$100 Million to Save Mouse That Doesn't Even Exist

Land owners and government officials have spent $100-million dealing with an endangered mouse that doesn't even really exist.

After six years of regulations and restrictions that have cost builders, local governments and landowners on the western fringe of the Great Plains as much as $100 million by some estimates, new research suggests the Preble's mouse in fact never existed. It instead seems to be genetically identical to one of its cousins, the Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse, which is considered common enough not to need protection.

The new research could lead to loss of the Preble's "threatened" status and removal from Endangered Species Act protection. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to decide that question in December.

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