Trump's Vicious Attack on Endangered Species

We knew the Trump administration would come gunning for the Endangered Species Act. It's happening now.

Late last week the administration rolled out a series of proposals to weaken protections for endangered animals and plants, make it easier for their most precious habitat to be drilled and bulldozed, and ensure hundreds of species waiting for protection face even more lethal delays.

Combined with similar bills in Congress, these are the most significant threats the Endangered Species Act has ever faced.

Check out this in-depth "Democracy Now" interview with Kierán Suckling, the Center for Biological Diversity's executive director, about the latest attacks on the Act. And don't miss an appearance by the Center's Brett Hartl on "The Daily Show" this week in another segment on Trump's onslaughts.

We're gearing up to fight these attacks with everything we've got. Please consider donating to our Trump Resistance Fund, and your gift will be matched by a generous Center supporter.

Love Grizzlies? Put Aug. 7 on Your Calendar

Mark your calendar: Ignite Change, the Center's nationwide network of volunteer activists, is organizing dozens of events around the country Aug. 7 to speak out against plans allowing more than 20 grizzlies to be hunted if they wander out of Yellowstone National Park this fall.

You can help stop this by hosting or joining one of our events around the country. We're calling them "Brews for Bears" and are encouraging people to gather at their local watering hole to organize, mobilize and take action, including sending a postcard to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke urging him to restore protection to these bears and stop the hunt.

Find out more about how to get involved.

Suits Launched to Save Near-extinct Alabama Fish

This week in Alabama we filed a formal notice of intent to sue Mazda Toyota Manufacturing, U.S.A. Inc. and the city of Huntsville over the construction and operation of an automobile manufacturing plant in the heart of the most important habitat for one of Alabama's rarest fishes.

The auto plant threatens to pollute and degrade springs, streams and wetlands that support one of only two remaining populations of the critically endangered spring pygmy sunfish.

"Allowing construction to go forward without carefully looking at the impacts and putting a strong conservation plan in place is playing fast and loose with Alabama's unique natural heritage," said the Center's Elise Bennett. "One wrong step could wipe this lovely little fish off the face of the Earth."

Read more in Decatur Daily.

A Big Court Win in Fight to Save Mexico's Vaquita

Responding to a lawsuit by the Center and allies, the U.S. Court of International Trade this morning ordered the Trump administration to ban seafood imports from Mexico caught with gillnets that kill the critically endangered vaquita porpoise.

As few as 15 vaquita remain, and almost half the population drowns in fishing gillnets each year. Absent immediate additional protection, the tiny porpoise could be extinct by 2021.

"With vaquitas on the brink of extinction, these economic sanctions are painful but necessary to push Mexican officials to finally protect these little porpoises," said the Center's Sarah Uhlemann. "For 20 years, the Mexican government has promised to save the vaquita but failed to take meaningful action. That has to change or we'll lose these animals forever."

Read more.

Wyoming, Colorado Billboards Target Grizzly Hunt

Five billboards that will be seen more than a million times by people in three states started going up this week as part of a campaign to stop trophy hunts planned this fall for Yellowstone grizzly bears in Wyoming and Idaho. The first billboards went up in Casper, Wyo. and near Fort Collins, Colo. Others are coming soon to Cody, Wyo. and Boise, Idaho.

The billboards feature a bear with its paw raised, the statement "I am not a trophy" and the URL www.StopTheGrizHunt.org.

"Wyoming and Idaho should be absolutely ashamed for allowing some of America's most iconic bears to be senselessly gunned down," said the Center's Andrea Santarsiere.

Read more in our press release.

Speak Up for Sage Grouse and the Sagebrush Sea

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has proposed deep cuts to protections for greater sage grouse — the West's famous and increasingly rare dancing bird. His plan? Removing hundreds of thousands of acres of protected habitat in Utah and weakening restrictions on harmful activities like oil and gas drilling in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon and Nevada.

Conservation plans adopted by the Bureau of Land Management in 2015 don't even provide the absolute minimum steps needed for sage grouse to survive amid a host of growing threats. But now Zinke wants to dismantle even those plans.

Tell the BLM that it must stop putting the fracking, drilling and mining industries ahead of protection for sage grouse and the 350 other species that live in the West's vast sagebrush sea.

In Memoriam: Lincoln Brower, Hero of the Monarchs

The Center is heartbroken: Lincoln Brower, the world's foremost expert on monarch butterflies, has died at 86. Brower studied monarchs for 64 years, publishing 200-plus papers on their biology. In 2014 he joined us in petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for their Endangered Species Act protection. A tireless advocate for the natural world, Brower was also a kind-hearted, generous man.

An audience member once asked him what difference it makes if a species goes extinct. He answered: "It's just complete nonsense and a totally wrong way of thinking to believe that other organisms don't matter. ... Our culture is depauperate as we lose tigers and elephants and hippopotami, monarchs and pandas and great apes. ... That's why I'm on this Earth."

The Center honored him in 2016 with our E.O. Wilson Award for Outstanding Science in Biodiversity Conservation.

Wild & Weird: The Adorable, Endangered Axolotl

Axolotls are adorable — and desperately endangered — salamanders. Biologists found about 6,000 in the wild in 1998, but in 2014 they failed to find even one, and feared they'd gone extinct. Luckily some axolotls have been discovered since, roaming the lakes and canals of Xochimilco, just outside Mexico City.

But habitat loss, pollution and invasive species continue to make their last remaining homes all but unlivable.

These extraordinary beings can do one thing better than almost anyone else: regenerate. While many amphibians can regenerate a limb, axolotls can also regenerate their spinal cords and even parts of their brains.

Check out our new video about axolotls on Facebook and YouTube.