Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, Whooping Cranes, and Timber wolves. This issue of The Current centers on charismatic animals all under the protection of the Endangered Species Act.

As I updated my bird guide, in preparation for my trip to view Whooping Cranes at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, I noticed that I recorded my first Bald Eagle on August 23, 1977 in Morrison County. Congress had passed the Endangered Species Act four years earlier. Not longer after, Bald Eagles began making a come-back. Now, I see the magnificent birds nearly every week. It’s hard to recall that not so long ago, they were very rare.

Those who would gut the Endangered Species Act claim that the act has failed because species often don’t recover sufficiently to get off the list. Actually, the mark of success should be measured by how many species on the list go extinct, and the answer is: very few. In fact, all of us are familiar with spectacular successes of the Act: the timber wolf, the Bald Eagle, the Peregrine Falcon, the California Condor, to name just a few.

Why should we care about endangered species? I recently visited Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, where this question was posed to visitors. I was interested in their answers, and I’d be interested in yours. Drop me a line at and we’ll run your answers in the next issue of The Current.

Sue