As we agonize over ongoing extinctions, we also need to remember how far and how quickly we’ve come in avoiding them, and how we’ve saved species once on the brink such as the wood duck, great egret, snowy egret, wild turkey, eastern bluebird, American alligator, fisher, gray wolf, and pronghorn, to mention just a few.Northern Spotted OwlConsider the protracted spotted-owl wars in the Pacific Northwest. The bird is still declining, politicians are still bloviating, the timber cartel is still suing. But what’s so encouraging about the wars is that they’re happening. Moreover, the bird may now have a future. In June 2011 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hatched its revised recovery plan, and in November 2012 it nearly doubled critical habitat.While the plan hasn’t inspired environmentalists to handsprings, Seattle 蜜柚APP Society director Shawn Cantrell says this: “It’s telling that, unlike the other plans, no [green] group has challenged this one in court. We’d like...