America's Endangered Species: Don't Say Goodbye

Follow two young photographers intent on creating portraits of the one hundred rarest and most endangered species in America - pictures that create an urgent poignancy, as we may have to say goodbye to a multitude of these plants and animals. Their odyssey takes them from the Florida swamp to the Kansas prairies, from the highest condor nest in California to the dark recesses of bat caves in Virginia. They have scrubbed themselves and their equipment to surgical cleanliness in order to penetrate a series of isolation chambers where the black-footed ferret lives - imprisoned by the threat of a lethal virus. They have dived to meet the manatee face-to-face even as that species is being ravaged by a mysterious infection. The photographers, Susan Middleton and David Liittschwager, are often in danger themselves, as they evade the teeth and claws of panthers and grizzlies and the lethal venom of snakes and spiders. They have also found assistance, sometimes unexpectedly; from policemen, mechanics, cowboys, housewives, naturalists and plain folk around the country who are all fighting to save the threatened wildlife from their own backyards.