America's National Parks offer such an array of recreational activities, it can be easy to forget that one of their main purposes is to protect precious ecosystems, species and resources. One of California's National Parks, however, is working hard to make sure its native inhabitants are not only surviving, but thriving.
Yesterday, on the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, Channel Islands National Park declared two formerly endangered plant species fully recovered. The Santa Cruz Island Dudleya, rare flowering succulent, and island bedstraw, a flowering member of the coffee family, are two plants that are found only on the Channel Islands and nowhere else on the planet.
