Oregon Public Broadcasting

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday that it will review the health of 28 plants and animals. That could lead to federal protection.

The review includes a rare Northwest flower called the “pale blue-eyed grass” -- found only in the Cascade Mountains.

Andrea Raven is a Portland conservation botanist who studied the flower for more than ten years. She says development and cattle ranching keep it from thriving.

Andrea Raven: “While we found that cattle didn’t directly kill very many plants in our study, what we did find was that cattle within a month period of grazing, with a fairly modest number of cows, would remove over three-quarters of the flowers and the fruits.”

The pale blue-eyed grass is already listed as threatened by the state of Washington, and the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management consider it a “species of concern.”

Inclusion on the endangered species list would protect it further.

The pale blue-eyed grass is a rare iris.  It was part of a petition from the environmental group, Wild Earth Guardians, involving hundreds of species.

Federal biologists announced plans Tuesday to study only a fraction of those.