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Article: As endangered list grows, so does struggle to save species.
- Article from:
- The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, PA)
- Article date:
- December 29, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Philadelphia Inquirer. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Dawn Fallik
PHILADELPHIA _ The dwarf wedge mussel isn't exactly a stunner in the freshwater beauty pageant world _ even though it's a Web site's January 2004 "Mussel of the Month."
It's small. It's brown. It's an introverted kind of invertebrate, spending most of its time buried in mud.
But mussels act as the canaries of moving waters. They spend their lives as pumps, filtering water through their shells all day. So when something goes wrong, the mussels are among the first to die. And a lot of them are dead.
Now, 30 years after President Richard M. Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law on Dec. 28, 1973, ...