Celebrate Endangered Species Day!
05/15/2009
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An endangered Gila Topminnow / |
Did you know that the United States has over 1,200 species listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act, including 746 plants and 571 animals? Endangered means that a species, or a population of a species, is at risk of going extinct. Habitat loss is the most common reason in the United States why species become threatened with extinction. There are also over 250 candidate species, which the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has not yet had time to determine whether they qualify for listing. And of course, thousands more endangered species exist around the world, most of which are categorized at the World Conservation Union's Red List database.
Today, May 15th, is Endangered Species Day, a day declared in 2006 by unanimous resolution in the Senate to commemorate the importance of biodiversity and rare species throughout the United States, and of preserving and recovering these species. I think everyone should spend time today learning about at least one unfamiliar endangered species. Most animal lovers know about the charismatic megafauna – the American bison, the grizzly bear, the killer whale, the great white shark – but do you know about the endangered white wartyback, a freshwater mussel? Alameda whipsnake? Gila topminnow? Santa Ana sucker? Salt Creek tiger beetle?
Since the Endangered Species Act was passed into law in 1973, fewer than 10 species on the list have gone extinct. However, few have been removed from the list due to recovery, either, although many species numbers have increased and their habitat has been protected due to the law. Removing a species from the protection the ESA provides can be a challenging decision that biologists, conservationists and local citizens often debate. Sometimes recovering populations of rare species face the same pressures they did when their population started declining. A classic example is the gray wolf, which still suffers from a serious image problem in some states where, as of May 4, of this year, is now officially removed from the ESA and not protected from hunting anymore. Conservationists fear that delisting will lead to its decline, erasing gains made while the wolf was protected. On the other hand, the bald eagle has made an astonishing and successful recovery in most states.
An article by National Wildlife magazine editor Roger DiSilvestro, written in 2004 (Where Would They Be Now?) that discussed 10 species that have benefitted greatly from the ESA, including some relative unknowns like the Mauna Loa Silversword (a plant found in Hawaii), Karner Blue Butterflies, Grey Bats and Key Deer, but also the Florida Manatee, Bald Eagles, and Florida Panthers.
The FWS produced this video on endangered species you can view, a quiz where you can test your endangered species knowledge, and they also publish a quarterly magazine, the Endangered Species Bulletin, available online. The National Wildlife Federation (@NWF), encourages people to tweet using the #speciesday tag in honor of the day, saying, “I’m tweeting for (Enter Your Species here) in honor of Endangered Species Day! You can follow Animal PLanet on twitter @AnimalPlanet, or me @bohemianone.
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