Somebody needs to dope-slap these bureaucrats. Where did anyone get the idea that all species alive today must remain alive for all time? What essential ecological niche do these obscure species fill anyway? Are the spotted owl, the snail darter, kangaroo rat, or the dodo bird necessary for anything? Were our lives diminished one jot by the extinction of the dodo (except for the lack of delicious dodo products in our supermarkets)? HEY EPA! Most species have become extinct from the beginning of life on earth. Otherwise we'd be up to our armpits in trilobites (or worse, velociraptors).