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w Evolution is occurring today, as evidenced in part by the rarity of certain species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (1977) has provided the following list of organisms that are currently recognized as threatened or endangered: No. of Endangered Species No. of Threatened Species Group of Organisms U.S. Foreign Total U.S. Foreign Total Mammals 36 227 263 2 17 19 Birds 66 144 210 1 1 Reptiles 8 46 54 1 1 Amphibians 4 9 13 1 4 Fishes 30 10 40 4 Snails 1 1 Clams 22 2 24 Insects 6 6 2 2 Total 172 439 611 11 17 28 a In addition, 92 animals and about 1,850 plants have been proposed for listing and are in review (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1977). Although only 34 species of fish are officially listed as threatened or endangered in the U.S., the Conservation Committee of the American Society of Ichthyol- ogists and Herpetologists and the Endangered Species Committee of the Amer- ican Fisheries Society provided a list, by state and population status, of 300 species and subspecies that are considered to be in danger (Miller, 1972). Man has dominated his environment and changed various aspects of it for his self-interest. The moralistic question is: Does he have the right to speed up the process of evolution by changing his environment so quickly that organisms cannot adapt to the change(s) and therefore become extinct? On the other hand, some biologists argue--should man interfere with mother nature for those species that might become extinct naturally? The moral obligation of biologists to prevent organisms from becoming extinct is philosophical, and therefore subject to controversy and argument. However, the passage of such legislation as the Endangered Species Act of 1973 indicates that many people agree that conservation agencies are obligated to preserve our fish and wildlife heritage if possible (U.S. Fish and Wild- life Service, 1976). RATIONALE FOR THE PROTECTION OF THREATENED AND ENDANGERED SPECIES Historically, fishery management was directed toward species with commercial and sport value, and wildlife management toward game species (Benson, 1970, Wildlife Management Institute, 1974 ). Researchers at universities sometimes studied nongame species because of their special interests or because they were taxonomists, and state and federal agencies may have studied a nongame species because it competed with or provided forage for game fish. In a thought-provoking paper, Pister (1976) pointed out that fish and wildlife managers were so busy trying to satisfy the ever increasing demand for a constantly dwindling harvestable resource of fish and game that they had mixed emotions about the new emphasis on nongame 4