Save the Prostrate Milkweed!

This week the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the prostrate milkweed, a rare flowering plant native to south Texas and northeastern Mexico, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. At the same time the USFWS wants 691 acres in two Texas counties listed as “critical habitat.”

There are only 24 populations of the rare plant remaining in Starr and Zapata counties in Texas and in Tamaulipas and eastern Nuevo León in Mexico. According to the Center for Biodiversity, “nineteen of those populations are rated in low condition…indicating acute imperilment.”

This species of milkweed is a low lying flowering plant frequented by large flying insects like the tarantula hawk (a wasp). “Prostrate milkweed’s flowers attract and support native pollinators, especially large bees and wasps, and it is a host plant for monarch butterflies,” says Chris Best, state botanist for USFWS in Texas.

The milkweed’s habitat is threatened by, as usual, human encroachment: “energy development, road and utility construction, and right-of-way maintenance; habitat loss from border security and enforcement activities,” according to USFWS. On top of that, an invasive species, buffelgrass, is squeezing out the milkweed on its own turf.

The USFWS proposal launches a 60-day public comment period, after which the Service is required to make a final listing and critical habitat decision within a year.

Watch the tarantula hawk go to town on milkweed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0MchsUxHVA.

Photo credit: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center