No. 1261, September 5, 2024

Feds Asked to Act to Reduce Bird Strike Deaths

U.S. buildings kill more than 1 billion birds each year — and that chilling death toll has contributed to a 30% decline in North American birds since 1970.

So on Wednesday, along with allies, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a legal petition under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act that asks the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to set up a permitting process for commercial buildings likely to risk killing birds. It would require building owners to reduce collisions using films, curtains, and other means of making glass visible to birds.

“We can’t keep letting commercial buildings kill vast numbers of birds every year when there are known solutions to this tragic problem,” said the Center’s Tara Zuardo. “Migrating birds are crashing into walls of glass that leave them broken and dying. As bird populations dwindle, this threat affects all of us.”

Help the Center fight for migratory birds with a gift to our Saving Life on Earth Fund.

Stick Up for Snot Otters

Hellbenders are giant aquatic salamanders who live in the eastern and central United States. The largest North American amphibians, they can grow more than 2 feet long and breathe through their slimy, ruffly skin — which gives them unfortunate nicknames like “snot otter” and “ol’ lasagna sides.”

Hellbenders have recently declined by more than 80% and face ever-increasing threats, so we petitioned to protect them under the Endangered Species Act. After initially denying our petition, now the Fish and Wildlife Service is again considering protection (thanks to a lawsuit by the Center and allies).

Back our petition: Tell the Service to protect these enormous amphibians now.

And meet a hellbender up close and personal in our new video on Facebook and Instagram.

Help Sought for Rare Fish in Oregon and Nevada

Freshwater fish who live only in the Alvord Basin of Oregon and Nevada, Alvord chubs were once widespread in the basin but are now being driven toward extinction by cow grazing, water withdrawals, introduced species, and climate change.

So we just petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect them under the Endangered Species Act.

“These little glittery, freckled fish mastered living in a harsh desert environment, but now they need our help,” said Chelsea Stewart-Fusek, an attorney at the Center. “They’re no match for the cows and irrigation pumps that are decimating their streams.”

Join the Movement to Close This Mine

New science refutes federal-agency assumptions that the Pinyon Plain uranium mine doesn’t threaten the Grand Canyon’s aquifers and springs. But the risks are real — and the mine’s pollution could be impossible to clean up.

That’s why Tribes, Coconino County, the Center, and others are demanding the mine’s closure. Meanwhile Arizona’s attorney general is requesting a new environmental review, and hundreds of people have been protesting.

So far we’ve submitted more than 17,000 signatures demanding the closure of this toxic mine.

If yours wasn’t one of them, add your voice now.

Keep Colorado’s Wolves Wild and Free

Even as we celebrated the exciting news of pups born to reintroduced wolves in Colorado, state agency officials were caving to livestock-industry pressure to remove this new wolf family because of the animals’ preying on cattle.

For wolves to survive and thrive in Colorado, livestock operators need to take advantage of tools and funding to learn effective conflict-prevention measures. But state wildlife managers found an open pit of rotting livestock corpses that may have attracted the wolves now being blamed for predation. And the livestock operation associated with the cattle carcasses didn’t promptly accept the state’s offer of resources that have been proven to work — like range riders — to scare wolves away from livestock.

Colorado’s new wolf pups need us to speak up for their pack.

Tell Colorado Parks and Wildlife you support its landmark efforts to restore Colorado’s wolves — and you don’t support rewarding poor ranching practices by relocating wolves who were just following their natural instincts.

Plan Helps Protect 900-Plus Species From Herbicides

Following years of Center work and public pressure — and a legal agreement we won in 2023 — the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a strategy to better safeguard federally protected species from herbicides. The strategy requires measures to reduce herbicide spray drift and runoff into waterways to shield more than 900 plants and animals protected under the Endangered Species Act, including fish like yellowfin madtom and pallid sturgeon.

“Reducing herbicide runoff into our nation’s streams and rivers will also give people cleaner water and a healthier environment,” said the Center’s J.W. Glass.

The Revelator: Criminalizing Protest

In France a group called Earth Uprisings wants to unite the climate movement. In response government officials called the group “eco-terrorists” — continuing a worldwide strategy of criminalizing protest.

Learn more in The Revelator. And if you don’t already, subscribe to the free weekly Revelator e-newsletter for more wildlife and conservation news.

That's Wild: Fruit Bats’ Time Management

Wild fruit bats in Egypt, new research shows, map time in the way people do: They rely on their “episodic memory” to recall how long ago they personally visited certain trees. Not only that, but bats in the colony appear to know how long individual trees bear fruit — avoiding those trees in advance when their fruiting is over — and to plan for the future by flying faster toward faraway, remembered trees.

Read about it at Ecowatch.

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Photo credits: Tennessee warbler by D Faulder/Flickr; eastern hellbender by Brian Gratwicke/Flickr Commons; Alvord chub by Doug Markle/Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife; Grand Canyon rally by Taylor McKinnon/Center for Biological Diversity; wolves from Shutterstock; pallid sturgeon by Ryan Hagerty/USFWS; France protest by Les Soulèvements de la Terre/Facebook; fruit bat courtesy Lietuvos zoologijos sodas/Wikimedia.

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