AP Wire | 02/10/2005 | Law­mak­ers announce new push to change Endan­gered Species Act:

More than 1,800 plants and ani­mals are now list­ed as threat­ened or endan­gered. The Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice says about 40 have been tak­en off the list over the years — few­er than half of those because they recov­ered, and the oth­ers because they went extinct or for tech­ni­cal reasons.

Let’s get this straight. Eigh­teen hun­dred species have been iden­ti­fied as at risk of extinc­tion. Of those, around one per­cent are no longer in dan­ger, a hand­ful were removed because of tax­o­nom­ic revi­sion, and around 1% of these at-risk species went extinct. If a gov­ern­ment pro­gram iden­ti­fied kids at the great­est risk of using drugs, and after they entered the pro­gram, only 1% actu­al­ly used drugs, it would be the most suc­cess­ful gov­ern­ment pro­gram ever.

Ever.