By Mark Collette, Caller-Times [1] (excerpted)
CORPUS CHRISTI - For 31 years, one woman has been a savior, advocate, dogged researcher, champion and mother for a creature that once teetered on the brink of extinction.Now, after all those years, it looks like her babies are growing up.
In September, Donna Shaver's work with the endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle culminated in a report that was unthinkable 17 years ago.
Within about three years, the ridleys could be downlisted from endangered to threatened, Shaver and other biologists believe. Wildlife officials in the United States and Mexico released the second revision of a Kemp's ridley recovery plan, last updated in 1992, that now predicts the species will be off the threatened list by 2024. ...continue reading [1]
