New Colorado Wolf Restoration Plan Proposed

Colorado’s Rocky Mountains need wolves, wolves need the Colorado Rockies — and the United States needs wolves.

So, along with 13 other groups, the Center for Biological Diversity just submitted a science-based restoration plan to guide wolf reintroduction and recovery in Colorado.

In the wake of recent discussions in Colorado focusing on a distrust of wolves, the plan highlights the positive ecological, economic and social impacts these intelligent, social animals can have on the Colorado landscapes they were driven out of in the past.

“Coloradans need to know that killing wolves is not the best way forward,” said Andrea Zaccardi, legal director of the Center’s carnivore conservation program. “Our alternative wolf-restoration plan proposes common-sense rules to prevent conflict between livestock and wolves. It gives livestock owners incentives to take responsibility for their deceased livestock, which can attract wolves to vulnerable cattle and sheep. It also prohibits the killing of wolves for preying on livestock on the public lands we all share.”

Help our fight for wolves and other wildlife with a gift to our Saving Life on Earth Fund.

Join the Call to Action on the Climate Emergency

Even in the wake of the collapse of climate negotiations in Congress, this week President Biden yesterday stopped short of declaring a climate emergency.

The Center has been calling for the president to take strong executive action since before he took office. We’ve built a coalition of more than 1,000 organizations across the country to work together to take bold action on the climate emergency.

That coalition, People vs. Fossil Fuels, will be mobilizing on Tuesday, July 26 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT to increase the pressure on Biden to be our #ClimatePresident. Can you join this virtual call to learn how you can get involved and take meaningful action to address the climate crisis?

Another Bad Trump-Era Habitat Rule Repealed

The Biden administration just repealed a Trump-era rule significantly weakening critical habitat protections under the Endangered Species Act. The rule radically changed the process of weighing the benefit of protecting habitat for imperiled species against the economic impacts for private landowners — in a way that heavily favored private landowners. Nixing this rule could help scores of species, from Florida bonneted bats to eastern black rails.

“Trump’s disastrous efforts to weaken the bedrock law protecting our nation’s wildlife from extinction are dead — and good riddance,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center.

We recently petitioned wildlife agencies to not only undo the Trump-era rollbacks to the Endangered Species Act — but also to push for ambitious new regulatory safeguards that strengthen all aspects of the law.

Win: Court Orders Review of Toxic Fungicide

In a big victory for conservationists and wildlife, a federal court has ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to study how a new fungicide could harm endangered species.

In 2020 the EPA approved use of a chemical called inpyrfluxam on U.S. crops ranging from corn and soy to apples and peanuts — despite research showing it’s highly toxic to endangered salmon and steelhead and a risk to large birds like whooping cranes.

“This decision should send a clear message that the EPA can no longer ignore its duty to make sure new pesticides don’t push imperiled wildlife closer to extinction,” said Jonathan Evans, the Center’s environmental health legal director.

Our Fight for Tiny Desert Raptors

Cactus ferruginous pygmy owls are as fierce as they are small. These 2.5-ounce raptors prey on birds twice their size and feed lizards to their chicks. Sadly they’re no match for urban development gobbling up their unique Sonoran Desert habitat in the U.S. Southwest.

The Center has been fighting to save cactus ferruginous pygmy owls — “cactus” for the saguaros they live in and “ferruginous” for their rust-colored stripes — since 1992, when we first petitioned to protect them under the Endangered Species Act. After three Center lawsuits, in 1997 they were protected in Arizona and Texas. But developers fought back with their own suit, and the species lost protection in 2006.

Now these diminutive owls have a new shot at federal safeguards. Responding to Center advocacy, last December the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to protect them again, this time throughout their range.

Learn more about these owls (and our work to protect them) from Audubon.

Endangered Species Law for Kids (and Everyone Else)

How does the U.S. Endangered Species Act work? Does it protect species outside the United States, like giraffes and elephants? How does the Center use it to save imperiled plants and animals?

All good questions, whether you’re in 2nd grade or your second year of grad school.

Learn the answers (and lots more) in this Mongabay Kids interview with the Center’s Tanya Sanerib, senior attorney and legal director of our International program. The publication is geared toward youth but interesting for all.

Revelator: Farmed Salmon Is Gross

Did you know farmed salmon host so many sea lice that some fish-processing plants use Shop-Vacs to remove them?

Sharing that unsavory image and many more, the new book Salmon Wars looks at the “dark underbelly of our favorite fish” and urges regulators and businesses to better protect wild salmon, coastal ecosystems and consumers.

That’s Wild: No Helmets for Headbanger Woodpeckers

Scientists have long suggested that wood-pecking birds have skulls that are natural shock absorbers. Not true, as a new study published in Current Biology shows through video analysis of the birds’ movement: It’s still a mystery how woodpeckers’ brains withstand the hard hammering of their beaks — sometimes at the mind-bending rate of 20 pecks per second — but it’s not through shock absorption. Maybe the birds just like the vibe.