JACKSON, Miss.— The Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today for failing to protect critical habitat for Pearl River map turtles. These turtles live only in the Pearl River of Mississippi and Louisiana, where their biggest threat is habitat loss. The turtles are named for the beautiful, intricate patterns on their shells, which resemble topographic maps.

“The construction of dams and channels has permanently altered the Pearl River and driven the decline of Pearl River map turtles, who depend on its free-flowing fresh water to survive,” said Lindsay Reeves, a senior attorney at the Center. “Now the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is planning to build yet another dam on the Pearl. We’re at a pivotal moment where we need to protect the turtles’ critical habitat or risk losing them forever.”

The project proposed by the Corps would dredge out the banks of the Pearl River and build a dam to create an enormous lake for real estate development. This would be especially harmful because Pearl River map turtles can’t survive in lakes and construction of the dam would flood their nesting sites. They depend on flowing freshwater to find food and shelter and need sandy beaches along the riverbanks to build nests.

The Service protected the Pearl River map turtle as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in July 2024, triggering a 1-year period to protect the turtle’s critical habitat. The Service missed that deadline.

The designation of critical habitat is an important step in preventing the Pearl River map turtle’s extinction. A Center study found that plants and animals with federally protected critical habitat are more than twice as likely to be moving toward recovery than species without it. And, with the Trump administration’s recent attempt to exclude habitat destruction from the types of harm the Endangered Species Act prohibits, designating critical habitat is of crucial importance because it ensures that harms and threats to habitat are still considered.