Tiny frogs and toads used to swarm over the Sierra Nevada. Now, the government says nearly 2 million acres of land needs to be preserved to prevent them from going extinct.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article164578712.html
Even though almost all North American snakes avoid humans when given the chance, occasionally you can encounter ones like Great Basin Gopher Snakes, California Kingsnakes or even rattlesnakes that get discovered before they can vanish. That doesn't happen very often to the Red Racer, a snake so fast that they can quickly disappear even if you do see them before they see you.
The color of T-shirts people wear affects escape behavior in western fence lizards, according to a study published August 9, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170809142029.htm
Winding through Long Beach, Calif., the murky San Gabriel River contains trash, the runoff from a flood channel and the outflow from two power plants.
Officials said Cascades frogs have been lost from most of the mountain lakes and streams of Northern California where they once lived, primarily due to disease and introduction of nonnative fish.
Desert tortoises are dying at alarming rates, primarily due to invasive species of grass, especially red brome and cheatgrass. Foreign to the Mojave Desert, these grasses are not as nutritious to tortoises as their normal forage.
https://www.fws.gov/cno/newsroom/featured/2017/desert_tortoise_survival/
