Barely Hanging On

We sometimes forget that we share this plant with other animals and it's easy to do that because we feel that we are the superior species. We show little concern about what we do and what we do with our waste and forget what toll it has on our enviorment. Life is a very fragile thing that we all must care for because the extinction of one animal almost certainly means the endangerment of another. Here in Florida we are blessed with beautiful wild life that we can all go see all around us especially in the everglades. The everglades is one of the biggest water purifiers on this planet and most people do not know that which causes the uninformed people to be careless with how much we waste or how we waste. To think that animals that once flourished so well in our surrounding areas are now reduced to being monitored by organizations because they are about to lose a fight that seems they cannot win or do anything about. I'm only going to name a few animals that can be found from the everglades to the keys dividing them into different categories:

Fish:
Shortnose sturgeon, Atlantic sturgeon, Crystal darter, Common snook, Bluestripe shiner, Harlequin darter, Okaloosa darter, Saltmarsh topminnow, Key silverside, Suwannee bass, and the Bluenose shiner.

Amphibians:
Flatwoods salamander, Pine Barrens treefrog, Dusky gopher, Florida gopher, and the Bog frog.

Reptiles:
American alligator, Atlantic loggerhead turtle, Atlantic green turtle, American crocodile, Leatherback turtle, Big Pine Key ringneck snake, Eastern indigo snake, Alligator snapping turtle, and the Miami black-headed snake.

Birds:
Northern goshawk, Bachman's sparrow, Roseate spoonbill, Henslow's sparrow, Golden eagle, Ivory-billed woodpecker, Marsh hawk, Pigeon hawk, Arctic peregrine falcon, Whooping crane, and the Burrowing owl.

Mammals:
Florida panther, River otter, Bobcat, Everglades mink, Southeastern brown bat, Round-tailed muskrat, Florida black bear, West Indian (=Forida) manatee, Sherman's fox squirrel, Eastern chipmunk, and the Englewood mole.

These are just a few on a long list that keeps growing day by day, and if we don't do anything to help stop this process we can all rest assure that all these animals will move from the endangered list to the extinct list.