The Roundhouse in Santa Fe. Post file photo

By ALAINA MENCINGER
The Santa Fe New Mexican

Every time an inventory of insects and other arthropods is conducted in New Mexico, new species are discovered.

The state, home to thousands of native pollinator species, is a “biodiversity hot spot” in North America, especially for insects and other arthropods, said David Lightfoot, the senior collection manager for the Division of Arthropods at the Museum of Southwestern Biology.

It keeps Lightfoot busy. 

“We’re still kind of the Wild West when it comes to understanding our insects in the state, which makes it very exciting for people like me, because that’s what we do,” Lightfoot said. “We’re making new discoveries all the time.”

But Lightfoot wants to see more attention paid to the state’s six-legged critters. While pollinator species are getting increasing attention for their declining populations and critical role in agriculture, other insects are overlooked.

Arthropod aficionados are hopeful that could change with the approval of a bill that would codify the authority of the state Game and Fish Department — which will be renamed the Wildlife Department — to manage some of the smallest wildlife species, alongside the biggest mammals and birds. 

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed Senate Bill 5 into law Thursday.

The bill specifically lists invertebrates in the definition of wildlife that the department will be authorized to manage. That includes bees, butterflies, arachnids and all manners of insects around the state.

“Insects are the base of basically all of our food webs, aquatic and terrestrial,” Lightfoot said. “They perform very important services, starting with decomposition of organic matter in the soils and on the soils, to herbivory and production of organic matter for decomposition. So arthropods are critical for nutrient cycling, and they’re the ones that nobody really thinks about or pays attention to. But they are critically important.”

Rosemary Malfi, director of conservation policy for the international Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, said in other states that lack the authority to manage insects and other arthropods, agencies can be barred from accessing some federal funding.

In Nevada, for example, state officials have struggled to get federal funding for invertebrate “candidate species” — those the federal government acknowledges are at risk of being endangered but are not yet listed as endangered. 

“That’s what we want in conservation,” Malfi said. “We want species not to be threatened, not to be endangered, and those funding sources help empower states to prevent those species declines.”

Xerces Society Southwest pollinator conservation specialist Kaitlin Haase said insects in the state are suffering “a death of a thousand cuts”.

Climate change, habitat loss and land conversion all contribute to declining populations, Haase said. River- and wetland-dwelling insect species like fireflies, dragonflies and cattle flies — a source of food for trout — are put at risk as the snowpack shrinks and waterways go dry, Haase said. 

Giving the state a clear authority to manage insect species could allow for more projects like habit creation and shine a light on arthropod species, Haase said. She would like to see a state entomologist hired for the department. 

“It’s definitely an understudied and underappreciated branch of wildlife, but just as critical as a lot of our other major species that have bones,” Haase said.