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All told, less than one percent of the historic numbers of grizzly bears survive in a mere one to two percent of the bear's former range. These small numbers, coupled with ongoing habitat loss, led to the grizzly bear being listed as a threatened species in 1973. The decline of the grizzly bear was driven the transformation of the American wilderness into farms and ranches. Pioneers shot and poisoned grizzly bears to keep them from killing domestic sheep and cattle. To help conserve and recover healthy grizzly bear numbers, the Sierra Club is actively engaged in efforts to restore grizzly habitat and to minimize conflicts between bears and people.
Declines in the number of eagles were first noticed in the late 1800s following sharp drops in the numbers of waterfowl and other eagle prey. The direct killing of eagles and the cutting of trees required by eagles for nest building also played a part. To arrest these activities, Congress passed the Bald Eagle Protection Act in 1940. Unfortunately, the Bald Eagle Protection Act was unable to defend the bird against the effects of harmful pesticides, especially DDT, which poisoned eagles and made it difficult for them to reproduce. By the time the bald eagle was listed under the Endangered Species Act, there were only 500 breeding pairs in the wild in the lower 48 states. The banning of DDT, coupled with the habitat-protection standards of the Endangered Species Act, has delivered a remarkable comeback in bald eagle numbers since then. In 1995 the bald eagle was downlisted from "endangered" to "threatened" after some 5,700 breeding pairs were counted in the wild. Today, with approximately 9,100 breeding pairs in the lower 48 states, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently considering a proposal to declare the bald eagle recovered and to delist the eagle.
Over the past 30 years, the Endangered Species Act has worked to help increase wolf numbers in the Northern Rockies. In 1995, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and to the wilderness of Central Idaho to reestablish the animals in the region's wildlands. Today, thanks to the Endangered Species Act, the howl of more than 700 wolves is once again heard in the Rockies, a place where many feared it had been lost forever.
The life of the black-footed ferret is intertwined with its main prey, the black tailed prairie dog. Historically prairie dogs made up 90 to 95 percent of a black-footed ferret's diet. Originally the ferrets lived throughout grasslands from Canada to Northern Mexico, reaching as far west as Utah. But as settlers plowed up the soil of the Great Plains and the government launched prairie-dog eradication campaigns, ferrets began an inevitable decline. The burrows where they sought shelter and reared their young disappeared, and many died from eating poisoned prairie dogs. In the 1960s, scientists grew alarmed by the sharp decline in the number of black-footed ferrets in the wild. By the 1970s, the ferret, though by then listed under the Endangered Species Act, was presumed extinct. Then, in 1981 a colony of 129 black-footed ferrets was found in a prairie dog town near Meeteetse, Wyoming. Although this discovery gave conservationists new cause for hope, the number of ferrets sharply declined to only 18 individuals within four years following an outbreak of disease. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service collected the remaining ferrets to breed them in captivity and release their offspring into the wild to restore the species. By 1999, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had reintroduced 1,200 ferrets to sites in Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, and Arizona. The goal of the black-footed ferret recovery plan is to reintroduce an additional 1,500 ferrets into the wild and establish at least ten breeding populations by 2010. Photo of black-footed ferret coutesy USFWS. |
The grizzly bear is a creature whose fate is intimately entwined with that of the American wilderness. Much has changed for the grizzly since the time when more than 100,000 of them roamed from the shores of the Mississippi to the California coast 200 years ago. Today, only approximately 1,000 grizzly bears remain in the lower 48 states, spread out in isolated holdouts in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Washington. 
When European settlers first arrived in North America, as many as one million bald eagles flew in the skies. The bird's prowess led it to be declared the National Emblem of the United States by the Second Continental Congress in 1782. Despite its association with the new nation's identity, it was more than a century before the safeguarding of eagles became a national concern.
Symbolic of wildlands everywhere, the gray wolf was once found through most of North America, from Alaska and Canada south through the lower 48 states and into northern Mexico. By the time the Endangered Species Act became law in 1973, the wolf was gone from the Rocky Mountains, having been exterminated by shooting, trapping, and poisoning for the benefit of the livestock industry. The wolf was one of the first large mammals to be listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
Spending much of the day out of sight below ground, the black-footed ferret was not described by science until naturalist John James Audubon wrote about it in 1851. No one else commented on the ferret for another 26 years, but the animal's elusive nature did not keep it out of harm's way. Indeed, the lithe creature with a black bandit mask was destined to become one of North America's most endangered mammals.