Freshwater mussels surviving in eastern Maine are the focus of a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
The Center for Biological Diversity argues that the government has to give Brook Floater mussels protection under the Endangered Species Act.
"Freshwater mollusks are the most endangered group of organisms in North America, because they have to have high water quality," said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity.
Some of the last healthy populations of Brook Floaters are in the Penobscot River basin and river systems in Downeast Maine according to the state department of inland fisheries and wildlife.
The mussels range from Atlantic Canada to Georgia, but have been hurt by water pollution, dams and development, according to the center. Brook Floater populations have shrunk to just a few scattered streams and disappeared entirely from Rhode Island, Delaware, and the District of Columbia, according to the center.
"They’re in a lot of trouble, range-wide only 15 percent of Brook Floater populations are in good condition and the vast majority of those are in Maine," Curry said.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. alleges that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wrongly denied endangered species protections for the mussels in 2019, during Trump's first term.
