Center for Biological Diversity
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Endangered Earth
No. 999, Aug. 29, 2019
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Wins for Global Wildlife: Our Report From Geneva
This month the Center for Biological Diversity's International Program staff joined nations and other nonprofits at the 18th meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, held in Switzerland. CITES is a treaty aimed at limiting trade in rare animals and plants — the biggest threat to their existence, after habitat loss.
We're happy to report that the meeting wrapped up this week with new protections granted to dozens of species.
Parties agreed to regulate trade in giraffes as their populations plummet. Along with our partners, the Center has worked hard for these protections. Critical bans on the ivory and rhino-horn trade were upheld. Protections were also given to more than a dozen kinds of tarantulas, otters and flat-but-charming pancake tortoises, all often sold as pets. Three types of sea cucumbers called "teatfish" will get stronger protection, along with mako sharks.
Read more in our press release.
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This Pesticide Threatens Thousands of Bee Species
Did you know bees and other animals pollinate 1 out of every 3 bites of food we eat? People owe a lot to our pollinator friends — and they urgently need our help.
Trump's Environmental Protection Agency just approved a vast expansion in the use of sulfoxaflor, a pesticide the agency itself considers "very highly toxic" to bees. This will put thousands of bee species in harm's way — and the pesticide could end up on a wide range of our favorite fruits, including cherries, strawberries, peaches and citrus.
Tell the EPA to keep sulfoxaflor off our food and protect pollinators, not chemical-company profits.
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Saving the Endangered Species Act — The Next Step
The Center and allies have sued to stop Trump's unprecedented attacks on the Endangered Species Act, but we need your help to win this fight.
On Tuesday hundreds of volunteers joined Executive Director Kierán Suckling and our organizing team for the kickoff call to mobilize against Trump's attacks. We've got a solid plan to save the animals and plants that depend on the Act. Thanks to those who participated on Tuesday — and if you couldn't make it, you can still get involved.
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Consider donating to our Endangered Species Act Defense Fund while gifts are being matched dollar for dollar: [link removed]
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VIDEO
Watch the newest installment in our national Endangered Species Mural Project go up in a time-lapse video on Facebook or YouTube. Located in Seward, Alaska, the 105-foot-long mural by Roger Peet and Tricia Tripp depicts rare seabirds called spectacled eiders, as well as endangered North Pacific right whales.
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See all 22 murals and learn more about this public-art project, which raises awareness of local endangered species, at our website.
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Center Op-ed: As the World Burns
Center biologist Tierra Curry remembers her time in the Amazonian jungle with wonder. Sleeping there, she writes in The Hill, is difficult since "potoos and owls compete with innumerable insects to fill the night with sounds. Patches of the forest floor really do glow at night, like in the movie Avatar."
The fires now ravaging the Amazon — and the anti-wildlife, climate-denying policies of demagogues like Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and U.S. President Donald Trump — put all the Earth's life at risk. Speak up now, urges Tierra, for the wild world and for climate sanity.
Read her piece now in The Hill.
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Lawsuit Launched for 23 Micronesian Species
The Center filed notice on Monday of our intent to sue the Trump administration to force it to protect critical habitat for 23 endangered species in the Pacific Islands. The species — including the Mariana eight-spot butterfly and Slevin's skink — live in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Territory of Guam, Republic of Palau and Federated States of Micronesia. These 14 plants and nine animals are threatened by sprawl, military expansion, climate change and more.
Get details in The Guam Daily Post.
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$45 Million for Species, Waterways in North Carolina
A landmark agreement reached by the Center and allies in North Carolina will deliver more than $45 million in environmental benefits to mussels, fish and other freshwater species.
The agreement — stemming from our legal challenge of an interstate project around Raleigh — means the state will fund the purchase and protection of habitat for imperiled aquatic species like the Carolina madtom and Neuse River waterdog. It will also support stream and habitat restoration, and the breeding and reintroduction of salamanders, snails and mussels.
"This agreement makes way for the recovery of our unique native wildlife," said the Center's Perrin de Jong.
Read more in The Progressive Pulse.
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Federal Wildlife Killing Doesn't End With Cyanide Bombs
We're happy to be celebrating the Trump administration's flip-flop last week on the use of inhumane M-44s, or "cyanide bombs," by its Wildlife Services program, writes John Platt in The Revelator. But tragically, there are plenty of other cruel methods used in the program's ongoing slaughter of our native creatures (2.6 million animals in 2018 alone). A video, published with John's story, enumerates these methods of killing.
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Meanwhile — in the Center's ongoing fight to shut down that slaughter across the country — we and our allies sued Wildlife Services on Tuesday over its killing plan for 10 counties in Northern California. Read more at SFGate.
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Wild & Weird: Millipede Feet Facts
Although the word millipede comes from the Latin for "a thousand" and "foot," there's a bit of inflation in that name: These crawly critters don't really have 1,000 feet. The count varies from under 100 to a few hundred, depending on the number of an animal's body segments.
Newborn millipedes have a measly three pairs of legs — they grow the rest later. The fossil record suggests that, as some of the planet's first air-breathers, these invertebrates may be the oldest animals to have exited the ocean's primordial soup in favor of land.
Male millipedes have several specialized "sex legs" called gonopods, which they use to transfer sperm packets to females.
Check out our new video of a millipede strutting its stuff while casting an oversized shadow on Facebook or YouTube.
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Center for Biological Diversity
P.O. Box 710
Tucson, AZ 85702
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