Saving beetle also helps more popular creatures

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Bug haters had a field day at the public hearing on plans to save the endangered Salt Creek Tiger Beetle.

The bashing went on for more than an hour, with no one speaking up for the little insect. By the time it was over, it seemed as though an army of locals could easily be recruited to squash the little creatures, boot step by boot step.

At issue were plans by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to designate 1,795 acres in Lancaster and Saunders counties as critical habitat for the endangered beetle.

Critics of the plan saw the effort to save the beetles as a plan to spend $88,000 per bug to save the few hundred of the Salt Creek Tiger Beetles that are still alive.

That computation is based on the federal government’s estimate that the plan to protect the beetles could have an economic cost between $18.6 million and $23.1 million over the next 20 years.

But there’s a better way to look at the plans. The endangered beetle is really just one little bug in a very big picture. The effort to save the beetle is really about saving much more than a few insects.

In announcing its decision to list the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle as endangered, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said, “The Salt Creek Tiger Beetle is considered a ‘bio-indicator’ species. Its presence signals the existence of a healthy saline wetland, and it serves as an important link in a complex food chain of the saline wetland ecosystem. A healthy saline wetland provides numerous benefits for people as well, including water purification and flood control.”

In other words, the effort to save a few hundred beetles means preserving some turf for a host of other special creatures in the natural world.

And the costs of preserving habitat are not as horrendous as a few superficial facts would indicate. Although critics talked of spending on beetles, that terminology confuses the issue. Most of the costs are assumptions that land values will decrease, rather than actual ongoing government spending. Privately funded groups such as the Nature Conservancy already have kicked in at least several hundred thousand dollars in acquiring saline wetlands for the beetles.

Those arguments could have been made at the hearing, but no one showed up to put in a word for the beetles. Representatives of a couple of local nature groups said they missed the notice of the public hearing.

It’s no surprise, really. It’s tough to rally around a bug. The Salt Creek Tiger Beetle will never be as popular as the more iconic species such as pandas, whooping cranes and polar bears.

But preserving habitat for the beetles means saving a home for many other intriguing insects, plants, birds and other animals, some of which are more lovable than a half-inch beetle metallic brown to dark olive green with a habit of grasping prey with its mandibles.