CALIFORNIA’S WILD HERITAGE; Threatened and Endangered Animals in the Golden State <i> By Peter Steinhart (Sierra Club Books: $12.95, illustrated) </i>

Peter Steinhart divides the state into its physical habitats and lists the endangered (“in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range”) and threatened (“likely to become an endangered species within the forseeable future”) animals in each region. The list is depressingly long, ranging from the American peregrine falcon to the El Segundo blue butterfly and Kern Canyon slender salamander. But “Heritage” is more than a litany of creatures driven to the brink of extermination. Steinhart explains that the threatened extinction of an animal species cannot be reduced to a simple conflict between an insignificant squirrel and jobs for humans. Biodiversity serves as an important indicator of the condition of the local environment: If a region no longer can support a breeding population of Northern spotted owls (or any other indigenous fauna), it has been more seriously damaged than may be readily apparent. Like the canaries that 19th-Century coal miners took down into the shafts, the planet’s animals serve as living alarms.