Center for Biological Diversity
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Endangered Earth
No. 994, July 25, 2019
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Ban Sought on Petrochemical Plants' Plastic Pollution
Outdated rules allowed plants that make plastic from fracked natural gas to discharge 128 million pounds of pollutants into U.S. waterways last year. That included more than 77,000 pounds of the most toxic pollutants — and the plastics industry is aggressively expanding. That's why the Center for Biological Diversity and 279 other groups filed a legal petition Tuesday demanding that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set strict new water-pollution limits on industrial plants that make plastic.
"The EPA shouldn't let petrochemical polluters spew one more ounce of plastic pollution into our rivers and oceans," said Julie Teel Simmonds, the Center attorney who authored the petition. "We need rigorous new rules to control this growing threat to public health, marine life and the climate."
Get more from Julie's op-ed in the Houston Chronicle.
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And support our petition by sending a letter to the EPA urging it to protect people and wildlife from plastic pollution.
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Courtroom Roundup: A Week of Fights and Wins
On Tuesday our attorneys went to court seeking an order to halt bulldozers from breaking ground on the Rosemont copper mine in Arizona, which threatens to destroy habitat for rare wildlife including jaguars. Keep watch for our update on the judge's decision.
We also launched a lawsuit against the Trump administration for failing to give severely imperiled dunes sagebrush lizards the Endangered Species Act protection they need.
And we had critical wins in two previous lawsuits. Our suit for Southern Resident killer whales has forced the National Marine Fisheries Service to update its "biological opinion" on these endangered orcas — the first step toward minimizing the harmful impacts of Pacific salmon fisheries on their survival and recovery. Another suit has prompted the feds to examine harm to whales and other imperiled wildlife from drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. That could mean better protection for sea turtles, whales and other imperiled species.
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Endangered Species Mural Honors Mexican Wolf and More
We just unveiled the 21st installment of our Endangered Species Mural Project: an 18-foot-tall, 75-foot-wide painting of five of New Mexico's most imperiled animals.
Designed by summer-campers and interns with the Mimbres Regional Arts Council's Youth Mural Program — and overseen by artist Roger Peet with local coordinators Alison Philips and Dianna Ingalls Leyba — it covers two walls at Western New Mexico University in Silver City.
This massive mural features the Mexican gray wolf, one of the world's rarest mammals, and four other species native to the Gila Wilderness: the Mexican spotted owl, Gila trout, Gila mayfly and narrow-headed garter snake.
Our Endangered Species Mural Project unites artists, scientists and organizers to bring endangered wildlife onto the streets of communities nationwide.
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'Overwhelming Joy': 1,000th Condor Chick Hatched
California condors once teetered on the brink of extinction, with only 22 wild individuals left in the world in 1982. But thanks to a captive-breeding program — and the protections of both federal and state endangered species laws — North America's largest bird has been making a slow recovery.
Last week the species hit an incredible milestone: The hatching of its 1,000th chick since the breeding program's launch.
Get more from Smithsonian.
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This Land: New Book Exposes Biggest Threats to the Wild West
If you're a lover of wilderness, wildlife and the American West, journalist Christopher Ketcham's new book should be required reading. In This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism and Corruption Are Ruining the American West, Ketcham weaves together 10 years of reporting and decades of adventuring into a deeply political and deeply personal call to save the West's public lands.
Read a review at The Revelator.
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And sign up for The Revelator's weekly newsletter.
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Here's a Bad Idea: Letting More Beavers Be Killed in Wyoming
If beavers got more protection, writes the Center's Andrea Santarsiere in the Jackson Hole News & Guide, Wyoming's rivers, fish and fly-fishermen would all reap the benefits. Instead the state is planning exactly the opposite: to let more of these industrious natural engineers, who keep rivers healthy, be trapped for their pelts around Jackson Hole.
Read Andrea's op-ed.
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Wild & Weird: The Discovery of a Glow-in-the-dark Shark
A team of scientists has identified a new species in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico: a rare pocket shark that looks like a miniature sperm whale and oozes glowing liquid to attract prey. It's been dubbed the American pocket shark (Mollisquama mississippiensis).
In the entire history of fisheries science, this is only the second time a pocket shark has been captured or reported. The last time was in 1979, when a different species (Mollisquama parini) was caught in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Find out more about the tiny shark at USA Today.
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Center for Biological Diversity
P.O. Box 710
Tucson, AZ 85702
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