Partnering to save endangered animals: Virginia

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

It's our last state -- Virginia!

Virginia is just about as far north as you'll be able to find the red-cockaded woodpecker. In the world of North American woodpeckers, this one stands out.

Its the only woodpecker that excavates nest and roost areas in living trees. Not to mention, it's also one of just two woodpeckers protected by the Endangered Species Act (along with the ivory-billed woodpecker).

Partnering to save endangered animals: West Virginia

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

The Appalachian Mountains rise thousands of feet along an ancient line dropping south from Canada to Alabama. Over centuries, unique environments developed along this line and gave birth to an rich variety of wildlife, including an amazing number of freshwater mussels. 

West Virginia, the only state completely enclosed in the Appalachian range, takes pride in the huge chunk of mussels that call its rivers and streams home. In many unpolluted streams, an experienced visitor can spot from 20 to 30 different kinds of freshwater mussels.

Partnering to save endangered animals: Maryland

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

In Maryland and other states, bog turtles are most often found on private lands. These lands need long-term maintenance to maintain quality habitat for bog turtles; otherwise the vegetation growth advances or exotic species invade. 

On Deb English’s horse farm, the solution was grazing by sheep and goats. 

The abundance of bog turtles in pastured wetlands like those on English’s farm suggests that grazing has historically maintained the openness of wetlands needed for habitat. English and her family worked with the Maryland Bog Turtle Partnership to improve a section of their farm for the turtles. 

Partnering to save endangered animals: Delaware

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

And we're back! Time to feature Delaware and one of its most renowned avian visitors--the red knot. 

Back at the end of May, biologists cheered when a legendary red knot was seen in Delaware Bay. This dove-sized shorebird was tagged in 1995 in Argentina and is thought to now be around 19 years old. If an odometer tagged along with the bird, it would read over 350,000 miles, thanks to its yearly migration from Argentina to the Canadian Arctic.

Partnering to save endangered animals: New Jersey

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

Turtle collectors covet bog turtles because of their beauty and scarcity. Some people pay hundreds of dollars for one on the black market. On the other hand, some people take actions that harm bog turtles. The Endangered Species Act provides the bog turtle with protection for these sorts of activities. 

One man, even after informed of bog turtle presence and of the harm the tree removal would, damaged bog turtle habitat on his farmland. The land had been improved for bog turtles by a previous owner. Since the work was done, no bog turtles have been documented there. Read more of the story.

An example of the type of habitat where bog turtles can be found.
Credit: Gary Peeples/USFWS

Partnering to save endangered animals: Pennsylvania

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

We established the Cherry Valley National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Pennsylvania in part to protect the federally threatened bog turtle. Pennsylvania state agencies all identified habitat loss and fragmentation -- mostly due to development -- as the main threat facing North America's smallest turtles. 

When the refuge boundary was established, Cherry Valley was experiencing a surge in residential development that threatened the turtle’s habitat -- wet meadows and other shallow, sunny wetlands, known as fens. Refuge Manager Michael Horne says the first parcel acquired for the refuge provided “promising wetlands in terms of bog turtle management.” Read more of the story.

Cherry Valley National Wildlife Refuge. Credit: USFWS

Partnering to save endangered animals: Rhode Island

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

From the beginning, Avalonia Land Conservancy recognized Sandy Point Island as a treasure, a property unlike any others it owned – a sandy island enough removed from the shore to provide isolation and uniqueness while still close to home, says its former president Anne Nalwalk.

When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began to monitor the use of the island by various shorebirds, the true value of Sandy Point as a nature preserve became most apparent. Avalonia has been amazed to learn the importance of Sandy Point to shorebirds that use it for nesting, resting and staging. Read the story.

Binti Ackley, a volunteer at Sandy Point, helps tag horseshoe crabs, watch
and protect shorebird nests and chicks, and educate visitors. Credit: John Ackley

Partnering to save endangered animals: Connecticut

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

Your only chance at seeing the tiny Puritan tiger beetle is in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and the Connecticut River in New England. Historically, there were 11 populations along the Connecticut River, but only these two remain.

The Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge has long been the driving force in protecting and restoring the embattled beetle population on state- and city-owned property in Massachusetts. It was only natural for them to lead the efforts to help protect and maintain the beetles' other population in Connecticut. Read more of the story.

Puritan tiger beetles are voracious predators, preying on other invertebrates
by chasing and catching them in a tiger-like manner. Credit: Susi von Oettingen/USFWS

Partnering to save endangered animals: New York

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

New York’s Long Island is home to more than 7 million people, two major airports, nine bridges, 13 tunnels, and one very rare plant—the sandplain gerardia. This plant with delicate pink flowers grows at a handful of sites on Long Island, where coastal grasslands have been crowded by development or non-native plants. 

A partnership with the Federal Aviation Administration led way to the protection of more than 100 acres for this plant and other wildlife. Read the rest of the story. 

Protection of the Sayville grasslands is critical to survival of
sandplain gerardia. Credit: Ed Sambolin

Partnering to save endangered animals: Massachusetts

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

A few decades ago, an uncontrolled wildfire roared through an area of pine barrens on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, burning 8 square miles down to the sandy soil.

Today, the communities and businesses of the town of Mashpee border these fire-prone barrens, as well as lands protected by federal, state and local agencies. Not only do thousands of people live here, but the rare New England cottontail has also found a home in the pitch pines and scrub oaks of the barrens. Read the rest of the story.

Contrary to what some may know, some types of young forests are dependent on
periodic wildfire. Fire management officers mimic the natural fire process to keep a
healthy space for plants and wildlife, including the rare New England cottontail,
which needs this habitat for survival.
Credit: Catherine J. Hibbard/USFWS

Partnering to save endangered animals: Vermont

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

Just over 10 years ago, state and federal biologists didn't know that the endangered Indiana bat spent its summers roosting in Vermont's Lake Champlain Valley.

After tracking bats into the valley, they teamed up to learn more about its habits. The information they collected would become vital for protecting and conserving Indiana bats and their key habitat when the disease white-nose syndrome entered the picture years later. Finish the story.

Partnering to save endangered animals: New Hampshire

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

Happy Pollinator Week! This week, we have a chance to learn more and recognize the little, hard-working animals that pollinate the majority of our flowering plants and crops.

Within this group of hummingbirds, bats, bees, beetles, butterflies and flies is the Karner blue butterfly, a small endangered butterfly found in oak savannas and pine barrens from eastern Minnesota to the Atlantic seaboard.

Partnering to save endangered animals: Maine

We're so excited about the new interactive map highlighting endangered species efforts in each state across the nation. Each day we'll feature a state, partner and animal. Subscribe on the right to keep up!

Almost 150 years ago, Maine’s fish commissioner saw the toll that over-fishing, pollution, dams, and loss of habitat were taking on Atlantic salmon.

He began exploring the possibility of raising salmon in captivity to restore wild stocks, and his husbandry work led to the creation of the first Atlantic salmon hatchery, a predecessor to the Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery. The hatchery's work produces up to 3 million eggs that are raised for release in the wild. Read the rest of this story. 

Salmon are raised at Craig Brook and released in the Penobscot River.
Credit: Randy Spencer – ME DMR

Which endangered animal calls your state home?

Find out what we’re doing to help. 

Today we’re excited to launch an interactive map where you can learn about efforts to protect your state’s wildlife in need. The Service developed the map to share stories of success and partnership built across America under the Endangered Species Act. 

The new, web-based interactive map has information about endangered species success
in every state. Find it at http://www.fws.gov/endangered.