Green Week: Making the cut

The endangered species list contains 1,985 species of plants and animals recorded as either "endangered" (next stop: oblivion) or "threatened" (hanging out at the rest area just before the exit). Most of the media attention and charity love goes to totemic animals like wolves, whales and polar bears or greeting card/desk calendar models like the Karner blue butterfly. Few people are clamoring to "Save the Dung Beetles." The very idea of saving species has critics among the top end of the predator food chain, who argue that millions of species have been wiped out since the planet first exploded with life. That's true, of course, with the one major distinction being that those were acts of nature and the cosmos, not the conscious behavior of a single species that can't be sure of which links in the environmental chain are essential for its own existence.

Sixteen Rhode Island species are listed on the Endangered Species Act. Some are residents (the American burying beetle), others visit annually (a variety of whales and sea turtles), while a few make rare or rumored appearances - the wildlife equivalent of celebrity sightings (Eastern puma). Up until March 28, the gray wolf was on the list. In Wyoming (the state out West not the village in southwestern Rhode Island), a few days after the wolf came off the list, 16 were shot dead, including a limping canine known to locals as "Hoppy." So now that wolves are no longer endangered, they're being slaughtered in mass numbers. Memo to other species: Do not leave the list. Thriving can get you killed.