Photo Credit: NJDEP

The Obama administration issued a new “candidate notice of review” Tuesday identifying 244 plants and animals that need Endangered Species Act protections to avoid extinction.

The 244 candidates are a wide variety, from shorebirds like the red knot, which migrates along the Atlantic Coast in one of the longest migrations in the animal world, to the aboriginal pricklyapple, a cactus found in Florida, and the Pacific fisher, a relative of the mink and otter that is dependent on old-growth forests on the West Coast.