Oct. 5, 2011 - According to the Associated Press, "The Obama administration is taking steps to extend new federal protections to a list of imperiled animals and plants that reads like a manifest for Noah's Ark. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service already has issued decisions advancing more than 500 species toward potential new protections under the Endangered Species Act.
"Here at a single glance, you see the sweep of the Endangered Species Act," said Patrick Parenteau, an environmental law professor at the University of Vermont. "They are moving through this large backlog at a fairly crisp clip now. This is the largest number of listing actions we've seen in a very long time, in decades."