Flight Nurse Pete Emerson: Sorry, did I wake you?
Dr. Wayne Yates: No. Mopoke outside has a death wish.
Pete: They're protected, aren't they?
Wayne: Yeah, well, they're going to need the mafia.
Dr. Wayne Yates: No. Mopoke outside has a death wish.
Pete: They're protected, aren't they?
Wayne: Yeah, well, they're going to need the mafia.
— RFDS season 2 premiere
One day the main characters find a pest in their home or workplace. However, just as one of them is about to shoo it away or, if one of them isn't so merciful, exterminate it, an Obstructive Bureaucrat shows up telling them that the animal is endangered, and thus killing it or even evicting it would constitute a crime.
Now the characters have to deal with an annoying and troublesome pest that they just can't get rid of, or even possibly have to actively ensure its safety and well-being.
This trope has roots in reality: some protected species aren't terribly pleasant to have around humans, and regulations around protected species (such as the Endangered Species Act in the United States) can be difficult for private citizens to navigate. In fact, one of the criticisms sometimes leveled at such laws is that they can create a perverse incentive
for landowners and developers to quietly kill and dispose of the species or preemptively destroy a habitat, rather than go through channels and risk whatever project they were planning being cancelled by the government in favor of preserving the population.
A reasonably common Invoked variation of the trope has a character deliberately introducing a protected species to a location in order to cause problems for another character.
Related to this is the Unwanted Gift Plot, in which a bothersome or simply unwanted gift is received. The Endangered Pest may bring the attention of an Animal Wrongs Group.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Kyo Kara Maoh!: Yuri discovers a few creatures in the Demon Kingdom are treated differently than he expects:
- Dragons are endangered and kept in a protected forest preservation away from poachers. While Yuri initially assumes he's meant to slay one, instead they have to stop poachers, and he and Wolfram bond with a dragon baby they call "Pochi."
- When exploring an abandoned building in the castle, Wolfram and Yuri discover giant monstrous eggs inhabiting the place, which they take to be monster eggs and nearly kill a few before they hatch. They turn out to be the rare and endangered bearbees, and Wolfram insists they are now Yuri and Wolfram's children as they helped hatch them. For bonus pain, the bearbees always nest where they hatch, turning the building permanently into disuse for regular bearbee mating season.
Comic Strips
- Blondie (1930): In one week's worth of strips, Dagwood's plans for his property was stopped due to an endangered animal being found there. By the end, a predator had eaten the pest and Dagwood's plans could continue.
Film — Animated
- Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder: Leela has to keep the last survivor of a parasitic leech species alive, despite it constantly attacking her.
- Lilo & Stitch: Invoked. Cobra Bubbles once protected the Earth by claiming it was a nature preserve for the endangered mosquito.
- Played for Laughs in Rio where Jewel once gave one of her human handlers a shiner, but it’s implied she didn’t face any repercussions on account if being an endangered bird.
Film — Live-Action
- Dr. Dolittle 2 revolves around an attempt to invoke this trope to stop a logging project by reintroducing a rare subspecies of grizzly bear to the forest: there's a wild female, so Dolittle tries to set her up with a released captive male to trigger protected species regulations.
- Hook has Peter Banning's 5-billion-dollar real estate deal falls apart because the Sierra Club discovered a rare species of owl living on the land. While the owl isn't seen, it's described as a cozy blue owl about 10 inches tall and needs a 50-mile territory radius for mating purposes. Peter, who has been neglecting to spend time with his children for these business deals, ends up venting his anger upon his kids when they're making too much noise for him to comprehend the bad news.
Literature
- Hoot: The burrowing owls aren't pests, but they happen to live in a lot scheduled to become a pancake house. Those in charge of the project don't care and have every intention of bulldozing the area, owls included. The only thing stopping them is a kid constantly vandalizing their equipment. The hero eventually realizes that burrowing owls are endangered, allowing the kids to save them through legal means.
Live-Action TV
- Chili TV: One short had the cast in a Star Trek parody. Their mission was to transport an alien, supposedly the last of its kind. It turned out to be both extremely annoying to Only Sane Man Bernd and definitely not the last, as by the end there were dozens of the things following him around.
- Kickin' It: Right after the teens have found the perfect area to build a skate park for their town, Kim and Milton find out that an endangered vole lives in that exact part of the forest. Against the opinions of their peers, they contact the officials and let them know, meaning that the area will become protected and can't be built on. The main conflict of the episode comes from the teens facing their angry skateboarder classmates.
- Married... with Children: Exploited in "Field of Screams". The football field where Al had the greatest experience of his life (four touchdowns in one game) is going to be bulldozed to build a very profitable and productive car factory. The field is saved when he nearly dies from being bitten repeatedly by "the rare and poisonous African Pang beetle", which has established a colony in the field after Kelly swiped them from the Chicago Institute of Bugs and Vermin and accidentally released one.
- Another episode saw Al trying to get rid of a bird whose chirping was keeping him up at night, only for him to get stuck with it when it turns out to be an endangered species.
- RFDS (2021): Season 2 has a minor Running Gag about a mopoke (a kind of owl) that seems to be stalking Wayne and making noise whenever he tries to get some shut-eye. It's a protected species, so, much to his chagrin, he can't scare it off.
- Saturday Night Live: A friendly outdoor barbecue is interrupted by an ugly giant bird landing in the middle of the table. The men try to shoo it away, and eventually (since it won't leave) they beat it to death. At the end of the sketch, the camera zooms in on a newspaper in the background with the headline "Rare California Condor released back into the wild" with a photo that looks exactly like the bird they just got done killing.
- Tremors: El Blanco is considered an endangered species. The locals have to put up with his periodic and dangerous passes through town, as his presence is the only reason why Melvin doesn't bulldoze the sleepy community to put up condos.
- The Vicar of Dibley: In "Summer", the local water company plans to turn the Dibley valley into a new reservoir to alleviate a drought. Owen hatches a plan to invoke the trope to stop the town from being destroyed for the reservoir by making his farm the sole home of a rare breed of livestock: a three-legged cow. To wit, "I've got a four-legged cow... and a sharp axe." Inexplicably, this actually works: rather than bowing to the demonstrations led by Geraldine, the project is cancelled on grounds of the "discovery" of a one-legged chicken on Owen's farm.
- Yes, Minister: in "The Right to Know", a site of proposed development is blocked by protestors who say it is a habitat for badgers (it is illegal to interfere with badger setts in the UK). Hacker's own daughter Lucy sympathises with the badgers' plight and threatens to embarrass him politically by saying she will protest nude. However, it becomes doubtful how legitimate the site's status as a badger habitat really is, and Humphrey manages to put Lucy off the idea of protesting by stating that the site is infested with rats instead.
Webcomics
- PvP: A panda takes up residence in the magazine offices, and makes a habit out of attacking Brent. Unfortunately, pandas are endangered.
Western Animation
- Family Guy: "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows": Peter grows a beard and somehow has a bird of an endangered species make a nest in it. It causes a bit of trouble for him when he goes to watch a film at a movie theater.
- Fugget About It: Canadian hosers are seen as an endangered people by the Heritage Protection Council of Canada, who grant them free protection from harm and supply them with unlimited amounts of beer, coffee, and cigarettes from the government. Three of them move in next door to Jimmy and proceed to annoy him at every opportunity due to him being unable to touch them, until they're outed as frauds and get their protection status revoked.
- Looney Tunes: In "My Favorite Duck", Daffy Duck pesters camper Porky Pig, and whenever Porky tries to get even, Daffy points out that he's not allowed to hurt ducks out of season, producing various signs confirming this. Unfortunately for Daffy, duck season opens halfway through the cartoon, and any sign Daffy finds only encourages Porky to shoot him.
- My Gym Partner's a Monkey: One episode has Adam forced to shadow a new panda bear student named Ding Pang. Throughout the episode, Ding Pang causes trouble for Adam and the other students, but he's able to get himself out of any well deserved beatings because he's an endangered species under protection. It's then revealed Ding Pang is actually a former student named Larry Raccoon in a panda bear disguise and, with the ruse exposed, Adam and the others immediately take their revenge by pelting him with dodgeballs.
- The Simpsons: "The Frying Game" starts off with the Simpsons stuck dealing with a "Screamapillar" early in the episode. It is a caterpillar that screams with great intensity despite its size, is sexually attracted to fire, and needs constant reassurance or it will die. Typical of Homer, he nearly kills the creature, which results in him and Marge doing community service.
- Sonic Boom: In "Do Not Disturb", an endangered creature called a Widabit wanders into Sonic's shack, and due to a series of government regulations, Sonic is unable to move the ugly and smelly creature, forcing the hedgehog to live with Tails until the Widabit is relocated to a preserve. Sick of living with Sonic, Tails creates an invention to call a male Widabit. Tails' invention works so well that it calls a huge bunch of Widabits, allowing the herd to be moved. Unfortunately, due to how long it will take to move them to a preserve, Sonic has to live with Tails for another week.
- South Park: In the episode "Jakovasaurus", the town saves the eponymous species from extinction; however, the townspeople find that the Jakovasauruses are an extremely annoying race that only Eric Cartman can stand.
- An episode of Timon & Pumbaa had the meerkat-warthog duo at odds with an obnoxious woodpecker (voiced by Gilbert Gottfried) who's pecking is causing them headaches. They soon put him in a cage, to which he threatens to get them thrown in prison by showing them a card that classifies him as an endangered animal and instructing them to free him. Timon manages to use this against him by letting the woodpecker go...into a volcano.
