Species Focus Area
Cities are habitat whether we plan for them that way or not. Urban green space often carries species with nowhere else nearby to go.
These are the species most people can actually affect — through a yard, a chimney, a streetlight, or a vacant lot.
Common threats
How people can help
These ten are not a scientific ranking. They were selected for conservation urgency, teaching value, and regional relevance, and each one has a complete, sourced profile.
Vulnerable (IUCN)
Chaetura pelagica
A bird that gave up hollow trees for masonry chimneys, and is now declining as those chimneys are capped, lined, and demolished.
Least Concern (IUCN), with steep documented decline
Chordeiles minor
A bird that nests on bare gravel rooftops in cities and is disappearing as flat roofs are resurfaced with smooth membrane.
Least Concern (IUCN), with regional declines
Progne subis
North America's largest swallow, whose eastern population nests almost entirely in housing provided by people.
Endangered (IUCN); ESA listing proposed
Myotis lucifugus
Once among the most common bats in North America, reduced by more than 90 percent in the northeast within roughly a decade by a fungal disease.
Vulnerable (IUCN); ESA listing proposed as Endangered
Perimyotis subflavus
One of the smallest bats in eastern North America, devastated by white-nose syndrome and proposed for federal endangered status.
Least Concern (IUCN), with significant colony-level vulnerability
Tadarida brasiliensis
The bat that fills Texas skies at dusk, forming some of the largest gatherings of mammals anywhere on earth — including beneath a bridge in downtown Austin.
Vulnerable (IUCN)
Terrapene carolina carolina
A long-lived land turtle declining across suburban and rural America through road mortality, habitat fragmentation, and well-meaning removal from the wild.
Least Concern (IUCN); Threatened (Texas state listed)
Phrynosoma cornutum
The Texas state reptile, once common in yards and schoolyards and now largely gone from the eastern half of the state.
Vulnerable (IUCN) / Proposed Threatened (ESA)
Danaus plexippus
A butterfly whose entire eastern population funnels through Texas twice a year on a multi-generation journey between Canada and central Mexico.
Critically Endangered (IUCN) / Endangered (ESA)
Bombus affinis
The first bumble bee protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, gone from about 87 percent of its historic range in roughly two decades.