taking from public lands and intrastate transport and sale of certain rare plant species. The Endangered Species Act would offer additional protection for the species through the recovery process and interstate/international trade prohibitions." While listing offers legal protection, preventing extinction and working toward full recovery require plans and actions. Two years after declaring the species as endangered, in 1986 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a recovery plan. The chief tactic was to produce a genetically diverse collection of trees for reproduction and reintroduction into the wild. Other priorities were to protect the habitat of remaining populations, and to study the disease and methods of propagation. Only two updates of the federal recovery plan have been published since the 1986 original recovery plan. There was an update in 2010 and another in 2020. Because the federal publications are mandated to contain complete, factual, and up-to-date information on endangered species, the 2020 update will be the primary reference for sections on this page dealing with conservation actions. Policy was also expressed in a legal document in 2021, in the agency's 2021 "Finding on a Petition to Downlist the Florida Torreya." This document is primarily relevant in the "Conservation Controversy" section of this page. In situ habitat improvement One of the "recovery actions" listed in the federal recovery plan for Torreya taxifolia is "Recovery Action 7: Reestablish Torreya in its native habitat." Because the remaining wild plants are all young stems that continue to die back and then resprout from the same rootstock, conservation actions aimed at reestablishing the species in its native range are grounded in first discovering how best to improve the habitat such that new plantings might thrive. In 2002, potted seedlings descended from the original cuttings taken a dozen years earlier were used experimentally to discover what, if any practices, could improve the prospects for success in the native habitat. None of the tested treatments (fungicide, fertilizer, lime, and combinations of such) worked; two-thirds of the sixty seedlings planted into the forest died in their first year. The 2020 recovery plan update also reported that in 2011 a new experiment was initiated in forest habitat in the native range. This time, the wild resprouted stems were all caged to prevent herbivory and damage by antler rubbing, and then treated in different ways: (1) control; (2) application of mulch; (3) application of lime; (4) experimental opening of the