Venus flytraps caught in shrinking natural habitat

One of nature's most recognized wonders, the venus flytrap's ability to snatch living prey makes it a favorite of elementary school science classes everywhere. Yet the flytrap is falsely ferocious: It's hardly the man-eating Audrey Jr. from "The Little Shop of Horrors," but a tiny plant only a few inches tall with leaves no bigger than a thumbprint.

These days, the little plant is more vulnerable than ever. And despite its popularity, the people who could protect it seem focused on other problems.

The flytrap's natural habitat exists only within a hundred miles of the Carolinas' coast, where much larger and more territorial plants have always held forth. Booming growth and development along the coast threatens to overrun the few sensitive and thin populations of venus flytraps that still exist in the wild.

An Associated Press review of state botany records found that nearly 80 percent of the 117 identified wild populations of flytraps in North Carolina have little chance of surviving, have been wiped out altogether or haven't been seen in years. Most of the viable clusters are in nature preserves, yet experts believe some of those could be thinned by encroaching humans.