By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI

Capital Press

The Stephens' kangaroo rat will keep its status as a protected endangered species, to the consternation of farmers in California's Riverside County.

The Riverside County Farm Bureau has been trying for about 15 years to convince the federal government that the rodent doesn't belong on the list of threatened and endangered species.

Damien Schiff, an attorney for the organization, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has underestimated the rat's population and overestimated the quality of habitat needed for its survival.

"What the service believes is marginal or unusable habitat we think is in fact usable," he said.

The group's arguments have failed to persuade the federal agency, which on Aug. 19 announced that removing the rat from the list would be unwarranted.

Schiff said the bureau is contemplating further legal action against the agency, such as claiming the decision was arbitrary and capricious in violation of federal law.

Since the rodent was listed as endangered in 1988, farmers and others in southern California have faced increased costs of doing business, he said.

Farmers cannot perform agricultural activities that might hurt the rat without obtaining an "incidental take permit" from the federal government.

Such permits must be accompanied by "habitat conservation plans" that aim to mitigate harm to the endangered species.

"These costs would not exist if the rat were not listed," said Schiff. "The permits that are available are not cheap and they're not easy to get."

Specific costs are determined by property size and the type of activity, but they typically run in the thousands of dollars, he said.

The Riverside County Farm Bureau initially petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to delist the rat in 1995, but the agency did not make a decision in the matter.

That inaction prompted the group to file a legal complaint in 2009, ultimately leading to a consent decree in which the agency agreed to release a decision this summer.

According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the rodent has a known range of about 55,000 acres in Riverside and San Diego counties, with 15 populations identified in that area.

The species' habitat has been reduced from more than 300,000 acres, mostly due to agricultural and urban development in the past century, according to the agency.

Without the benefit of endangered species status, the rat would not be sufficiently protected from such threats, which haven't been reduced in their "imminence, intensity or magnitude," the agency said.