Over three thousand more species wait on a list of candidates for such status, but in the 1980s over thirty-four species went extinct while on the waiting list (Cohn, 1993). Is the ferret program representative of the national effort to recover species?
             United States policy on endangered species, including the ferret and hundreds of other plants and animals, is codified in the 1973 Endangered Species act (ESA ,as amended, U.S. Congress 1983, Bean 1991) . This piece of legislation sets a national goal the prevention of any further extinction and the restoration of species currently threatened with extinction. The ESA is a highly popular piece of legislature because no one would advocate the killing of an entire species. But the simple goal of saving a species cloaks a complicated process. The ferret case is a good illustration of how the ESA is actually outfitted, how and state officials and others tackle the complex work of restoring species, and how problems come about in nearly all recovery plans. In short, the ferret rescue is a measure of how the ESA really works.
             After finding the small population in Wyoming, in 1981, one might expect a well led and smoothly coordinated recovery eff
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