September 4 is National Wildlife Day, founded in 2005 to promote animal welfare and highlight endangered and threatened species. This bald eagle, the United States’ national bird, was photographed in flight over Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Wyoming, a stretch of the Green River protected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as habitat for eagles, sage grouse, and other prairie and river wildlife. Bald eagles were themselves once endangered, driven to the brink by DDT pesticide poisoning before a decades-long recovery effort brought them off the endangered species list in 2007, a case study in exactly the kind of conservation work the day is meant to recognize. Photo by Tom Koerner, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Mountain-Prairie region, public domain.