YANKTON, S.D. (AP) - An Army Corps of Engineers team at Yankton has been recognized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for its efforts to protect and restore threatened and endangered species on the Missouri River.

The Gavins Point Threatened and Endangered Species Office is one of 16 recipients nationwide of a 2007 Recovery Champion Award from the Fish and Wildlife Service.

It was singled out for its Missouri River Recovery Program that focuses on the least tern, piping plover and the pallid sturgeon.

The least tern and pallid sturgeon are on the endangered species list. The piping plover is listed as endangered.

An endangered species is one that is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its natural range.

A threatened species is one that is likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future.

"In the early 1990s, the (Fish and Wildlife) Service recognized that the job of monitoring these species on the Missouri River system was much more work than we could perform, so we turned to the corps for assistance and support," said Mike Olson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Bismarck, N.D.

The Gavins Point office holds the Missouri River science responsibilities from the headwaters at Three Forks, Mont., to the confluence at St. Louis, said Casey Kruse, section chief of the corps' team in Yankton.

"Casey Kruse and his staff in the Yankton office worked to develop and implement one of the most comprehensive and geographically challenging endangered species monitoring and recovery programs ever imagined," Olson said.