Local insect candidate for federal protection
Group seeking shield for Mojave poppy bee
A national environmental group is demanding a swarm of protections for a native desert bee now found only in Clark County.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition last week asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to add the Mojave poppy bee to the endangered species list.
The Tucson, Arizona-based group says the quarter-inch-long, yellowand-black bee has disappeared from about 80 percent of its known range since scientists first described the insect 25 years ago.
It was once found at 34 locations in four Western states. It is only seen today at seven sites within Lake Mead National Recreation Area and on neighboring public land in Clark County, where its fate is tied to the survival of the rare and protected Las Vegas bear-poppy.
Before it disappeared from Utah, the bee was also known to pollinate the federally endangered dwarf bear-poppy, which is found only around St. George.
Under pressure
Tara Cornelisse, an entomologist and senior scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the bees and plants are under ongoing threat from livestock grazing, off-road vehicle use, gypsum mining and other development in their shared habitat.
The bees depend on the poppies
and vice versa, she said.
“We find this cycle where one of them declines and the other declines,” Cornelisse said. “If we don’t act quickly, we’re going to lose this beautiful little native bee as we watch two of the Mojave’s irreplaceable desert flowers continue to decline.”
It’s unclear what a federal listing for the bee might mean for public land use in Clark County. The Las Vegas bear-poppy is already listed as an endangered species at the state level, but Cornelisse said protections for the insect could lead to increased limits on development in areas where the plant is found.
Clark County Commissioner Larry Brown said county officials are taking a wait-and-see approach to the proposed listing.
BEES
have flashing lights, police said.
The family was taken to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, about a mile north of the scene, where the boy died. It was the 114th traffic fatality investigated this year by the Metropolitan Police Department.
The 25-year-old mother was critically injured, while the 2-year-old was seriously injured and the 3-yearold suffered minor injuries, police said. Abdulwahab’s sisters were expected to survive.
There was no change in the unidentified mother’s condition as of Tuesday, said Metro spokesman Aden Ocampogomez.
As police investigated Monday night, grocery bags and strollers were strewn across the curb on the south side of Katie. A baby bottle stood upright on the curb across the street. By daylight, the bottle and neon-colored markings painted along the road by investigators were the only remaining signs of the hourslong investigation.
In bright-pink paint, the markings indicated where one of the family’s strollers had landed on a sidewalk next to a shoe. The stroller’s scuff marks stretched roughly 4 feet, the police markings showed.
About 10 feet away on the same sidewalk, orange paint marked where another stroller had come to a stop after the crash. In the middle of the road, also in pink and orange paint, marks showed where two victims landed.
Just after 11 a.m., a woman with two balloons — one shaped like a cross and the other a red heart — crossed Katie in the same crosswalk the family was using and placed them on the sidewalk near the upright baby bottle.
The woman, who identified herself only as a nearby resident, said she had just learned of the crash from her neighbors and decided to leave something at the scene in memory of the boy.
Police said that Frias was not suspected of impairment and stayed at the scene, cooperating with detectives. As of Tuesday afternoon, he was not facing charges, but Ocampogomez noted that the collision was still under investigation.
In May, Metro investigated another crash involving a woman and three kids less than a half-mile north of Monday night’s scene. Heavenly James, a 26-year-old
Las Vegas woman, was pushing a stroller carrying an infant while walking with two children when a sedan struck the four pedestrians as they crossed Maryland at Dumont Boulevard in a marked crosswalk.
Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter. Contact Max Michor at mmichor@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0365. Follow @Maxmichor on Twitter.