No. 1329, December 24, 2025 |
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For the Center for Biological Diversity, 2025 was fast, furious, and successful — so much so that President Donald Trump and far-right members of the U.S. House of Representatives hit us with multiple “investigations” and attacks to intimidate us and slow us down. It didn’t work.
On Jan. 20, the day Trump was inaugurated for a second term, we filed our first lawsuit against the new regime’s cascade of illegalities … and our suits have continued at a breakneck pace. We’ve filed 65 so far — targeting DOGE’s destructive rampage; climate-killing fossil fuels; the despoilment of forests, wetlands, and oceans; the broad approvals of poisonous chemicals; and the building of the infamous “Alligator Alcatraz” prison in the delicate Florida Everglades.
We fought to defend rivers from slaughterhouse pollution and to expose the abandonment of marginalized farmers and local food production. We even sued to stop Trump from branding national parks passes with a closeup of his face, as though these precious places were a golf-course franchise.
We stood up to the corruption of right-wing Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee, whose shady dealings are imperiling the stunning Boundary Waters Wilderness in Minnesota and Point Reyes National Seashore in California — along with the Canada lynx, gray wolves, northern long-eared bats, and tule elk who depend on them. Read on to learn more about these and other crucial victories.
As always, we’re grateful for your faith in us. And we can promise there’ll be more hard-fought battles and victories in 2026.
Consider giving a gift to the Future for the Wild Fund to keep us strong. Till the end of the year, your donation will be doubled. |
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Protecting Endangered Species and Their Homes |
In a federal landscape uniquely hostile to wildlife, we secured proposed Endangered Species Act protection this year for southern hognose snakes, Barrens darters, and ghost orchids. We won lawsuits requiring consideration of new safeguards for many others, including southern bog turtles, freshwater fishes like roughhead and Rio Grande shiners, Berry Cave salamanders, Clover’s cactus, and streaked horned larks.
We achieved the proposed designation of 760,000 acres of critical habitat for foothill yellow-legged frogs and 91,000 acres for longfin smelt in San Francisco Bay; we won lawsuits requiring habitat protection for Mt. Graham red squirrels and eastern black rails.
We also shut down destructive coal mining in the heart of critical habitat for jewel-like, highly endangered candy darter fish in West Virginia’s Cherry River Watershed and reached a historic agreement to end most cattle grazing in California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, which will help native tule elk survive. |
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In response to one of our lawsuits, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had broken the law when it denied our petition to protect wolves across the U.S. West under the Endangered Species Act.
In New Mexico, through advocacy and organizing for Mexican gray wolves, we persuaded decisionmakers to release a genetically important wolf named Asha and her family from captivity into the wild. We also celebrated new wolf packs in California and Colorado as we continued our push for ongoing state and federal wolf protections.
We won crucial legal victories defending grizzly habitat from destructive logging in Montana’s Kootenai National Forest and from expanded grazing near Yellowstone National Park. And we helped protect rare coastal martens (and their dune habitats) from noisy and destructive off-road vehicles.
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Standing Up for Public Lands |
The Center helped defeat a dangerous U.S. Senate scheme that would’ve sold millions of acres of public lands to private developers and corporations to exploit for profit, and we kicked off a landmark campaign to defeat the administration’s plan to strip protections from 45 million acres of the last undeveloped portions of national forests and open them to harmful roadbuilding.
And we halted logging in North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest and Nolichucky River Gorge, one of the wildest river gorges in the U.S. East and home to endangered mussels and hellbender salamanders. |
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Defending marine species of all kinds from oil spills and other threats, the Center challenged an illegal executive order attempting to undo ocean protections from offshore oil and gas drilling. We won critical habitat protections for five threatened species of Indo-Pacific coral around Hawai`i, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Pacific Remote Island Areas.
And thanks to a legal victory, we spurred the formation of the first federal task force to protect Pacific humpback whales from deadly entanglements in pot fishing gear. |
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On the fossil fuel front, the Center’s landmark constitutional case challenging oil and gas pollution in New Mexico advanced to the state Supreme Court. Also in New Mexico, we won a ban on the disposal of toxic fracking waste into the soil and water outside oilfields.
In California we successfully opposed a massive industrial project that would have logged forests for wood pellets to burn in coal-fired power plants abroad; and in the Gulf we sued over a deepwater natural gas project off the Louisiana coast that would be the first offshore project in the United States to export fracked gas and could hurt highly endangered Rice’s whales.
Fighting for energy justice, we won a precedent-setting victory at the California Supreme Court saying state courts must independently determine whether decisions by the state utilities commission are lawful (instead of just deferring to the commission). That could help fix recent setbacks to solar power in the state.
We won a key lawsuit in Puerto Rico over FEMA’s multibillion-dollar plan to rebuild the fossil-fuel-based grid after Hurricane Maria: A federal judge decided the agency must consider whether the money would be better spent on distributed, cleaner energy like rooftop solar and batteries.
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Fighting Toxics and Pollution |
Our Environmental Health program had some big achievements this year despite the current administration’s lockstep with polluting industries.
We nailed down court-ordered deadlines for the Fish and Wildlife Service to complete Endangered Species Act consultations on six of the pesticides most dangerous to wildlife; we marked our 50th win in an epic decade of clean-air lawsuits aimed at cutting smog, soot, and other air pollution, bringing relief to countless imperiled species and nearly half the country’s population — some 152 million people living in 34 states.
And we successfully challenged the air-pollution permit for a massive new heavy metals mine in the Patagonia Mountains of southern Arizona, a hotspot of biodiversity that’s home to endangered and threatened species ranging from Chiricahua leopard frogs to Huachuca water umbels, Mexican spotted owls, and ocelots.
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In our increasingly ambitious international work, the Center this year secured bans on seafood imports from 42 nations that lack whale and dolphin protection measures in their fisheries. These bans will press nations from Indonesia to Ecuador to ensure that imperiled marine mammals like Irrawaddy and bottlenose dolphins aren’t killed in fishing gear.
We also catalyzed an international investigation into Mexico’s failure to protect critically endangered vaquitas from dying in fishing nets and obtained proposed U.S. trade bans for imperiled pangolins — the world’s most trafficked mammals — and butterflies from Brazil through Endangered Species Act listing.
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In the Southeast, we stood up to the Trump administration over its cruel, destructive “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida, litigating to halt operations, force environmental reviews, and protect the irreplaceable Everglades. And we celebrated the wild birth of four litters of endangered red wolf pups in North Carolina by helping to raise millions for one of the country’s largest wildlife crossings.
In Alaska we challenged a state plan to kill an unlimited number of bears across 40,000 square miles and teamed up with Alaska Native Tribes to sue over the giveaway of federally protected wilderness to pave a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.
In the Southwest we documented thousands of incidents where cattle were harming public riparian areas home to endangered species like southwestern willow flycatchers; we sued to protect Tecopa bird’s beaks, rare desert wetland wildflowers.
And in California we filed petitions to secure state protections for Pacific pocket mice and Quino checkerspot butterflies, both awarded candidacy under the state’s Endangered Species Act. And we won permanent protection for more than 3,500 acres of oak woodlands and rare plants in Lake County.
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Population and Sustainability |
Our program addressing the environmental impacts of human population pressure and consumption led a successful effort to update the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s food code guidance to support swapping single-use for reusable containers.
We also released a groundbreaking media analysis that found there’s a key gap in climate coverage: Nearly 99% of articles about the climate crisis failed to mention shifting people’s diets, even though it’s a critical part of reducing food-related emissions. We published a guide to expanding our award-winning campus Library of Things project to colleges and universities across the country. |
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It was an extra-tough year. But you spoke up anyway, and with the Center by your side, you sent more than 2 million messages on critical environmental issues — more than a million to the Trump administration alone. Together we won some important victories. Here are just a few:
Supporters like you helped make Etsy and eBay commit to halting the sale of taxidermized painted bats, a beautiful and vulnerable species that belongs alive in the wild.
In an important step toward tackling the plastic pollution crisis, you helped convince the U.S. Senate to pass the REUSE Act of 2025. The bill directs the Environmental Protection Agency to take steps to support reuse and refill systems, where consumers can reuse containers instead of relying on single-use plastic.
After you urged importers and retailers not to support avocado production harming monarch butterfly forests in Michoacán, Mexico, the Michoacán government established an avocado-certification program, joined by major packinghouses, to improve forest conservation in their supply chains.
Your advocacy played a part in pushing New York state to ban commercial harvesting of horseshoe crabs, amazing 10-eyed arthropods who are drained of their blood and used as bait. After a flood of comments from Center supporters, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum nixed a kill order for a young Mexican gray wolf, the son of a genetically crucial female who met a tragic end. You showed you care, and he’s still running free today.
Next year will be packed with more chances to make change. With your help, we’re ready for the fight ahead. Till then, stay in touch on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Bluesky.
And if you missed any of the action, check out our Current Action Alerts webpage. |
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Center for Biological Diversity
P.O. Box 710
Tucson, AZ 85702
United States
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