A tiny Northwestern seabird got some great news on Jan 20. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service declared that the marbled murrelet is still in need of federal protection and declined petitions to remove the bird from the list of threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The Fish and Wildlife Service cited declining populations in Oregon, Washington, and California as proof that the marbled murrelet was not ready to be removed from the protective measures that have been in place since the early 1990s. more