Back from Extinction

On the outer edges of man's environment live various wild animals that are not likely to survive under the conditions that man has imposed on their surroundings. The U.S. has 101 varieties, known collectively and officially as "endangered species." They range from the black-footed ferret, which roams the Dakotas, to Bachman's warbler, which flits through the swamps of the Southeast. In recent years, as the Government made it official policy to save these creatures from going the way of the great auk, the news of threatened extinction has slowly changed to news of survival. Some of the latest developments:

>PEREGRINE FALCONS. These birds of prey, which once numbered in the thousands all over the U.S., fell victim to pesticides, which made their eggshells too thin to survive, and now there are fewer than 200 pairs left (except in Alaska). "The impending demise of this beautiful falcon is one of the ecological tragedies of the modern age," says Zoologist Clayton M. White of Brigham Young University. White has helped set up the United Peregrine Society, which plans to build a sanctuary near Klamath Falls, Ore. The aim is to find the falcons' remote nesting places and remove the birds and eggs to man-made shelters. White, who keeps four pairs of falcons on the roof of the zoology building, says, "Given enough time, we can ultimately get enough birds to reintroduce them back into the wilds."

>BLUE WHALES. As of a decade ago, whaling fleets had killed so many of these leviathans--the largest creatures on earth, growing up to 150 tons--that their surviving numbers were estimated at only about 1,000. In 1966, by an international agreement, all hunting of blues was banned. Since then, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, which has made a new estimate based on sightings by commercial whaling ships, the blues have multiplied like oceanic rabbits to a total somewhere between 10,000 and 17,000. Though some oceanographers were surprised at the speed of the whales' return, Robert Miller of the Fisheries Service explained: "The blues, like other whales, have built-in sonar equipment and apparently use it over long distances for underwater communications, with certain signals for different activities"--among them a mating call.

>TIMBER WOLVES. There are fewer than 1,000 Eastern timber wolves left in the U.S., but they still raid cattle in northern Minnesota. The state and federal governments therefore worked out a plan whereby hunters would be allowed to kill up to 200 wolves a year within specified boundaries in Minnesota, but there would no longer be the traditional $50 bounty per wolf. The U.S. Department of the Interior then changed its mind and called for a moratorium on all wolf killing until a conservation program could be worked out. Lewis Regenstein, Washington director of the Fund for Animals, lobbied for the moratorium and was jubilant. "Contrary to legend, wolves are not hostile to man," he says. "There is not a single documented case of a healthy wolf ever attacking a human in the United States without provocation."

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