Help Overhaul This Shady Pesticide-Spraying Program

For decades the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, aka APHIS, has run an antiquated and highly secretive program that allows insecticide spraying to kill native grasshoppers and Mormon crickets on public lands in 17 states. This is done to keep insects from “competing” with cows for grass.

The public lands APHIS targets for spraying are home to an astonishing diversity of wildlife, including imperiled sage grouse — who eat grasshoppers and Mormon crickets — and vulnerable pollinators like butterflies and bees. Spraying these lands harms wildlife, and because APHIS is so secretive about its activities, most people visiting have no idea whether a given area has been (or will be) sprayed.

But there's good news. Thanks to a legal victory by the Center for Biological Diversity and allies, APHIS is being forced to reassess its grasshopper-and-cricket-killing program — and it needs your feedback.

Tell APHIS to completely overhaul its approach, stop drenching sensitive public lands with insecticides, and protect wildlife, people, and public lands.

SoCal Mine Expansion Would Block Puma Movement

Thanks to a Center petition, mountain lions in Southern California and the Central Coast are protected by the state's Endangered Species Act. But a rock mine expansion now threatens to shrink a key connectivity area for them to only 800 feet wide — which could block an isolated population from getting in and out of the Santa Monica Mountains.

So the Center just challenged a Ventura County decision letting Pacific Rock extract nearly 30 million tons of rock over the next 60 years.

Said Center attorney Evan Levy, “While we don’t know whether this rock will be wanted or needed in 2086, we know that the longer the mine operates, the worse the impacts to mountain lions will be.”

Back our fight for these big cats with a gift to the Future for the Wild Fund.

Suit Aims to Expose Who’s Behind Anti-Whale Action

Slowing down ships in whale habitat is the only proven way to reduce their collisions with whales, including endangered North Atlantic right whales — yet the Trump administration plans to get rid of a speed-limit rule passed in 2008.

That’s why, this Tuesday, we sued seeking records revealing which individuals, federal officials, or industry groups may have influenced and lobbied for the plan.

“The public has a right to know who’s behind a government process that could condemn these whales to extinction,” said Kristen Monsell, our oceans legal director.

Petition Seeks Cancer Warnings on Pesticide Labels

On Wednesday the Center filed an emergency petition asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to add cancer warnings to labels on all pesticides with ingredients the agency has linked to cancer. Our petition is especially urgent because the Supreme Court just sided with Bayer and the Trump administration in limiting Americans’ ability to sue pesticide companies for harms linked to many of their products.

The same pesticides the EPA fails to label for cancer risks are driving declines in species across the United States, from California red-legged frogs to Florida manatees.

“The sad fact is that the EPA has utterly failed to protect people from dangerous pesticides,” said the Center’s Nathan Donley. “We’re asking for something ridiculously easy — just do your job.”

New Podcast Episode: The Dark Truth Behind Exotic Pets

Every year the United States imports about 90 million live animals to sell as pets, from frogs and fish to spiders, birds, and lizards. And of those, about some 30% are taken directly out of the wild and shipped to the United States for sale. It goes the other way too: The United States is a major exporter of wildlife for the pet trade, especially wild turtles.

In the newest episode of our Sounds Wild podcast, cohost Mike Stark talks with Center scientist Dianne Dubois about her months-long investigation into how the wildlife pet trade is driving species declines around the world.

Listen to the latest episode on our website or find it on Apple or Spotify.

Revelator: Whale of the Month

The Revelator just launched a new monthly series with an article on Rice’s whales — including their unexpected connection to Wisdom, the world’s oldest albatross. These critically endangered marine mammals eluded identification until just a few years ago. Now the Trump administration’s push for still more oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico could push them into oblivion.

If you haven’t yet, subscribe to The Revelator’s free weekly newsletter for more wildlife and conservation news.

That's Wild: The Elixir of Youth

Most butterflies live for a few weeks at most, but some tropical butterflies in the genus Heliconius can live for months — and not only that, but their bodies show little evidence of aging.

Their secret, according to a new study in Nature Communications, may be eating pollen instead of nectar (a more typical butterfly nosh). Researchers found that non-pollen-eating Heliconius species lived for an average of 57 days, while those who ate pollen averaged 177. One pollen eater, Heliconius hewitsoni, had a maximum lifespan of 348 days.

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Photo credits: Mormon cricket by Lori Ann Burd/Center for Biological Diversity, sage grouse courtesy USFWS Pacific Southwest Region; mountain lion courtesy NPS; North Atlantic right whales by Tim Cole/NOAA Fisheries; California red-legged frog courtesy NPS, Florida manatee by Keith Ramos/USFWS; bog turtle by Lisa Brouellette/USFWS; Rice's whale courtesy NOAA Fisheries; Heliconius hewitsoni by Greg Hume/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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