Center for Biological Diversity
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Endangered Earth
No. 998, Aug. 22, 2019
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Suit Takes On Trump's Gutting of the Endangered Species Act
The fight is on.
The Center for Biological Diversity and allies sued the Trump administration Wednesday for its unprecedented attack on the Endangered Species Act.
President Trump's lethal new rules will have a profound effect on the future of endangered species, making it harder to protect their critical habitat and denying protection to animals and plants newly listed as "threatened." The rules will increase hunting, trapping and killing. They'll accelerate logging, drilling and mining of key habitat.
We'll do everything in our power to overturn these scorched-earth rules. The future of bears, wolves, sea turtles and hundreds of other species depends on it.
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Consider donating to our Endangered Species Act Protection Fund: [link removed]
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Are You Ready to Mobilize for the Wild?
If we're going to defeat President Trump's attack on the Endangered Species Act, we need to show massive grassroots support for the creatures it saves. That's where you come in.
Join the Center's Executive Director Kierán Suckling and our top organizing staff this Tuesday, Aug. 27, on a national call to learn what's at stake and how we can stop the Trump bulldozer in its tracks. This is a do-or-die moment for the Endangered Species Act. Call in to our "Mobilize for the Wild" meeting, and we'll plug you into this important campaign.
RSVP for the Aug. 27 call.
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Courtroom Roundup: Taking on Trump
In addition to suing Trump over his vicious assault on the Endangered Species Act itself, this week the Center filed several suits against his administration to defend wildlife: orcas, corals and bees.
We sued the National Marine Fisheries Service for ignoring a legal petition to protect critically endangered Southern Resident killer whales from ship traffic that interferes with their feeding in the heart of their Salish Sea foraging habitat. The suit follows news that three more of these starving orcas are presumed dead, leaving their number at 73.
We also sued the Fisheries Service for failing to protect 12 coral species around Florida and islands in the Pacific Ocean. These corals received Endangered Species Act protection in 2014, but not the critical habitat protection they need to recover, which the law requires. About 30 percent of the world's corals have been lost, and scientists say the rest could be gone by the end of the century. We can't wait any longer to save them.
Last but not least, we sued Trump's Environmental Protection Agency over its approval of the bee-killing pesticide sulfoxaflor for use on 200 million acres of crops. The EPA made this approval despite the fact that its own scientists concluded sulfoxaflor is "very highly toxic" to bees.
This brings our Trump lawsuit count to 158. Learn about them all at our Trump Lawsuit Tracker.
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Protection Sought for Las Vegas Bearpoppies
Evolved for the hardscrabble world of the Mojave Desert, the Las Vegas bearpoppy has claw-like leaves and blooms in showy yellow. But it's been pushed to the brink of extinction by development and resource extraction — so this week we petitioned for Endangered Species Act protection.
"Tough little desert flowers like the Las Vegas bearpoppy are at the heart of the Mojave's magic," said Dr. Tara Cornelisse, a Center scientist. "If it doesn't get federal protection quickly, this beautiful wildflower will be bulldozed, trampled and blasted into extinction."
Read more in Nevada Current.
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VIDEO
Endangered Florida Key deer are delightfully tiny — about as big as a medium-sized dog. Last week we learned that Trump's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to strip federal protection from these vulnerable animals. We'll fight the decision, of course. Watch our new video of the deer on Facebook or YouTube.
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Good News: Trump EPA Suddenly Flips on Cyanide Bombs
Just a week after it re-approved the use of "cyanide bombs," for wildlife killing — and three days after a Center agreement restricted use of these cruel devices in Wyoming — Trump's EPA withdrew that decision. The agency will study the matter further, said Administrator Andrew Wheeler.
More than 99.9 percent of the people who submitted public comments on the re-approval opposed the lethal traps, including many thousands of Center supporters.
Read about it in The New York Times.
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Take Action — Stop Tule Elk From Being Shot at Point Reyes
Trump's National Park Service has put out a shocking plan to kill native tule elk in California's Point Reyes National Seashore, the only national park where these rare animals live.
The agency would shoot up to 15 elk every year to appease livestock owners who enjoy subsidized grazing of their cows on this precious public land. Its plan would enshrine private, for-profit cattle-growing as the park's main use — while doing little to rein in the damage from grazing, including water-quality degradation and soil erosion.
But that's not all. The plan would allow conversion of park grasslands to artichoke farms and row crops, and it would let livestock operators bring in sheep, goats, chickens and pigs — a recipe for even more conflict with native wildlife.
Fed up? We are too. Send a personalized comment opposing the Park Service's destructive plan.
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The Revelator Q&A: Harriet Washington on Stolen Minds
In her new book A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind, award-winning scholar and medical ethicist Harriet Washington writes that high levels of pollution in nonwhite communities can hurt people's brains as well as their bodies. For The Revelator, Tara Lohan interviews Washington on how widespread racist injustice is "stealing cognition."
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Sign up for the Revelator e-newsletter: [link removed]
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Center Op-ed: How to Save Our Public Lands From Trump
Did you know the U.S. public collectively owns 670 million acres of breathtaking forests, mountains, canyons, rivers, wetlands and deserts?
Our Public Lands Director Randi Spivak knows that and a whole lot more — including how we're all being hurt by Trump's aggressive program of throwing open vast tracts of our precious public land to fossil fuel extraction. It's worsening the climate crisis and pushing rare and vanishing species across the country closer to extinction.
Read Randi's latest opinion piece to learn more ... and find hope in action.
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Wild & Weird: We Want the Fish Tube
Last week Twitter users rediscovered — and lost their minds over — a 2014 video of salmon being launched through a translucent tube over a dam at the Columbia River.
The minute-long clip illustrates a conservation success story achieved through human intervention. Through the tube, salmon slide preposterously down from the sky to their previously blocked-off spawning grounds, their ancient migration path restored by rubber and pneumatics.
Created by Whooshh Innovations, the "fish tube" has been used for at least five years to help Washington's native fish. But the conservation element isn't what drew the most attention on Twitter. Rather, the video seems to have tapped into a widespread urge to escape our current realities.
Watch the video of the fish tube and learn about the poetry, escapist fantasies, and nihilism it conjured across Twitter at WIRED.
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Center for Biological Diversity
P.O. Box 710
Tucson, AZ 85702
United States
