The national debate over protecting fragile species comes to life in Livermore, Calif., where upscale housing developments push ever deeper into the rumpled blanket of grassy hills at the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay area. The threatened California red-legged frog breeds in the weedy creeks hidden in the hollows of this landscape, part of more than 4 million acres that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed in 2001 to designate as essential for the frog's recovery.

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