight endangered flower-loving flies did not become millionaires, but they did create jobs for and put money in the pockets of ungrateful Private Interest Groups (PIGS) that have squashed the truth and the flower-loving fly.

Broadcaster Tom Brockaw, NBC and network-owner General Electric assisted the wise-use movement by spreading Lilburn's misinformation on the evening news and succeeded in bringing Secretary Babbitt to his knees. That newscast, coupled with the previous misinformation about the Stephen's kangaroo-rat and wildfires in Riverside County, led Secretary Babbitt and the USFWS to back off in enforcing the ESA.

The Clinton administration apparently did not want to risk anymore bad publicity and succumbed to the will of the anti-ESA industry terrorists-revealing, in the end, that even the male flower-loving fly has more of a backbone than Babbitt or Clinton.

As for the endangered Delhi Sands flower-loving fly, the future looks bleak. And the ramifications extend to all species and ecosystems, as the fight for the fly is also the fight to stop the ESA from being chipped away. The saga and fate of the fly calls out from the moral, spiritual, ecological and evolutionary center of Creation: "Who's next?"