to respond to public concerns, sometimes resort to well-intentioned but 

 ineffective remedies. The best thing that could happen to wildlife would 

 be for all concerned Americans to join hands in working for truly needed 

 programs. In this way, they would assure that adequate and effective 

 steps are taken to restore depleted species and to prevent others from 

 becoming endangered. 



Extinct, Endangered, and 

 Threatened Species 



To clearly understand endangered wildlife, it is necessary to know 

 some technical terms that are widely used but imperfectly understood. 



Congress enacted Endangered Species Conservation Acts in 1966, 

 1969, and 1973 to help check the decline of America's rarer forms of 

 mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, and plants. 

 These legal mandates are administered through an Office of Endangered 

 Species in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 



Legal definitions used in these Acts do not always conform with strict 

 dictionary definitions. Under terms of the Acts, a species or subspecies 

 is endangered when officially declared in imminent danger of extinction 

 by the Secretary of the Interior after consultation with scientists. 

 Threatened species are those officially declared likely to become en- 

 dangered in the foreseeable future over all or a "significant portion" of 

 their ranges. Lists of these animals, amended periodically, are published 

 in government documents. 



A species in the scientific sense, is a group of animals sharing 

 common characteristics that are passed on to their offspring and whose 

 members can produce fertile young only by mating within their own 

 group. A subspecies is a group of animals of the same species that has 

 developed common distinctive characteristics because they evolved in 

 isolation from other subspecies of the parent species. Differences may 

 include color, size, or bone structure. Although the differences are 

 artifically maintained, an extreme example can be found in the variety of 

 breeds in the domesticated dog. Among wild animals, some subspecies 

 differ so much from others of the same species that the layman would 

 consider them unrelated. But members of different subspecies can 

 interbreed and produce young that are capable of successful breeding. 



;5 



