An inconspicuous wetland plant from the northeastern United States needed 35 years to recover from the brink of extinction. On July 10, 2026, the US Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Northeastern bulrush (Scirpus ancistrochaetus) from the federal list of endangered species. When the plant was placed under protection in 1991, only 13 known populations remained in six states. Today, there are 148, distributed across eight states.
From 13 to 148 Populations in 35 Years
The Northeastern bulrush is an herb up to 1.20 meters tall, a perennial from the sedge family. It grows exclusively in seasonal wetlands of the northeastern United States: small, shallow depressions that fill with water in spring and dry up in summer. Precisely this dependence on a specific, difficult-to-protect habitat had brought the species to the brink of extinction.
In 1991, biologists registered just 13 populations in six states. The main causes of decline were wetland drainage for agriculture and development, plus the encroachment of invasive plant species into remaining habitats.
The path to recovery was lengthy. The Wetland Trust and the Upper Susquehanna Coalition started a pilot program in 2014 to propagate and transplant the species, successfully establishing new populations in New York. Vermont used federal Recovery Land Acquisition Grants to purchase and secure several properties with suitable habitats. The combination of habitat protection, removal of invasive species and targeted introduction of new populations worked. Today, 148 known populations exist in eight states: Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.
The Fish and Wildlife Service emphasized in the official delisting statement that threats to the species had been reduced to a level that no longer meets the criteria of an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. For the next five years, the law mandates a monitoring program.
What Scientists Point Out
The decision to remove the species from the list entirely is not undisputed among researchers. Kendra Cipollini, plant biologist at Wilmington College and one of the leading experts on the Northeastern bulrush, told Inside Climate News: "Completely delisting it is premature." She pointed to climate change, ongoing habitat loss and insufficient genetic diversity within known populations as continuing risks.
Cipollini also emphasized the plant's function as an umbrella species: the protection status had also protected seasonal wetlands and thereby indirectly secured frog and salamander species dependent on these habitats. With the loss of species protection status, this protective effect for the entire ecosystem also disappears.
In Comparison: Other Species Comebacks Show the Pattern
The Northeastern bulrush is far from the first species conservation success of this magnitude, but it demonstrates a recurring pattern: even seemingly hopeless cases can recover if the causes of decline are consistently addressed.
The Iberian lynx was considered the world's most endangered cat species in 2001 with only about 60 adult animals remaining. Through a breeding program, targeted reintroductions and improved rabbit populations as primary prey, the number according to WWF conservation data rose to over 2,400 animals in Spain and Portugal by end of 2024, a 19 percent increase in 2024 alone. The lynx is today no longer threatened with extinction.
The European bison (Bison bonasus) was hunted to extinction in the wild in 1927. Through breeding and reintroduction programs, according to WWF, approximately 7,200 European bison now live in the wild in Europe, mainly in Poland, Belarus and Russia. In Germany, a wild herd has existed in the Rothaar Mountains in North Rhine-Westphalia since 2013. In 2020, the World Conservation Union IUCN downlisted the bison from "endangered" to "vulnerable".
The white-tailed eagle in Germany follows a similar pattern: in the 1990s, Germany had around 240 breeding pairs; the NABU today records over 1,000 breeding pairs across the country.
Three Conditions That Determine the Future
The statutorily mandated five-year monitoring will show whether populations continue to stabilize even without formal protection status. Three factors will be decisive.
First: climate change. Seasonal wetlands change with increasingly unpredictable precipitation patterns. The plant depends on the cycle between spring flooding and summer drying. Dry summers, once rare, are becoming more frequent and intense.
Second: development pressure. Seasonal wetlands are often small and inconspicuous enough to be overlooked in construction planning. The species protection status had previously helped identify these areas and protect them from development. This legal mechanism now disappears.
Third: genetic diversity. 148 populations sound like many, but biological reality is more complex: if these populations are genetically too similar and too isolated from each other, a single extreme event can affect multiple populations simultaneously. The monitoring program will also investigate this question and provide the foundation for possible future protective measures.