27 Species Move Toward Safeguards

 

Monarchs and 26 Other Species Closer to Protection After three lawsuits, the Center for Biological Diversity just secured an agreement on dozens of species from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — the agency committed to making decisions on whether 18 plants and animals should be granted the protection of the Endangered Species Act and will also decide whether to identify critical habitat for nine other species.   Those whose survival is at stake include monarch butterflies, tricolored bats, eastern gopher tortoises, western pond turtles, black-capped petrels, Bethany Beach fireflies, Las Vegas bearpoppies and Mojave poppy bees.   “I’m so glad these 27 species are finally getting a shot at avoiding extinction,” said Noah Greenwald, the Center’s endangered species director. “It’s incredibly frustrating that some of these animals and plants have waited decades for help. Disturbingly, the Fish and Wildlife Service has done little to nothing to address the problems that caused these delays.”   Twenty-one of the species will see protection decisions by the end of fiscal year 2022. Six Red Wolf Pups Born in the Wild For the first time since 2018, a litter of pups has been born into eastern North Carolina’s struggling population of wild red wolves. The pups — four females and two males — belong to a wolf pair in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.   The happy news comes as the Fish and Wildlife Service is making a renewed effort to save the species from extinction.   “It’s tremendously encouraging to see the agency trying to recover these animals again,” said Perrin de Jong, a Center staff attorney based in North Carolina. “My heart is filled with hope at the sight of a new generation of red wolves taking its rightful place on the landscape.”   Help our work for red wolves and other critically endangered species with a gift to our Saving Life on Earth Fund. 500 Groups to Biden: End the Fossil Fuel Era The Center and more than 500 other organizations from six continents sent a letter to President Joe Biden and other world leaders Wednesday, urging them to speed the end of the fossil fuel era and spur a just, equitable transition to 100% renewable energy — now.   Two months after Russia began its fossil fuel-funded Ukraine assault — and days after Biden’s renewed Earth Day pledge to fighting climate change — our letter demands a stop to the violence and climate chaos sowed by fossil fuels. It was sent in solidarity with the people of Ukraine — and across the world — affected by the dangerous volatility of the oil and gas economy.   Biden can hasten the transition by declaring a climate emergency and accelerating clean energy deployment under the Defense Production Act.  California Will Get World’s Biggest Wildlife Crossing By 2025 Southern California will be home to the largest freeway wildlife crossing in the world: the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, funded by both private and public money, is planned to stretch over a 10-lane span of the 101 Freeway.   And it won’t come a moment too soon — just this week, as the project was set to break ground, Southern California marked its third reported mountain lion death by car strike in a single month.   "These tragedies are preventable if California invests in more wildlife crossings, which protect both wildlife and people from dangerous collisions,” said the Center’s J.P. Rose. With Your Help, Old Forests Thrown a Lifeline Biden has issued an executive order telling federal agencies to inventory the mature and old-growth forests on U.S. federal lands. That way we can take steps to protect them — a key part of storing carbon to help curb climate change.   “This smart move signals to the world that Biden’s serious about protecting forests,” said the Center’s Randi Spivak. “There’s no carbon-capture technology better than older forests and trees. For the sake of our climate and nature, it’s time to stop logging these carbon-storing champions on federal forests now. We don’t have a moment to lose.”   Thank you to our supporters — almost 23,000 — who took action on this issue. You made a difference. Watch This: Saving the Southwest’s Last Wild River The Gila River is the Southwest’s last major free-flowing waterway. Between its source in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness and its mouth in the Gulf of California, it weaves a ribbon of green through Arizona’s arid Sonoran Desert, harboring endangered species like Chiricahua leopard frogs, Gila chub and yellow-billed cuckoos.   Head to Facebook or YouTube to see breathtaking footage and hear interviews with Gila experts, including Center cofounder Todd Schulke. You’ll learn about efforts to protect the river from dams and diversions and the fight to keep it forever untamed through a Wild and Scenic River designation. New Book Explores Life, Loss of Extinct Bear There used to be another bear in North America that weighed nearly a ton and topped 10 feet when it stood on its hind legs.   A new book by Center staffer Mike Stark charts the rise and fall of the giant short-faced bear, a species that went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene and has been nearly forgotten in our natural history.   Chasing the Ghost Bear: On the Trail of America’s Lost Super Beast was published by the University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books. Read an excerpt in The Revelator and have your favorite bookstore order it (or buy it here). Revelator: Methane Emissions From Dams  Globally hydropower is the largest source of renewable energy. But in addition to the ecosystem impacts of reservoirs — including those used for hydropower — a growing body of research finds that most of them aren’t emissions-free. Some emit huge amounts of methane, a short-lived but potent gas that packs 85 times the global-warming punch of carbon dioxide over 20 years.   Now a coalition of environmental groups (including the Center) is calling for regulatory action.   Learn more in The Revelator, and don’t miss out on the e-newsletter bringing you each week’s best environmental articles and essays. That's Wild: How Tardigrades Ride Snails Tardigrades are famously sturdy. The eight-legged, near-microscopic organisms, also known as water bears, can survive extreme temperatures, crushing pressure, UV radiation, the vacuum of space, and other conditions that would kill most life forms. As long as they have access to water, they can withstand almost anything — but they can’t always survive traveling by snail.   A new study shows that these tiny, tubby creatures hitch rides on land snails to journey farther than they could on their own. They stick to the snails’ bodies, where they live in a coating of snail mucus. But it’s a high-risk mode of transportation: Some of the tardigrades in the study died once the slime dried out.   Learn more from Science Alert. Follow Us Center for Biological Diversity | Saving Life on Earth     Donate now to support the Center's work.   Photo credits: Monarch butterfly by Tamara Polajnak/Flickr; red wolf pups courtesy Red Wolf Recovery Program; rooftop solar panels by andreas160578/Flickr; redwood trees by Miguel Vieira/Wikimedia Commons; California mountain lion courtesy NPS; screenshot of Gila River video used with permission; Chasing the Ghost Bear cover illustration courtesy courtesy Indiana State Museum; dam at California's Lake Oroville by Kelly M. Grow/California Department of Water Resources; tardigrade by Frank Fox/Wikimedia Commons. Center for Biological Diversity P.O. Box 710 Tucson, AZ 85702 United States