Conservation campaigners have made sure the world knows about the menaces to such famously endangered species as the sperm whale, the black rhinoceros, the giant panda and the snow leopard.
But the latest candidate for rescue from extinction is an obscure bivalve - margaritifera margaritifera, or the freshwater pearl mussel - which takes a human lifetime to grow about 16 centimetres.
It has only one, potentially fatal (for the mussel) distinction: it occasionally produces a pearl.
Today the European Parliament will turn its attention to the fate of this dull-brown bivalve as Dr Alex Sherlock, Tory Euro-MP and ecological spokesman for the European Democratic Group, moves for its full protection by the EEC.
After months of study he had produced a full report (with bibliography) on this modest shellfish, which has been translated into all the languages of the Community.
Margaritifera margaritifera is under severe threat from predatory man. In some European rivers it has died out altogether and it is declining rapidly in the south-west of England and in the more populated parts of Scotland.
The reason is that the mussel is a choosy creature. It will only live in oxygenated fast-flowing rivers, and because it is a filter feeder is extremely sensitive to pollution. Worse still, it starts its life as a parasitic larva which lives in the gills of the brown trout or salmon. No trout or salmon - no mussel.
But what makes it even more vulnerable is that after 60 years or more of life it may occasionally, very occasionally, produce a pearl. Dr Mark Young, a lecturer in the zoology department of Aberdeen University, who has been studying the mussel since 1978. said: "You could tear two hundred mussels out of the river and still not find a pearl."
He believes that the principal cause of the mussel's decline is overfishing.
In the Irish Republic, where the cleaner rivers still have pearl mussels, the same ruthless fishing has devastated stocks. Mr Eugene Ross, a doctorate student studying the mussel at University College, Galway, said: "I have seen thousands upon thousands of shells heaped up on the river bank. The smell from the rotting flesh is terrible."
In Britain the Nature Conservancy Council has asked the Government to put Margaritifera margaritifera on its protected list. And in the European Parliament it has found a stout defender in Dr Alex Sherlock who says: "The idea of any species dying out bothers me.
"The mussel also had value as an indicator of pollution."
He is asking the European Parliament to consider making pearl fishers apply for a licence. Banning free-for-all fishing would put an end to casting the mussel's hard won pearls before humans.
