No. 1291, April 3, 2025

Save This Louisiana Lake From a New Oil Pipeline

Sabine Lake is an estuary teeming with life. Piping plovers, alligator snapping turtles, manta rays, West Indian manatees, and endangered Rice's whales all rely on its waters — which flow directly into the Gulf of Mexico.

But now this fragile ecosystem is at risk. A new offshore crude oil terminal called Blue Marlin would require running a pipeline through Sabine Lake and Bessie Heights, a nearby marsh. Construction alone could harm local fisheries and wildlife, but an oil spill would be disastrous — polluting the lake, killing wildlife, and devastating human communities.

Gulf Coast residents already face facility fires, toxic pollution, and intensifying hurricanes. They shouldn't have to endure yet another fossil fuel project.

Take action: Tell the U.S. Maritime Administration you're concerned about the potential harms of the Blue Marlin project.

Suit Aims to Save Two California Salamanders

Two salamanders in the southern Sierra Nevada — who’ve needed conservation help since at least the 1980s and ’90s — are the subject of a new Center for Biological Diversity lawsuit against the Trump administration for delaying their protection.

Kern Canyon slender salamanders and relictual slender salamanders have been hit hard by decades of livestock grazing, logging, and development — only a few populations of each species remain. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, whose mission it is to protect them, has been dragging its feet for far too long on finalizing listing under the Endangered Species Act.

We also just petitioned for federal protection of a rare Oregon flower called the Ochoco lomatium, a member of the carrot family, and for California state protection for Pacific pocket mice, who live on only about 740 acres on the coast of Orange and San Diego counties.

The Center has now filed 17 lawsuits against the second Trump administration. Help us keep fighting with a gift to the Center’s Future for the Wild Fund now — there are only a few more days to get your donation doubled.

San Diego Butterfly Gets a Safer Home

The Center and our local allies have reached a legal agreement with developers of Otay Village 13, in San Diego County, that will protect habitat for endangered Quino checkerspot butterflies and other wildlife and provide $15 million to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the area.

The agreement also reduces the acreage of the sprawling 1,900-home project by 35% and substitutes solar panels for gas hookups in the wildfire-prone area.

“This agreement will allow San Diego residents to breathe a little easier while giving all the struggling species in the area, like burrowing owls and San Diego fairy shrimps, a chance to survive,” said the Center’s Peter Broderick.

Join the National Hands Off! Rallies This Saturday

Don’t forget: This Saturday, April 5, Center staff and supporters will join other orgs across the United States to turn out for Hands Off! — a mass activation in defiance of the Trump-Musk billionaire takeover and the Republican assault on the environment and people.

President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and congressional Republicans don’t care what they destroy to rake in more money. But the Center’s ready to fight back.

Join us on April 5 to demand they get their hands off public lands, endangered species, and the federal agencies and funds that help support all these things and more.

Sign up to attend or host a Hands Off! event in a city or town near you.

And get ready with printable signs and shareable graphics from our website.

See you in the streets.

Center Returns Costa Rica Land to Talamanca Women

With the help of Paula Simmonds (our chief development officer) and Costa Rica-based attorney Enrique Rojas Solis, the Center has donated more than 40 acres of land in Costa Rica to a group of Indigenous women for conservation and cocoa production.

The mostly forested land, near the village of Manzanillo, will allow the Association Commission of Indigenous Women of Talamanca to keep producing artisanal chocolate. These 135 women practice sustainable farming as they continue their cultural legacy of harvesting cocoa.

“We’re thrilled to be returning these ancestral lands to the women of ACOMUITA,” said Center cofounder Peter Galvin, “and we celebrate their work.”

The Revelator: Giraffes for Peace

Can restoring wildlife help heal human communities? In this new Revelator article, journalist Laurel Neme looks to Kenya’s Baringo giraffes, who’ve brought peace to an area previously beset by strife and conflict.

If you don’t already, subscribe to The Revelator’s free weekly e-newsletter for more wildlife and conservation news.

That's Wild: Earwig and the Angry Inch

Earwigs may not be as obviously charismatic as bees or butterflies, but they have their own fan base of dedicated entomologists, as a recent article in Knowable Magazine explained.

Courtship can be dramatic: While females collect sperm in internal pouches, keep it to fertilize multiple broods, and don’t need or want to mate again, males have an understandable urge to be sperm donors. So in some species the two have gotten into a kind of arms race, with each sex’s genitals growing in size to be able to best the other’s.

In one case, male genitalia are almost as long as the rest of their bodies; female genitals are almost four times as long.

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Photo credits: Piping plover by Grigory Heaton/Flickr; Kern County salamander by Noah Morales, relictual slender salamander by Jonathan Hakim/USFWS; Quino checkerspot butterfly by Joanna Gilkeson/USFWS; protesters by realavivahr/Flickr; Costa Rica land by Enrique Rojas Solis; giraffes by Ami Vitale/Save Giraffes Now; earwig by Marshal Hedin/Flickr.

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