COVER N. 539 - USA

Postmark: North Pole,AK 99705 09.10.2024

Posted on the 9th October; Received on the 3rd December 2024

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Couldn't be more in season.... December has come and I'm already receiving correspondence from the North Pole.....😀

Thanks a lot A.W. both for the very carefully laid out cover  and the nice stamps inside. Truly appreciated it.

A. W.'s nice cover was purposefully sent on World Post Day, as the label affixed on the cover clearly points out.

The stamps used are part of the  twenty Forever self-adhesive stamps dedicated to Joel Sartore's  Photo Ark Project issued by USPS on 19MAY2023.

I took a quick look at the Photo Ark's website and by today 16,003 species have already been photographed and documented for eternity. Just as a curious side note, when I received the first cover using any of these stamps, in 2023, in June last year, the website counter showed 14,000, so a couple thousand  more have been added since.

The stamps feature photos in the classic black background Photo Ark scheme, of the following animals (clockwise from the top of the envelope):

- Key Largo cotton mouse (Peromyscus gossypinus allapaticola).

This rodent of the Crecetidae family is a subspecies of P. gossypinus, endemic to Key Largo, in the United States of America.

Urban development in its distribution area with the consequent habitat loss is the reason why this species is labelled as "At Risk" by the American Fish and  Wildlife Service.

- Black footed ferret (Mustela nigripes) 

Once declares extinct, this member of the Mustelidae family has been slowly making its comeback after the discovery in Wyoming of a residual population in 1981 and now more than 200 individuals exist in the wild. Still a number that does not prevent it from being classified by the IUCN as "Endangered".

- Vancouver Island Marmot (Marmota vancouverensis)

A rodent of the Sciuridae family, is one of the only 5 species of land mammals that are endemic to Canada.

After also having been in the brink of extinction, with only 32 adults in the wild in 2006, thanks to a continuous protection programme the numbers of  wild Vancouver marmots have been slowly rising, with 250 individuals being counted by the end of 2021. Still IUCN considers the species as “Critically Endangered".

Florida Panther (Puma concolor couguar)

Once thought to be a subspecies of the american cougar, genetic studies have led to the conclusion that  Florida Panthers are members of a cougar population inhabiting South Florida, with only 200 individuals believed to exist in the wild.

As a result of this reclassification, the Florida Panther which appeared as Puma concolor coryi in the IUCN lists as Endangered or Critically Endangered is no longer registered, but continues to be considered as an endangered species under the American Endangered Species Act of 1973.

Mexican wolf (Canis lupus baileyi)

This subspecies of the grey wolf once inhabited areas of eastern and southeastern Arizona and western and southern New Mexico as well as fragmented areas of northern Mexico. 

Given their extremely now numbers at some point, American and Mexican environmental agencies collaborated to save the species from extinction and all the existing individuals in the wild (five in total,  four male and one pregnant female) were captured in 1976 and, once put in protection centres, these formed the nucleus for developing a growing population which led to 11 individuals being again released into the wild in 1988, in Arizona. 

By 2024, the total population numbers 257 individuals in the United States, 45 in Mexico and 380 in captive breeding programmes. 

The Mexican Wolf is considered to be “Critically Imperilled” in the NatureServe classification system.

The Postmark hails from North Pole, a city in the Fairbanks North Star Borough, in the state of Alaska, with a population of approximately 2250 inhabitants.