WASHINGTON— The Center for Biological Diversity has reached a legal agreement requiring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to decide by March 7, 2030, whether to designate critical habitat for endangered black-capped petrels. The Center sued the agency in 2025 for failing to provide critical habitat protections for these seabirds, who are threatened by oil spills, offshore oil and gas extraction, and deforestation.

“Black-capped petrels need clean waters full of fish to survive, and I’m cheered that this win could protect their habitat,” said Catherine Kilduff, a senior attorney at the Center. “It would be tragic to lose these seabirds forever because of over-industrialization of the open ocean. This win ends the government’s foot-dragging in protecting waters off the Southeast Atlantic and the Gulf that the petrels fly hundreds of miles to reach.”

In 2023 the Service protected the black-capped petrel as endangered following 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.

These far-traveling seabirds forage in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic coast, returning to raise their young on Hispaniola, a Caribbean island shared by 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 their 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 could 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.

Recently, the Endangered Species Committee — often called the “God Squad” or “Extinction Committee” because it makes decisions that may condemn species to extinction — exempted federally approved oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico from review under the Endangered Species Act. This potentially guts protections for that habitat when it comes to oil and gas operations, but critical habitat protections for the black-capped petrels would still help alleviate other threats.

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

The agreement was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.