Congress, Save the Endangered Species Act

When members of Congress were at home last week, they got a clear message from the Center for Biological Diversity's grassroots volunteers: Do everything you can to save the Endangered Species Act.

We delivered 500,000 petition signatures supporting the Act, and on last Thursday's day of action we visited more than 70 congressional offices in 25 states.

A huge thanks to the hundreds of volunteers who called politicians, collected signatures, and went to offices. This is exactly the kind of powerful mobilizing it's going to take to beat back Trump's attacks on wildlife and the Endangered Species Act.

The campaign isn't over. Join the fight to save endangered species and consider donating to our Endangered Species Act Protection Fund.

Big Reprieve for Western Bird

Great news: In response to legal action by the Center and allies, a judge has blocked Trump's plans to expand mining, drilling, livestock grazing and other destructive activities on 51 million acres of greater sage grouse habitat in seven western states.

Greater sage grouse once occupied hundreds of millions of acres across the West, but their populations have plummeted.

"The ruling gives this beautiful bird a better shot at avoiding extinction," said Center attorney Michael Saul. "And it's also a victory for public lands and other spectacular wildlife that rely on undisturbed western sagebrush landscapes."

Get more from our press release.

Speak Up for Tortoises and the Endangered Species Act

Imperiled desert tortoises could lose up to 300,000 acres of habitat if bulldozers tear up public land in Clark County, Nevada, for new subdivisions and shopping malls.

The federal bill allowing this would create a huge loophole in the Endangered Species Act to let Las Vegas sprawl run rampant. Worse, the bill's passage would set a precedent for all counties and cities to run to Congress and beg for a license to sprawl.

This is a critical moment. Please: Speak up now for Nevada's desert tortoises and the Endangered Species Act.

The latest installment of our Endangered Species Mural Project is also our first internationally, in Mexico. A building in the popular Parque Borunda — near the border crossing in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua — now boasts a larger-than-life painting of two majestic borderlands species, the Aplomado falcon and the jaguar. It was done by a cross-border team of artists: Jaque Fragua of Jemez Pueblo and Dose of Los Angeles, plus Juan Carlos Reyes and Laura Meneses of Ciudad Juarez.

Take Action: Keep Utah's National Parks OHV-free

Utah is home to some of the most spectacular protected lands in the national park system — from Arches, Canyonlands and Zion national parks to Dinosaur and Hovenweep national monuments.

But now, without analysis or public input, a Trump administration order seeks to open all park roads, paved and unpaved, to vehicles like four-wheelers and side-by-sides. The move threatens these world-renowned landscapes with noise, traffic and pollution. It brazenly ignores previous decisions that such OHV use would harm these special places.

Send a letter today urging the Interior Department not to take this reckless step, which could irreversibly damage Utah's extraordinary monuments and parks.

Trump Opens Door to Clearcutting Alaska's Tongass

On Tuesday the Trump administration announced plans to gut longstanding protections against logging and road-building in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. This vast, temperate rainforest is the homeland of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples — plus grizzlies, salmon and rare Alexander Archipelago wolves.

"Alaska's elected officials are selling out their constituents and robbing future generations by trying to strip protection from one of the most pristine old-growth forests in the world," said Randi Spivak, the Center's public lands director.

Read more in The New York Times and look for an email from us next week about how you can take action to save the Tongass.

Think We're a Great Nonprofit? Say So in a Review

If you're looking for a free, easy way to help the Center, please take a minute to review us at GreatNonprofits.org, a site like Yelp or TripAdvisor where you can tell others just how effective and hardworking we are.

Thanks to previous stellar (that is, five-star) reviews by our supporters, the Center has won "top-rated" awards at GreatNonprofits over and over since the site was launched. But to get our 2019 award — which will help us to save the wild world — we need a steady stream of esteem.

So please, friends and supporters, write us a rave review now.

Wild & Weird: 'Survival of the Friendliest'

Biologists at the University of Copenhagen have discovered a microbial counterpoint to the Darwinian notion of "survival of the fittest." Colonies of bacteria organize themselves around cooperation instead of competition, and they reap rewards in strength and resilience. Stronger bacteria give extra space to weaker ones, allowing them — and the colony as a whole — to grow bigger than they would on their own. Bacteria also "inspire" each other to develop new features and innovate.

Get more from ScienceDaily.