Species images - Joel Sartore

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FIS023-00490

Several species of invertebrates cling to a bougainvillea hydroid stem at Gulf Specimen in Panacea, Florida.

The orange piece at bottom is a staghorn bryozoan (Schizoporella unicornis.)

The gray fleshy material second from bottom is a cluster of clear sea squirt (Clavelina picta).

The yellow round objects are banded tulip snail eggs (Fasciolaria hunteria).

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FIS023-00489

Several species of invertebrates cling to a bougainvillea hydroid stem at Gulf Specimen in Panacea, Florida.

The orange piece at bottom is a
Staghorn bryozoan (Schizoporella unicornis.)

The gray fleshy material second from bottom is a cluster of clear sea squirt (Clavelina picta.)

The yellow round objects are banded tulip snail eggs (Fasciolaria hunteria).

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FIS027-00017

A silver perch (Bairdiella chrysoura) at the Virginia Aquarium.

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ESA001-00163

The living room of a native American family in the Pacific Northwest shows images of past and present realities of this salmon-centered culture.

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These are steelhead salmon smolts (Oncorhynchus mykiss) being raised at a hatchery. They will soon be transported to release streams in the hope that some of them will survive their migration to the sea; but the heavily dammed Columbia river and its tributaries have become an obstacle course for several imperiled species. In addition the Native Americans, to whom the salmon runs are crucial, find fishing very poor. (US: Threatened)

Unplanned product of a foster-parent program for endangered whooping cranes (Grus americana), a "whoopill" was sired out of a whooper out of a great Sandhill crane (Grus canadensis canadensis). Having failed to produce a single breeding female, biologists have abandoned their efforts to create a viable flock of whooping cranes, whose numbers in the wild have crept from 51 in 1973 to about 165 today. Many think that, rather than struggling to restore a creature so near extinction, efforts should be concentrated on species in the early stages of danger.

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ESA001-00165

Unplanned product of a foster-parent program for endangered whooping cranes (Grus americana), a “whoopill” was sired out of a whooper out of a great Sandhill crane (Grus canadensis canadensis). Having failed to produce a single breeding female, biologists have abandoned their efforts to create a viable flock of whooping cranes, whose numbers in the wild have crept from 51 in 1973 to about 165 today. Many think that, rather than struggling to restore a creature so near extinction, efforts should be concentrated on species in the early stages of danger.

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ESA001-00160

This tiny snail darter (Percina tanasi) stalled the construction of Tellico dam on the Little Tennessee river. Though the dam was built, the Endangered Species Act was henceforth seen in many quarters as an enemy of progress.

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ESA001-00161

This bird earned questionable notoriety as a job buster. It is the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis), listed as threatened in 1990; it w as expected to cause thousands of job losses by disrupting logging in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. The actual cost of protection to the regional economy is not yet known.

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ESA001-00156

Fragmentation of fragile habitat has added to the woes of the once-hardy desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizi). They are collected from soon-to-be-developed lands and sent to a center where they are adopted, euthanized (if ill), or used for research.

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ESA001-00157

South of Los Angeles the implacable sprawl of single-family homes like these has reached critical mass. Or so think local environmentalists, who are challenging new developments to safeguard dwindling parcels of coastal sage scrub, habitat of the California gnatcatcher. Increasingly, developers compromise by setting aside land for imperiled species.

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ESA001-00158

Hit-and-run victims on Florida’s busy waterways, injured manatees maintain vital buoyancy only with the aid of inflatable wet suits at Orlando’s Sea World.

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ESA001-00159

A prodigy of adaptation, the endangered least tern (Sterna albifrons) survived the test of evolution by nesting on barren sandbars, protected from predators by the swift flow of surrounding rivers. These moated habitats are created by naturally occurring spring floods, which humans now spend millions to prevent.

A snorkeler reaches out to a vulnerable (IUCN) and federally endangered manatee (Trichechus manatus) in Florida.

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ANI022-00036

A snorkeler reaches out to a vulnerable (IUCN) and federally endangered manatee (Trichechus manatus) in Florida.