The Black Footed Ferret whose chattering calls once startled predators from Montana to Texas. Hellbender Salamanders, the 2-foot long amphibian giant of cold, clean mountain streams of eastern West Virginia, eastern Tennessee and Georgia’s northern mountains. San Bernardino Bluegrass waltzing with the wind in California’s Laguna, San Bernardino, Laguna, and Palomar mountains. The swamps of Louisiana, Alabama and Florida hiding the answer to the mystery of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker.

These are four of the most Endangered species in the United States, and, for many of us, these and the other 414 animals and 613 plants (as of this writing), listed as endangered U.S. species are our neighbors. They inhabit, or once inhabited, the fields, forests, deserts, Great Plains, river valleys and seashores that are now home to farms, town parks, city neighborhoods, suburban housing tracts, factories, shopping malls, streets and highways in every state in America.

There are more than 5,000 species of plants and animals recognized as endangered throughout the world. The United States’ own Endangered Species often compete for attention with Snow Leopards, Giant Pandas, Mountain Gorillas and other animals more frequently in the media spotlight.

While all endangered species deserve study and attention it’s important to remember that endangered species exist not only in far away jungles or remote wilderness regions of the world visited most often through magazine articles and television documentaries. They are also struggling to exist in the remaining wild spaces and places of our neighborhoods, cities and states.

More than 308 million people live in tens of thousands of communities in the United States. We frequently know our human neighbors but what we often overlooked are our ‘wild’ neighbors – the animal and plant species that are attempting to adapt and co-exist not only in national parks and protected areas, but in the wild places in and around our communities.

Chinook salmon return to spawning grounds via the rivers in Washington State’s largest metropolitan areas. Leafy Prairie Clover competes for survival in Cook County, Illinois. Leatherback Turtles nest on 68 Florida beaches. The Atlantic, Central, Mississippi and Pacific flyways provide critical habitat for endangered migratory birds in 44 states. These and all species, endangered or not, are stolen from our minds and hidden from our concern by our busy lives.

The personal discovery of endangered species begins with the understanding that these plants and animals exist not ‘out there’, but ‘over there’ in city parks, along riverbanks and farm fields, in urban forests and local creeks, gullies, swamps and streams. When we re-examine these places with open-minded curiosity we will discover our wildest and most endangered neighbors.