“Texas Hill Country is home to the golden-cheeked warbler, a true Lone Star State native. It does not breed or raise its young anywhere else in the world except in 33 Texas counties. The striking black-and-white songbird with the brilliant golden face is finicky when it comes to housing materials, building its nests from the bark of mature juniper trees.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put the warbler on the endangered species list in 1990 because its habitat in Hill Country was being sliced up and sold off to developers at such an alarming rate.
Even with the protection of the act, an estimated 1.5 million acres (nearly a third of the golden-cheeked warbler’s home range) disappeared between 1999 and 2011.
And now a coalition of groups and individuals would like to strip the warbler of its safety net altogether so developers have an easier time paving over more Hill Country habitat.” Read more from the Huffington Post