Ever seen a Tomah mayfly?

The prehistoric insect has been spotted in 15 places worldwide – 11 of the locations are in our back yard. But, chances are, most Mainers will never see this extremely rare species.

Although the Tomah mayfly has been listed as endangered by both state and federal conservation agencies, the nondescript gray bug lacks the verve of a blue whale or a peregrine falcon.

It just isn’t sexy enough to get noticed, said Steve Ressel, director of the Natural History Museum at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor.

The Tomah mayfly is among the unlikely stars of “Plants and Animals in Peril: Maine’s Endangered Species,” a new traveling exhibit created by students from COA.

“People probably don’t know about some of the gems that we have here in Maine,” said Mark McCollough, leader of the endangered species group at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Wildlife conservation issues are filtering into the science curriculum, but Maine schoolchildren rarely study the biodiversity at stake in the guise of 200 plant and 47 animal species that are considered threatened or endangered in the state, McCollough said.

“Kids are learning about the treasures of the tropical rain forest, but they don’t recognize the treasures that we have here in Maine,” Ressel said.

Nearly five years ago, Ressel and McCollough first discussed collaborating on an exhibit that would feature local plants and animals, and spark visitors’ interest in conservation efforts.

“Plants and Animals in Peril” finally opened in January, because more than 20 college students spent three semesters conceiving, designing and crafting the interactive exhibits that now grace the Stanley Oliver Grierson Gallery at COA.

“They’ve really made these tiny animals speak,” McCollough said.

A series of dioramas, perched on wheeled wooden cases stenciled “fragile,” touch on the connected aspects of preserving a rare species, from the scientific to the political.

Hinged panels topped with three-dimensional objects – the sole of a shoe, a cluster of frog’s eggs, a diploma – engage visitors and encourage them to peek beneath for an explanation, creating what Ressel calls “a sense of discovery.”

One diorama depicts the successful protection of piping plover chicks in their nesting areas on Maine beaches; another shows the field research that has led to the identification of the northern bog lemming, threatened in Maine.

What appears to be a modernist sculpture is symbolic of the causes of species extinction. A fishing net, a dribbling pipe and a patch of black asphalt are intertwined in a relationship as complex as that of the problems they represent: overharvesting of species, environmental pollution and habitat destruction.

“We’re hoping to whet people’s appetites, without trivializing the issues,” Ressel explained.

An interactive display addresses the politics of species protection with a video produced by COA student Jessie Davis. The production presents Mainers’ disparate opinions on the preservation of right whales, Atlantic salmon and gray wolves.

“We wanted to convey the multiple voices that go into whether a species is listed or not,” Ressel said. “There are strong views converging there, and that’s the point.”

A large banner, created by COA student Jesse Hammer, displays the staggering list of rare plants and animals that can be found in Maine. But nowhere does the exhibit click off the number of species lost each year, or day, or hour.

“We didn’t want to talk ‘at’ visitors. We wanted to avoid all that sort of apocalyptic, preachy text that we knew would be a turnoff,” Ressel said. “People should not fear that it’s Big Brother coming down to ruin their lives.”

The commonality that links each portion of the exhibit is a philosophy – much like that of COA itself – that the best way to solve a complex problem is to present information to spark individuals to think of their own solutions.

“The idea of the exhibit was to ask questions of the viewer, more than to dictate ideas,” said Hammer, a Massachusetts native who will graduate from COA in the spring.

“We would feel that we accomplished something if they leave the exhibit with an opinion,” Ressel added. “Any opinion is better than ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t have time to think about it.'”

Limited funding for endangered species programming has limited the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s outreach, so the COA exhibit is a perfect complement to state efforts, McCollough said.

“We’ve tried our best, but we just don’t have the capacity to reach out to the public as much as we’d like to,” he said. “By necessity, we often choose the ‘poster children’ to tell our story.”

With endorsements from DIF&W and Acadia National Park, the college received two private grants that funded the majority of the exhibit’s costs: $16,500 from the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund and $5,000 from the William P. Wharton Trust.

However, little funding of this sort is available to McCollough and his peers at DIF&W, and this lack of financial support for public initiatives has built a motley state record for endangered species conservation, according to the exhibit.

Maine is among only a handful of states that have created their own species listings, but the DIF&W department in charge of creating the list and informing the public hasn’t seen a budget increase in more than a decade.

Under Maine law, plants may be listed as threatened or endangered, but only animal species qualify for the funding necessary to create a recovery plan. And of the 34 animals listed as endangered in Maine, such plans have been completed for only four species. The Tomah mayfly is not among the chosen.

But Maine also invites more public participation in the process of identifying and protecting rare species than nearly any other state, McCullough said.

So the exhibit cuts through bureaucracy to show viewers how they can become involved in the preservation of rare plants and animals, from writing to congressional representatives on the postcards provided, to buying a conservation plate for their car, or even taking part in species population surveys through DIF&W.

“Every single person is empowered to make a difference,” said Cherie Mason, an environmentalist and author from Sunset who wrote the text for “Plants and Animals in Peril.” “This is not something that’s only in Augusta, it’s right in your own back yard.”

The calls to action included throughout the exhibit distinguish it from the often passive displays of endangered plants and animals that most museums present.

“The activist voice that pervades this exhibit is very different,” McCollough said. “Most people go to the museum and expect to be entertained or informed – they don’t expect to be involved.”

When its yearlong run at COA is completed in January 2002, the exhibit tentatively is scheduled to go to the Maine Audubon Society offices in Falmouth.

From there, McCollough hopes the exhibit will reach Gov. Angus King and other policy-makers in Augusta. “I would love for it to go to the halls of the state Legislature,” he said. “There’s a lot they could learn.”

Finally, the interactive displays will travel north and west to reach as many of Maine’s schoolchildren as possible in coming years.

“We’d like it to go to all four corners of the state,” Ressel said.

A curriculum that parallels the lessons of the exhibit will be available to elementary school teachers statewide by mid-March, said Dianne Clendaniel, program director for the COA Natural History Museum. Written on a fourth-grade level, the curriculum includes about a week’s worth of lessons that address the learning results for most subject areas through a study of endangered species in Maine, she said.

Although “Plants and Animals in Peril” provides information that would jolt any adult into thought, it is primarily aimed at the school classes that visit the museum, Mason said.

“Children are sponges. They’re the future,” she said. “They’ll be the voters who fix the mistakes that my generation has made.”

The Natural History Museum at College of the Atlantic is open 1-4 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Sunday and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday. For more information, contact the museum at 288-5395.