The endangered Endangered Species Act

Unless you are lucky enough to see it in bloom, you might never notice the Cushenbury milk-vetch. Its slender, silvery-white stems lie flat to the ground, and its delicate pink-purple flowers emerge for just a few months. The Cushenbury milk-vetch is no soaring California condor or howling gray wolf, but it too has barely dodged extinction because it is protected by one of America's bedrock environmental laws: the federal Endangered Species Act.

By Andrew E. Wetzler

September 14, 2008