Dozens of species — ranging from moths to orchids — may soon be added to Massachusetts’ endangered species list.
The Massachusetts Endangered Species Act, enacted in 1990, complements the federal one by protecting species at risk of being lost from the region.
State wildlife officials review the list about every four years to remove species that have either sufficiently recovered or disappeared, and add species that face growing threats. In several cases this year, the proposed additions recognize something extraordinary: the discovery of species that were thought to have disappeared from the state decades ago.
The proposed changes will likely be finalized in the next month, beginning a public comment period. Species on the list are placed in one of three categories: special concern, threatened, or endangered.
Being added to the state list brings extra protections: It is illegal to kill or take a listed species, and it adds additional reviews to developments that might encroach on natural habitats where listed species might live. Species on the endangered list are considered a top priority for grant-funded conservation efforts by the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, including land protection, habitat management, population management and field research.
Here are some of the species under consideration:
Golden borer moth
Proposed status: endangered
The golden borer moth hadn’t been seen in Massachusetts since 1983. Then, in 2014, a retired landscape contractor unexpectedly spotted one.
Brian Klassanos had taken up photographing the moths living in his backyard in Central Massachusetts. A few months into his new hobby, he recognized something in his photographs from a book he had on rare moths: the golden borer.
"My wife had to peel me off the ceiling, let me put it that way," Klassanos remembered. "I was pretty excited."
So far, the golden borer moth has only been found on Klassanos' property and adjacent ones.
“It's not a drab brown like you would expect most moths to look like," Klassanos said. "It's bright yellow. It has some reddish-brown mottling on it. … It's only maybe three quarters of an inch wingspan, but it's distinctive enough where, when you see one, you know what it is.”
The golden borer moth lays its eggs exclusively on a grass known as bottlebrush, and the caterpillars that hatch bore into that grass.
“It's possible that this species is hiding in one or two other places in the state," said Mike Nelson of the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program. "But it's also possible it's not, because it has relatively specific habitat and caterpillar host-plant requirements. And it always has been very rare.”
That’s why it’s being proposed for addition to the state’s endangered species list in the most dire category of “endangered.”
“We still have it,” Nelson said. “That means we can hopefully hang on to it, do things to conserve it, enable its persistence in the state.”
Macropis cuckoo bee and Parnassia miner bee
Proposed status: threatened
Like the golden borer moth, the proposals to add the macropis cuckoo bee and the Parnassia miner bee both come as the result of research by a dedicated citizen scientist. Michael Veit, a retired biology teacher from Pepperell with a master’s degree in entomology is responsible for both proposals.
The macropis cuckoo bee hadn’t been seen in Massachusetts since 1927. It’s a species as odd as it is rare. The bee gets its name from the cuckoo bird, because like the bird, the bee lays its eggs in the nest of another species (the macropis bee).
“It wasn't by chance that I found it," Veit said. "I was looking really hard for it and had been for years. So, when I finally found it in 2018, it was an incredible feeling.”
The macropis cuckoo bee was actually thought to be extinct until 2002 when it was rediscovered in Nova Scotia. It was then found in Connecticut in 2006, and Veit was part of a group that found it in Maine in 2016 and New Hampshire in 2017. Then in 2018 — more than 90 years since it was last seen in Massachusetts — Veit netted one in the town of Lancaster.
Since then, Veit has identified the macropis cuckoo bee in seven other locations around the state. Veit said he’s hopeful adding the bee to the state’s endangered list will help protect the species.
“It will help dictate how the habitat on state lands is managed, so that it will help to promote the bee and the host plant of the host bee,” Veit explained. He added that the best way to support the bee is to have large amounts of yellow loosestrife, the plant the macropis bee gets pollen from.
Veit is also responsible for proposing the Parnassia miner bee for consideration this year. This species only collects pollen from a kind of rare wetland plant called grass of Parnassus. The bee was not known to exist in the state, but Veit worked with biologists to track down locations where grass of Parnassus was growing and they found the bee in eight of those sites in Western Massachusetts.
These aren't Veit's first proposals of species for inclusion on the endangered list. Three other bee species that are already on the list are the result of his research.
Acadian hairstreak butterfly
Proposed status: threatened
For some amateur butterfly enthusiasts, the decline in the Acadian hairstreak has been alarming.
“About 15 years ago, I would say, the Acadian hairstreak was probably found in about 40 different towns,” said Garry Kessler, a retired computer scientist and member of the Massachusetts Butterfly Club.
Then the butterfly started becoming much less common. Kessler organized a group of about a dozen fellow enthusiasts who recorded every Acadian hairstreak they saw over the last several years, and compared those results to the historical data kept by the Massachusetts Butterfly Club over the previous 30 years.
“We now know of the butterfly in exactly two locations in Massachusetts, at opposite ends of the state,” Kessler said.
The species was found on private conservation land in the Berkshires and at the Joint Base Cape Cod military installation.
“I happen to be particularly fond of the group of butterflies that this butterfly belongs to, which is the hairstreaks, and they have some very interesting behaviors,” Kessler said. “They're not necessarily the flashiest butterflies, but they are kind of pretty. This particular one has a row of black dots on its hind wing. So it's not even necessarily colorful. It's sort of gray and black, but it's kind of elegant looking.”
It's not known why the species has declined so dramatically in the state, Kessler said.
“There are a lot of different factors that we can kind of point to that are involved,” he said. “I would say that they all point back to human activity.”
Acadian hairstreak populations appear to be doing better in northern New England and Canada, Kessler said, suggesting that climate change may be a contributing factor.
Human activity and disruption around willow plants, which host the butterfly, are also likely factors.
“If that area isn't managed in a way that is acceptable to the butterfly, you can destroy that population,” Kessler said. “One location was under a power line, and the power company decided that they needed to upgrade their service by putting in additional lines. So there was major construction in that area. And within three years of that construction project, the butterfly disappeared.”
Silver-haired bat, Eastern red bat and hoary bat
Proposed status: special concern
These three species of tree bats have all been rare in Massachusetts for decades. They haven't been previously added to the list largely because they hadn’t been well studied, said Mike Nelson of the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program.
For these tree bat species, Nelson said, one significant threat might be the decline in the abundance of insects.
“It's something that has been documented all over the globe and is feared to be a general thing,” Nelson said. “A general decline in abundance of insect prey is thought to be a major factor in not only the ... continued decline of tree bats like these three in Massachusetts, and indeed, throughout most or all of their range.”
These tree bats are not susceptible to the “white nose syndrome” fungal disease that have decimated other bat species, Nelson said, because tree bats are solitary animals that don’t overwinter communally in caves or other roosting areas where the fungus is passed around.
American horseshoe crab
Proposed status: special concern
These prehistoric-looking creatures, also known as Atlantic horseshoe crabs, aren’t as rare as some of the other species being proposed for the list, but they’re less common than they used to be and they're regularly harvested.
“We wanted horseshoe crabs to be state listed to bring another level of oversight into their management,” said Sharl Heller president and co-founder of the Southeastern Massachusetts Pine Barrens Alliance, which introduced the proposal.
Horseshoe crabs’ habitat has been diminished by development, said Frank Mann, vice president of the alliance. They’re also used as bait for the whelk fishery and their blood is harvested for use in biomedical laboratories.
State wildlife officials have not previously supported adding horseshoe crabs to the endangered species list, arguing in part that there’s insufficient data on how population numbers have declined.
Heller said that lack of data is part of what they want to address with the species being listed.
“We’re hoping to have scientific studies done that would answer some of the questions,” said Heller. “We’re hoping that there would be more money for restoration of historic spawning and nursery areas. We're hoping that might put pressure on the Division of Marine Fisheries to end the bait take.”
The state Division of Marine Fisheries has proposed new regulations that would ban the harvest of horseshoe crabs during their breeding season. That's one reason Mike Nelson of the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species program doesn't support adding them to the state's endangered species list.
“If we were to list it ourselves, I don't have a direct answer to ‘What would that do?’” Nelson said. “I suppose in theory, it would mean that our agency is saying to another state agency, the Division of Marine Fisheries, that, ‘Yes, we think this species should be regulated more restrictively.’ But we're already saying that.”
Nelson added that some would argue horseshoe crabs aren't rare enough to be on the list.
“I mean, one can still go find fair numbers of them in Massachusetts in various places where they're still doing relatively well," he said. "But that being said, both in Massachusetts and range-wide, the Atlantic horseshoe crab is a species of conservation concern. There are lots of species, like the horseshoe crab, that are of conservation concern that aren't necessarily yet, and hopefully we won't reach the point where we need to list them under the Massachusetts Endangered Species Act.”
Orchids, grasses and other plants
Proposed status: special concern, threatened and endangered
The largest group of species being proposed to the endangered list this year are plants, but Nelson said that’s not because of a sudden surge in threats to the state’s plant life. The last time the state made changes to the list was 2020. Assessing the prevalence of plant species in the state is a huge undertaking.
“We were a little bit behind with the plants, and some of these plants simply got, for lack of a better term, delayed,” he said. “We just didn't get around to fully assessing their status and ... there was just a backlog of plants that needed a full assessment, which involves talking to lots of people, gathering data, at times field work over the past four years. And so we sort of got that sorted.”
Six of the plants proposed for the list are orchids. Among the most common threats to the orchids, and to many of the other species on the list, Nelson said, is grazing from overabundant deer.
“Having an overabundance of deer browsing all sorts of plants sort of indiscriminately, unfortunately, tends to result in impacts to populations of rare plants,” Nelson said. “There is some evidence that various species of orchids are … tasty, apparently.”
The frog orchid and Hooker's orchid are listed as endangered, while showy orchid, Loesel's wide-lipped orchid, large-leaved orchid and round-leaved orchid are proposed for addition to the list as threatened.
Other plants proposed for listing as endangered include the incredibly rare split-leaved hawthorn, which only occurs in one place globally: Martha’s Vineyard.
“Hawthorns are particularly susceptible to cedar-apple rust, and other similar rusts,” state botanist Bob Wernerehl said in an email. “These occur commonly and have greater duration when there's more humidity in the air, especially overnight. This type of weather has been increasing in the past 40 years due to climate change.”
Willdenow’s sedge, which is proposed in the endangered category, is threatened by shade that it didn't used to experience, Wernerehl explained.
“The species thrives in forests where plenty of light comes through the canopy, a forest type that was common during a previous era when fire was more common in the landscape,” Wernerehl said. It’s also threatened by deer and invasive plant species.
There are also proposals to list these plants as endangered: velvet rosette grass, which is at the northern end of its range in Massachusetts; winged loosestrife, which is rare in part because farms no longer create the ideal habitat by burning hay fields in the spring; and slender clubmoss, which grows in bogs but is crowded out by a more aggressive common reed.
Bog sedge and slender bladderwort are proposed as additions to the list of threatened species.
Pine Barrens flatsedge and wild lupine could be added as species of special concern. The proposed changes include moving Appalachian bristle-fern from endangered to special concern because more populations of the species have been found in the state.
The one species being proposed for removal from the list is Ogden's pondweed, but it’s more of a technicality than a miraculous recovery.
“Nowadays we have all sorts of new DNA tools that we didn't used to have,” Nelson said. “So when it comes to Ogden's pondweed, that's a good example of a species that, based on just its physical characteristics, used to be thought, biologically, to be a separate species from close relatives. But more recent evidence, including DNA evidence, has shown that it is not.”
