For the past eight years, my family has lived on a 100-acre farm in LaRue County Kentucky, near the small town of Hodgenville (birthplace of Abraham Lincoln). Over the years, we have noticed a startling change in the landscape: trees are being cut down rapidly, logging roads delving into the depths of the deep old-forest growth, and felling many ancient trees. Our property has become an island of sanctuary, prohibited from loggers. We even keep hunting on our land to a minimum. We hope that by keeping evasive human involvement to a minimum (save for the livestock and animals we have introduced to the land) endangered species will have a small chance of establishing a foothold in the hills of rural central Kentucky. Think we don't have any threatened organisms in our state? The US Fish and Wildlife Service's Endangered Species Program has compiled a list:
Bat, gray (Myotis grisescens)
Bat, Indiana (Myotis sodalis)
Bat, Virginia big-eared (Corynorhinus (=Plecotus) townsendii virginianus)
Bean, Cumberland (pearlymussel) (Villosa trabalis)
Beetle, American burying (Nicrophorus americanus)
Catspaw (=purple cat's paw pearlymussel) (Epioblasma obliquata obliquata)
Clubshell (Pleurobema clava)
Combshell, Cumberlandian (Epioblasma brevidens)
Crane, whooping (Grus americana)
Curlew, Eskimo (Numenius borealis)
Dace, blackside (Phoxinus cumberlandensis)
Darter, relict (Etheostoma chienense)
Eagle, bald (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
Elktoe, Cumberland (Alasmidonta atropurpurea)
Fanshell (Cyprogenia stegaria)
Mapleleaf, winged (Quadrula fragosa)
Mucket, pink (pearlymussel) (Lampsilis abrupta)
Mussel, oyster (Epioblasma capsaeformis)
Mussel, scaleshell (Leptodea leptodon)
Pearlymussel, cracking (Hemistena lata)
Pearlymussel, dromedary (Dromus dromas)
Pearlymussel, littlewing (Pegias fabula)
Pigtoe, rough (Pleurobema plenum)
Pimpleback, orangefoot (pearlymussel) (Plethobasus cooperianus)
Plover, piping (Charadrius melodus)
Pocketbook, fat (Potamilus capax)
Puma (=cougar), eastern (Puma (=Felis) concolor couguar)
Riffleshell, northern (Epioblasma torulosa rangiana)
Riffleshell, tan (Epioblasma florentina walkeri (=E. walkeri))
Ring pink (mussel) (Obovaria retusa)
Shiner, palezone (Notropis albizonatus)
Shrimp, Kentucky cave (Palaemonias ganteri)
Sturgeon, pallid (Scaphirhynchus albus)
Tern, least (Sterna antillarum)
Wartyback, white (pearlymussel) (Plethobasus cicatricosus)
Wolf, gray (Canis lupus)
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