Good News for Endangered Orcas

Following a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity and allies, federal fishery managers just proposed a change to their Pacific salmon fishery plan that would help save Southern Resident orcas from starving.

The proposal would limit nontribal commercial Chinook salmon fishing in years with fewer than 966,000 estimated salmon so that the critically endangered killer whales can still get enough to eat. Their population has dropped to only 74 individuals — mostly because declining salmon runs have left them without enough food.

“Without more protections, we’ll watch Southern Resident killer whales continue to spiral toward extinction,” said Center attorney Julie Teel Simmonds. “Salmon and orcas in the Pacific Northwest are both in trouble, so we need to limit commercial fishing.”

Colorado May Have New Wolf Family

For the first time in almost a century, wildlife officials have identified a bonded pair of wolves preparing a den in Colorado. Biologists just announced that a wolf who came from Wyoming isn’t male, as was originally thought, and she’s been traveling — and likely making a den, preparing for pups — with a male.

After advocacy by the Center and allies, last fall Colorado voters passed an unprecedented ballot initiative requiring wildlife officials to reintroduce endangered gray wolves there starting in 2023.

“I’m so excited that we may soon have new wolf parents in Colorado,” said Center wolf expert Michael Robinson. “The state’s last pups were born in the wild almost a century ago. Unlike them, these new pups will not be the last of their kind, but instead could meet potential mates as more wolves are brought into the state.”

Headed to Court for West Coast Fishers

The Center and allies launched a lawsuit on Wednesday over the Trump administration’s denial of protection to most fishers on the Pacific coast. Reversing its own findings that West Coast fishers deserved protection, last year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to withhold safeguards — even though these plush-furred mink relatives are still threatened by intense logging, climate-change-fueled wildfire and toxic rodenticides.

Said the Center’s Noah Greenwald, “If the fisher is going to survive and recover in this warming world, it needs Endangered Species Act protection now.”

Agreement Could Help Caribbean Skinks

Following a 2020 lawsuit, we’ve reached an agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service on eight species of Caribbean skinks: The Service must decide whether to protect them by late 2024.

Found in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the skinks face extinction because of introduced predators, habitat destruction and climate change. Two species are believed to live on Great St. James — an island bought by Jeffrey Epstein in 2016 to build a sprawling compound. The Center first petitioned for the skinks in 2014.

“These lizards face rising seas and storms of increasing intensity in the future,” said Elise Bennett, a Center attorney. “Endangered Species Act protection is the best chance we have to save them.”

Lawsuit Launched Over DDT in the Ocean

After the discovery of up to half a million barrels of the banned pesticide DDT on the sea floor off California, the Center just notified Montrose Chemical Corp. and Bayer Corp. (Montrose’s parent company) that we’ll sue if they don’t take responsibility for this toxic threat.

From 1947 to at least 1961, Montrose transported barrels of DDT and acid sludge waste to barges that dumped them into the ocean near beautiful Santa Catalina Island. The massive underwater waste site was discovered by scientists and publicized last year in the Los Angeles Times.

“The United States banned use of DDT in 1972 because it was so durable and harmful to brown pelicans and other species,” said Center ocean scientist Kristin Carden. “We need to better understand how this DDT is circulating through our coastal ecosystems.”

Biden Budget Ignores Extinction Crisis

Last week President Biden released his first full budget. Unfortunately, despite scientists’ warnings that one million species risk extinction worldwide, the budget signals that safeguarding endangered U.S. species won’t be a top priority.

The administration is proposing just $22 million — a mere $1.5 million more than last year — to protect the 500-plus imperiled animals and plants still waiting for federal protection, from monarch butterflies to wolverines.

During his campaign, Biden touted his support for the Endangered Species Act when it passed in 1973. So far, though, his administration hasn’t moved to alter any Trump-era policies or decisions on endangered species. With this budget, Biden is also adopting the Trump administration’s measly funding levels.

Center Op-Ed: Pesticides Are Killing the Soil

A new Scientific American op-ed spotlights our latest scientific report showing the horrific harm pesticides cause to earthworms, ground-nesting bees and other subterranean critters. Written by the Center’s Nate Donley and our former intern Tari Gunstone, the article outlines how U.S. regulators have approved almost 850 pesticides despite the havoc they wreak on underground ecosystems — which harbor more organisms in one shovelful of soil than there are people on Earth.

“Protecting [these organisms] should be a priority, not an afterthought,” the article states, urging us to “face the task of reducing the world’s growing and unsustainable addiction to pesticide-intensive agriculture.”

Water Protectors Unite to Stop Line 3

This weekend Indigenous leaders and climate activists will gather in Minnesota to protest construction of the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline.

If completed, Line 3 will carry hundreds of thousands of barrels of toxic tar sands oil every day, crossing more than 200 waterways and cutting through Anishinaabe treaty territory. It will violate treaty rights, threaten ecosystems and wildlife, and release as much greenhouse gas pollution as 50 coal-fired power plants.

On June 5-8, water protectors and allies will come together for the Treaty People Gathering to urge President Biden and Minnesota officials to shut down Line 3. Frontline leaders have invited all to stand with them. The Center will be there — and with more than 300 other organizations, we’ve called on President Biden to halt this disastrous pipeline.

Brehm's ''Life of Animals, Volume I: Mammalia'' artwork

The Revelator: When Did Barbary Lions Disappear?

Barbary or Atlas lions — the large, distinct African lions that were once made to fight gladiators in ancient Rome — may have gone extinct as early as 1922, at the hand of a colonial hunter in Morocco, or as late as 1965, as the result of war.

That’s Wild: Rare Footage of Rare Owl

The Mexican spotted owl was the first species the Center worked to protect. Our legal work and fieldwork won it Endangered Species Act protection in 1993 and more than 8 million acres of protected habitat.

Now we’re probably the first to capture video of the rare owl hunting bats. Watch this new footage from one of our remote cameras near the Arizona-Mexico border on Facebook and YouTube.

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Photo credits: Southern Resident orca by Miles Ritter/Flickr; Colorado wolf F1084 courtesy Colorado Parks and Wildlife; West Coast fisher courtesy USFWS; greater Saint Croix skink by A.J. Meier; brown pelican by Fred Hochstaedter/Flickr; monarch butterfly by maginnis/Twenty20; tomato seedlings in healthy soil courtesy USDA; Treaty People Gathering graphic; Brehm's Life of Animals, Volume I: Mammalia artwork; Mexican spotted owl footage by Russ McSpadden/Center for Biological Diversity.

Center for Biological Diversity
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