BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 23, 2023
Furbish’s lousewort only grows on the gravelly shores of the St. John-Wolastoq River, nowhere else on Earth. Because of its endangered status, its rediscovery in the 1970s helped stop the Dickey-Lincoln School Dam, which would have destroyed 88,000 acres of Maine forest. Twenty-two years later, The Nature Conservancy purchased 185,000 acres along the river. We have continued to conserve much of the crucially important habitat for Furbish’s lousewort and a variety of other globally rare plants. Recently, Furbish’s lousewort was reclassified from federally “endangered” to “threatened,” signaling a reduction in threat level and a change in federal legal protection. Furbish’s lousewort has not experienced the recovery and stabilization of its populations that would support the reclassification. Biodiversity provides much-needed strength and resilience on a rapidly changing planet. ~ Joshua Royte, The Nature Conservancy in Maine