With the news this week that bumble bees have been added to the endangered species list, you may be asking yourself what you can do to help. Enter Bumble Bee Watch, a collaborative effort to track and conserve North America’s bumble bees.

This citizen science project allows for individuals to:

• Upload photos of bumble bees to start a virtual bumble bee collection;
• Identify the bumble bees in your photos and have your identifications verified by experts;
• Help researchers determine the status and conservation needs of bumble bees;
• Help locate rare or endangered populations of bumble bees;
• Learn about bumble bees, their ecology, and ongoing conservation efforts; and
• Connect with other citizen scientists.

Because bees are widely distributed, the best way to keep track of them is with an army of volunteers across the country armed with cameras. With any luck, you might help find remnant populations of rare species before they go extinct. Joining and participating is easy, just as simple as taking pictures.

Other ways to help include creating habitat, supporting local and organic agriculture, and recruiting others.

Are you interested? Learn more here…

It’s official, the bumblebee has been added to the ever-growing list of endangered species along with the grizzly bear, the northern spotted owl, the gray wolf, and about 700 other animal species which are extinct. Once abundant in the grasslands and prairies of the East and Midwest, the rusty-patched bee has now been restricted to protections in the continental US as its population keeps dwindling at an alarming rate.

It has been estimated that 95% of bumblebees now only exist in isolated pockets in twelve states and the province of Ontario, Canada.

It took much longer than expected to put this bee onto the list of endangered species list due to the tossing and turning in Trump’s administration. The original listing date was set for February 10, 2018, but it was not until June 27 that it was listed.

Human encroachment led to the subsequent loss of their natural habitat which played a significant role in the bee’s declining population. The classification will foster the conservation of tall grasses and protection of grasslands where the bumblebee and other pollinators naturally thrive.

Although the move has been welcomed, there is a chance the designation of bumble bees as an endangered species might not sit well with several industries and corporations. The move might, therefore, face a lot of challenges.

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  A five-year red wolf status review, released April 24, 2018 showed that only about 40 red wolves are left in the wild with only three known breeding pairs remaining.

The review, released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, recommends no change in the red wolf’s status as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The USFWS is expected to release a new proposed rule by late summer with alternatives for public comment covering future management of the “non-essential, experimental population” of red wolves in eastern North Carolina.

“Currently, the NEP (non-essential, experimental population) is declining more rapidly than the worst-case scenarios … it is obvious that there are significant threats to the NEP in eastern North Carolina and conditions for recovery of the species are not favorable and a self-sustainable population may not be possible,” the review reads.

In September 2016, the USFWS announced that red wolves would be removed from the majority of the five-county area of eastern North Carolina where they’d been reintroduced. The move followed nearly two years of evaluating the feasibility of reintroduction efforts, and a lawsuit in which environmental groups claimed the USFWS was not doing enough to protect the wolves. Reintroduction was once attempted in the Smokies, but failed.

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National parks are critical for protecting the animals and plants that live in them, and no park denizens need that protection more than endangered species.

The Endangered Species Act has helped boost the populations of numerous imperiled species since it became law in 1973, and it has contributed to the recovery of iconic species such as the bald eagle, which was removed from the list in 2007.

Using data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NPCA worked with Defenders of Wildlife to identify the endangered species whose critical habitats overlap with national parks. Based on that inventory, the ranges of 381 imperiled species — including 286 endangered species, 89 threatened species and six species with other designations — include national parks. Some species, such as Big Bend National Park’s Guadalupe fescue, can be found nowhere else in the country.

From Great Smoky Mountains National Park and its diminutive spruce-fir moss spider to Kalaupapa National Historical Park and its 600-pound Hawaiian monk seals, here are the 10 national parks that, according to our methodology, are home to the most endangered species.

Among exotic bugs facing mortal threats, few appear better set to survive than the Great Sand Dunes tiger beetle, an aggressive carnivore uniquely adapted to endure super-intense heat and some of the planet’s harshest scouring sand.

Its habitat within the wilderness of Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve already is protected from motorized recreationists and other perils.

“Other beetles should be so lucky as the tiger beetle,” said National Park Service biologist Fred Bunch, chief of natural resources at the dunes, who has observed the insects for 27 years.

But, depending on results of an upcoming U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey, this hairy, green-headed beetle with a violin-shaped mark on its back could be placed on the list of endangered species, requiring the ecological equivalent of emergency room resuscitation.

The uproars over endangered polar bears, rhinos, tigers and other charismatic big creatures have obscured a quieter emergence of growing numbers of bugs on the government’s roster of species going extinct. Today’s Endangered Species Act list of 1,447 animals includes 84 insects. Beyond bees and monarch butterflies, some of those most recently determined to be dwindling are beetles, such as the Northeastern Beach tiger beetle, a relative of the Great Sand Dunes beetle.

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Today, the California condor is regarded as one of the rarest birds in the world. In Pleistocene times, condors ranged from Canada to Mexico, across the southern United States to Florida, and north on the east coast to New York. During that period, condors were a common resident of the Grand Canyon judging by bones, feathers and eggshells found in caves where they once nested. A dramatic range reduction occurred about 10,000 years ago, coinciding with the late Pleistocene extinction of large mammals such as mastodons, giant ground sloths, camels, and sabre tooth cats that condors fed on.

By the time Europeans arrived in western North America, condors had retreated to a stronghold along the Pacific coast from British Columbia to Baja California. The birds managed to maintain a strong population until shooting, egg collecting, poisoning by cyanide traps set for coyotes, power line collisions, general habitat degradation, and especially lead poisoning began to take a heavy toll. Lead poisoning from ingesting fragments of lead ammunition in the carcasses and gut piles they feed on remains the greatest threat to California condors today.

From the 1880s to 1924, there were scattered reports of condors in Arizona. But by the late 1930s, no condors remained outside of California and by 1982, the total population had dwindled to just 22 birds. Extinction loomed.

The California condor was placed on the federal endangered species list in 1967. Critical habitat was identified and mortality factors were studied. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began a captive breeding program in 1983.

So, how is it going?