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. Read more at USA TODAY and consider donating to our Endangered Species Act Protection Fund.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Learn about the poetry, escapist fantasies, and nihilism it conjured across Twitter at WIRED.