WASHINGTON— The Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today for failing to provide critical habitat protections for endangered black-capped petrels, who are threatened by oil spills, offshore oil and gas extraction and deforestation.

“These intrepid sea birds cross oceans to feed, and they’ll only survive if they arrive to a healthy marine environment,” said Mark Patronella, a staff attorney at the Center. “Federal officials recognize that petrels need and deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act, but keep dragging their heels on protecting the places the birds need to survive. In the meantime, these remarkable birds move closer to extinction.”

In 2023 the Service listed the black-capped petrel as endangered as a result of a lawsuit filed by the Center in 2015, but it has failed to designate any of the petrel’s habitat for protection and its deadline to do so has passed. Today’s lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

These far-traveling seabirds forage in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic coast, returning to raise their young on Hispaniola, the island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Black-capped petrels — also called diablotín, or “little devil,” for their eerie night calls — travel hundreds of miles across open oceans in search of food. The petrel’s swift population decline has shrunk its nesting range to just four sites.

The birds face a long list of threats to survival, including oil spills, commercial fishing, offshore oil and gas extraction, climate change, deforestation around nesting sites, invasive predators and government inaction. Critical habitat designation for the black-capped petrel would have immediate benefits, including improved water quality in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic waters off the southeastern U.S., limits on overfishing and offshore energy extraction and reduced human pressure on marine ecosystems.

Endangered and threatened species that have critical habitat protections are twice as likely to recover as those without it.

“The Trump administration is increasingly hostile to our wild places and has repeatedly failed to uphold keystone environmental laws. I’m hopeful the court will force the administration to follow the law and protect the black-capped petrel’s feeding grounds,” said Patronella.