Threatened and Endangered Species

In 2012, scientists noticed that nearly a third of polar bears sampled in a study in Alaska were suffering from hair loss and poor health. Drs. Lizabeth Bowen and A. Keith Miles of WERC used new technology to track down and identify the factors responsible for driving disease in Alaskan polar bears.

At the population level, Dr. Amy Vandergast and her team estimates important population parameters such as effective migration (or gene flow) and the number of breeding adults (or effective population size), and quantify the impacts of landscape changes and disturbance on these parameters. This work informs individual species management.

The coastal California Gnatcatcher ( Polioptila californica californica), a federally threatened species, is considered a flagship species for southern California conservation planning. Dr. Barbara Kus collaborates with Dr. Amy Vandergast and local agencies to provide information to managers that can be used to conserve this species and its habitat.

This website provides access to the list of imperiled freshwater and diadromous fishes of North America as determined by the 2008 American Fisheries Society (AFS) Endangered Species Committee (ESC) on Fishes.

Environmental stressors such as contaminants and disease can cause physiological imbalance in all types of wildlife. WERC’s Drs. Lizabeth Bowen and A. Keith Miles develop gene transcription profiles to detect organisms’ physiological responses to environmental stressors and provide resource managers with early warnings for potential effects on wildlife and ecosystem health.

Federally-listed as threatened since 1986, the Atlantic Coast Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus) population comprises fewer than 2,000 breeding pairs, according to the most recent census data. These breeding pairs are the target of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) species recovery plan.

Loss of wetlands, invasive plants, and non-native predators pushed Hawaii’s waterbirds to the brink of extinction by the early 1900s, although population numbers have improved somewhat in recent decades with conservation efforts. Nonetheless, all Hawaiian waterbirds have global population sizes estimated around or below below 2,000 individuals, making them still highly vulnerable to extinction...

Freshwater mussels are in serious global decline and urgently need protection and conservation. Declines in the abundance and diversity of North American mussels have been attributed to a wide array of human activities that cause pollution, water-quality degradation, and habitat destruction. Recent findings suggest that many mussel species are already living close to their upper thermal tolerances...

Bat Research Bats are nocturnal, flying mammals that eat insects or fruits, pollinate flowers, distribute seeds, and are important to many ecosystems. Across North America there are 45 species of bats, many of which are threatened or endangered. One species of federally endangered bat, the Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis), is a medium-sized, gray, black, or chestnut brown bat living primarily in...

The spectaclecase mussel, Cumberlandia monodonta, was effectively listed as federally endangered in April 2012 (https://federalregister.gov/a/2012-5603). It is endemic to the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri River basins and historically inhabited 44 streams in these basins (USFWS 2014). Currently, the species is known to inhabit 20 of the historical streams, five of which are represented by one or...

WERC wildlife biologist Dr. Kristin Berry has more than forty years of experience studying Agassiz’s desert tortoise. As the lead on several USGS projects, Dr. Berry continues to lend her expertise to investigating the status, genetics, and behavior of Agassiz’s tortoise populations in the Mojave Desert.

Introduced rainbow trout and brown trout are considered a threat to the endangered humpback chub in the Colorado River in Grand Canyon. These introduced species eat native fish, but impacts are difficult to assess because predation vulnerability depends on the physical conditions under which predation takes place. We studied how predation vulnerability of juvenile humpback chub changes in response...