No Longer Endangered

Reporting from New Orleans - Federal officials announced Wednesday that they were removing the brown pelican from the endangered species list, capping a century-long recovery that started under President Theodore Roosevelt.

The brown pelican is a fixture in Southern California and along the Gulf of Mexico from Texas to Florida, where Roosevelt established the first national wildlife refuge on Pelican Island to protect the bird from human slaughter.

It is an icon in Louisiana, where it is the state bird and where Interior Department officials assembled Wednesday at the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge near New Orleans to proclaim the brown pelican "fully recovered" and no longer in need of federal protection.