The final flowers: One botanist's mission to secure protections for the last of Central Washington's gray cat's eye

May 16-Alongside the winding Columbia River and into central Washington's expansive, barren landscapes, a plant is in bloom, extending roots into what remains of the region's sandy dunes.

With fuzzy, clustered stems showcasing dozens of small, white flowers, the shrub-like veg might not catch the eye of anyone who isn't a pollinator buzzing by.

But those keen to the world of native plants might notice that they have never seen it growing anywhere else.

The gray cat's eye - scientific name Oreocarya leucophaea - only grows in a handful of sites along a roughly 100-mile stretch of the Columbia River Basin, spanning from around Trinidad south to the Hanford Site. It is ranked by global and state nonprofits as being critically imperiled and endangered.

Of the over 40 patches remaining, scientists believe only three have hope in the long term.

In November, conservationists at the Center for Biological Diversity sued the federal government in an attempt to get the plant protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The act, signed into law in 1973 by President Richard Nixon, generally aims to prevent endangered species and their habitats from being harmed by individuals or organizations while a recovery plan was developed. There are currently 1,685 species listed as endangered in the United States, per the Fish and Wildlife website, 893 of which are flowering plants.

Botanist Mark Darrach helped draft a listing petition for the gray cat's eye in 2021. A contract researcher for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity and associate researcher of the University of Washington Burke Museum, Darrach has watched and recorded the decline of the plant for the past 28 years.

He recalls seeing thousands of them along the river when he first began his work.

"This is one of the few spots where over the 30 years - roughly - that I have been working with the plant, that it appears to be doing reasonably well," he said at a Wanapum site on May 7.

The flowers used to bloom from May to early June in a typical year, but warmer temperatures mean Darrach now sees them beginning in April.

The gray cat's eye can only grow in sandy substrates, faring best in wind-swept dunes with a continual influx of new sands. It is only found in the context of a broader plant community, relying largely on generalist bees for pollination (unlike some plant species, O. leucophaea cannot pollinate itself. Instead, a given plant grows flowers with either "male" or "female" dominant anatomy).

Their sandy habitats were initially created by floods during the late Pleistocene epoch, or Ice Age, which ran from around 2.6 million years ago until 11,700 years ago.

When Europeans began to colonize the Eastern Washington region in the early 1800s, many of the sandy habitats were converted into agricultural lands. This trend has only increased over the past 50 years, the ESA listing proposal said.

As the space for dunes decreased across central Washington, so too did the opportunities for remaining spots to replenish their sand supply. In the past, lower water levels in the hot summer months would expose fine sediments that could be picked up by the wind to land outside of the riparian zone. Dams along the Columbia and its tributaries largely flatten this annual water cycle.

On the hot Wanapum day last week, Darrach pointed out nearly as many dead plants as living ones as he walked the site. The plants naturally only live around 10 years, but the environment is increasingly inhospitable to new growth.

"So we've lost our sand source," Darrach said. "We cut off the sand supply and slowly, literally all of the active dunes ... that's disappearing."

"The entire ecosystem is disappearing."

The ever-growing amount of invasive cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) into the area adds insult to injury.

Cheatgrass, originally from the Mediterranean region, found its way to Colorado in the late 1800s, according to a plant guide by U.S. Department of Agriculture. By the 1930s, it had spread to become the dominant grass species in the Pacific Northwest. It is highly flammable and can outcompete native plants when it comes to taking up nutrients and water.

A cheatgrass-fueled fire would be devastating for the gray cat's eye, Darrach said. Without a bank of seeds protected underground, the loss is permanent.

Where once there were over 40 populations scattered throughout the region, Darrach believes only three semi-viable sites for the plant remain today, including the Wanapum dunes.

The Hanford site has become an unlikely sanctuary, development of the land largely halted by the now-decommissioned World War II nuclear production complex on scene. It's another site Beverly Darrach calls "provisionally viable," so long as artificial pollination from a nearby cherry orchard continues.

The gray cat's eye should be a "slam dunk" for receiving federal protections, Darrach said. He talks about "when," not "if."

"It will be, no question," he said. "Unless politics gets in the way of the biology itself. The biology is really obvious."

But avoiding political controversy in the environmental world is no easy feat. While a backlog of species awaiting federal consideration for protections is ever-present, not one of the hundreds of ongoing petitions has resulted in a federally recognized "endangered" listing since President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2025.

After all, the Endangered Species Act puts politicians in a place of having to say no to development, codirector for the Center for Biological Diversity's endangered species initiatives Noah Greenwald said.

"Right at the beginning of the Endangered Species Act it recognizes that species have been driven to extinction because of economic factors, or economic development, untampered by sufficient concern," he said. "And so, you know, the act puts government officials in the position of having to say 'no' to development."

Not to mention, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tends to lack the resources to process the sheer magnitude of petitions, per a 2022 Columbia University study.

"There's no shortage of species that need protection," Greenwald said. "Scientists from around the world are warning that we're in an extinction crisis, that we're losing species at a greatly accelerated rate."

Greenwald coauthored a 2016 study published in the journal "Biological Conservation" that found that species tended to average in around 7.5 years to 15.7 years after initial petitioning to become listed as federally endangered. Such a time period occasionally sees the species in question go extinct before protections are granted.

Losing species means losing ecosystems, Greenwald said, and ecosystems offer invaluable services to the humans in and around them.

"They clean our air and water. They moderate climate. They moderate flooding. They recycle nutrients. They provide food and medicine," Greenwald said. "In causing this extinction crisis, we're imperiling our children's future and the quality of life that they can expect.

"And this plant, you know, this plant is very much part of that extinction crisis."

As Darrach walked through one of the few remaining gray cat's eye patches, he said that "we're letting this disappear because no one cares, or has had the education to learn about why they should be caring."

Yet, he continues documenting the plant's population. When the plant is listed as endangered, he suspects that he will be contracted to work on its conservation next.

What that looks like is unknown. Perhaps bringing in piles of sand to the area for the wind to blow around. More realistically, Darrach suggests out-planting to regions where sand dunes remain active.

"And that's pretty far afield from here," he said of where suitable habitat might be. "I can't think of any - there's no other spot in Washington State for sure."

Because of the gray cat's eye's sensitive nature, it wouldn't become invasive if out - planted, he said. It would essentially just be an effort to preserve the biodiversity.

"We'd probably end up doing some genetic studies to make sure that we're preserving as many unique alleles in the gene pool as possible," he said. "And ultimately, that's probably what's going to be the best strategy, is to do some out-cladding at some sites with similar habitat.

"And quite far away, where you might find that the ecological issues is still, sort of, closing in on the problem like it is here."

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