An endangered species is one whose population is so small that it is in danger of becoming extinct. Many countries have laws offering special protection to these species (forbidding hunting, banning their habitats from development, etc.) to prevent this.
Many of these laws are controversial. Typical areas of controversy include: criteria for placing a species on the endangered species list, and criteria for removing a species from the list once its population has recovered; whether restrictions on land development constitute a "taking" of land by the government, and the related question of whether private landowners should be compensated for the loss of use of their land; and obtaining reasonable exceptions to protection laws. For instance, in the United States, three firefighters died in a forest fire while firefighters waited for a committee to give them permission to use water from a nearby stream to fight the forest fire. They were prohibited from using the stream water because doing so may have endangered the trout living in the stream.
Endangered animals:
Endangered flowering plants
About 6% of the 300,000 identified species are endangered due to overcollection or destruction of habitat, for example
See also
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