Environmental Defense Fund Names Species of the Century

As we approach the year 2000, there are more species in danger of extinction now than at any time in the history of the nation, according to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which today released a list of the top wildlife winners and losers of the last century. EDF’s list is available at www.environmentaldefense.org online.

The last century began as a time of crisis for many US species, but some have staged spectacular comebacks, like the gray wolf, northern elephant seal, and whooping crane. A few species have even become too successful and are now a nuisance, like the white-tailed deer and brown-headed cowbird. At the start of the new millennium, some species are still in serious peril, like the Snake River sockeye and po’ouli (a Hawaiian songbird), while others are declining at an alarming rate, like the bobolink, black-tailed prairie dog, and longleaf pine tree.

According to EDF, while overexploitation was the major threat to species at the beginning of the last century, that threat has been replaced by three far more ruthless and indiscriminate killers: habitat destruction, alien species, and pollution.

“Wildlife in the US is in a greater state of crisis now than at any since the Ice Age,” said David Wilcove, an EDF ecologist and author of The Condor’s Shadow, The Loss and Recovery of Wildlife in America. “But there are very hopeful signs that we can save and recover disappearing species.”

Topping the EDF list of successful species is the white-tailed deer, which was in danger of disappearing from much of the US at the start of the 20th century due to unregulated hunting and deforestation. The imposition of game laws, combined with the regeneration of eastern forests, helped bring about its revival. Today some 17 to 25 million whitetails roam the forests, fields, and suburbs of America. They have become pests in certain places by destroying farm crops and gardens and decimating native wildflowers, hemlocks and yews.

On the bottom of EDF’s list, the longleaf pine ecosystem has been so damaged and degraded that dozens of species inhabiting this ecosystem are in danger of extinction. Longleaf pine once covered 74 million acres in the southeastern US from Virginia south through Florida to Texas. These forests were severely damaged by settlers, who destroyed the trees for tar, pitch, rosin, and turpentine, as well as logging them for timber. The suppression of natural fire caused the remaining acreage of longleaf to become overgrown with hardwoods.