No. 1207, August 24, 2023

Petition Filed to Save Mexican Bobcats

The Center for Biological Diversity just petitioned Mexico’s environmental ministry to protect bobcats under the country’s list of species at risk. 

Mexican bobcats, who live in at least 27 of Mexico’s 32 states, are the smallest of their kind — about twice the size of a house cat. They have more spots than their northern cousins but the same distinctive, face-framing tufts of fur, and are at risk from illegal trade, hunting, habitat loss, urbanization, vehicle collisions, and the U.S. border wall.

“Mexico must include bobcats as a species at risk so we can learn more about their status and save these beautiful animals from extinction,” said Alejandro Olivera, a senior scientist and Mexico representative at the Center. “Mexican authorities grant dozens of bobcat hunting permits every year, all while these cats are illegally trafficked on social media platforms.”

Help us fight for bobcats and other species with a gift to our Saving Life on Earth Fund.

Lifesaving Protection Decisions for 11 Species

Thanks to petitions and lawsuits by the Center, in the past eight days almost a dozen species have won Endangered Species Act protection or moved closer to it.

Forty-one years after declaring them worthy of federal help, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finally proposed to protect Texas kangaroo rats and two aquifer-dwelling Texas catfish species following Center lawsuits. It also proposed to protect nearly 600,000 acres of critical habitat for the adorable k-rats, who have external cheek pouches for gathering grass seeds and long hind legs for leaping.

After another Center petition and lawsuit, the Service proposed protection for four freshwater mussels and the Brawleys Fork crayfish in the Southeast. It announced that bleached sandhill skippers — extremely rare Nevada butterflies — may soon get help. And two species we petitioned and sued over won final protection and critical habitat: the sand dune phacelia of California’s coastal dunes and magnificent ramshorn snail of North Carolina.

Underfunding is one of the Service’s main excuses for delaying urgent decisions like these. You can help change that: Tell your members of Congress to support a bill to finally give the agency the money it needs to save species.

Court Scraps Massive Montana Logging Project

Responding to a suit from the Center and partners, a court just ruled against a massive logging project in Montana that threatened an imperiled population of grizzly bears and ignored the climate harms of cutting down forests that store carbon.

The project, Black Ram, would have allowed commercial logging on nearly 4,000 acres of the Kootenai National Forest, including centuries-old trees.

“This is a great win for the wild forests and grizzlies of Montana’s spectacular Yaak Valley,” said Center Senior Attorney Ted Zukoski.

Help us to keep defending grizzlies by keeping them federally protected.

Win: Key Permit Nixed for Utah Oil Trains

A federal appeals court has rejected a permit for the proposed Uinta Basin Railway, designed to quadruple oil production in Utah’s Uinta Basin and move crude oil to Gulf Coast refineries. The agency that authorized the permit didn't fully analyze how the railway might harm the climate, wildlife, water and people.

The proposed 88-mile-long railway would increase oil production — around 350,000 additional barrels a day — by linking the region’s oilfields to national rail networks.

“This is an enormous victory for our shared climate, the Colorado River, and the communities that rely on it,” said the Center’s Deeda Seed. “The Biden administration needs to dismantle this climate bomb and throw it in the trash where it belongs.”

If you were one of the people who sent 30,000 comments opposing this railway, thanks for helping us win.

Clean Water Victory: EPA Needs to Act on Cadmium

In response to a Center lawsuit — in a precedent-setting decision — a federal judge in Arizona ruled Friday that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Endangered Species Act in 2016 when it failed to assess harms to endangered species before nearly tripling the levels of cadmium allowed in U.S. waters.

Cadmium is a heavy metal and a dangerous carcinogenic pollutant, toxic to people and wildlife at any level of exposure.

“This groundbreaking decision will protect Atlantic sturgeon, sea turtles, and other aquatic wildlife from cadmium pollution and make our waters safer for people across the country,” said the Center’s Hannah Connor.

Thousands of People to Biden: Restore the Act Now

This week the Center and allies submitted 165,000 comments urging Biden to restore the full power of the Endangered Species Act. 

In 2019 the Trump administration finalized dozens of the most harmful regulatory rollbacks in the Act’s 50-year history. Instead of rescinding them all, this summer the Biden administration proposed to fix … seven of them. 

That’s not good enough. So we called on Center supporters to speak up and say so — and you responded with 40,000 comments. We hope they’ll be a wakeup call for this administration. Thank you.

If you want to keep helping protect endangered species, check out our other actions to honor the Act’s 50th anniversary.

The Revelator: Cocaine Eel?

There must be something in the water ... Oh, it's cocaine.

New research reveals that human-excreted cocaine could cause a host of health problems for wildlife like rare European eels — and people, too.

Read all about it in The Revelator. And make sure you subscribe to The Revelator’s weekly e-newsletter for more species and other conservation news.

That’s Wild: A Fruity, Cryptic Star Is Born

The Antarctic strawberry feather star is just one of four species uncovered in recent research on the “cryptic diversity” — basically, diversity that’s hard to spot — of an amazing group of marine critters once thought to be a single species.

Called free-swimming stemless crinoids, these animals all look a little like the fictional facehugger from Alien, but they’re actually related to starfish and sea cucumbers. Antarctic strawberry feather stars are aptly named for the fruit-like body shape beneath their 20 arms, which they pulse rhythmically to swim.

Check out the beauty of a feather star in action in this video on YouTube or Facebook (Skip to 1:00 to see it up close).

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Photo credits: Bobcat by Annica Kreuter; sand dune phacelia courtesy Oregon Wild, magnificent ramshorn snail by Andy Wood/Coastal Plain Conservation Group, Texas kangaroo rat courtesy TPWD; grizzly bear courtesy NPS; Uinta Basin hookless cactus courtesy USFWS; pallid sturgeons courtesy USFWS; brown pelican by Charles J. Sharp/Wikimedia; European eel © Ben Rushbrooke/iNaturalist; Antarctic strawberry feather star courtesy Gregory Rouse.

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