No. 1260, August 29, 2024

Wild Weeks for Colorado’s Wolf Pack

Less than a year after gray wolves were reintroduced to Colorado, new video footage shows three healthy wolf pups and one adult: Colorado’s first homegrown wolf family, the Copper Creek Pack.

The playful pups represent real hope, but on Wednesday news broke that their pack will be captured and relocated by state officials because of the animals' preying on cattle. That's a serious threat to the welfare of the new wolf family — and could have been prevented by responsible livestock management.

“Some livestock operators have been taking advantage of tools and funding to learn and deploy effective nonlethal measures for coexistence,” said Alli Henderson, the Center for Biological Diversity’s northern Rockies director. “They’re keeping livestock and wolves alive and saving taxpayer money. But ranchers who fail to clean up their act are setting us up for repeated conflicts. Relocating wolves to placate them only rewards uncooperative and unhelpful practices.”

Thanks to all of you who support wolf reintroduction and nonlethal coexistence measures for livestock owners. You can count on the Center to fight for Colorado’s new wolves — and we’ll keep letting you know how you can help.

Feds Failed to Protect Gulf Whales and Sea Turtles

Responding to a lawsuit filed by the Center and our partners, a federal court has struck down a government “biological opinion” guiding how to protect endangered marine species from offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Our suit pointed out that the document fell short on assessing the potential for oil spills and didn’t set up enough safeguards for rare and vulnerable native wildlife, like Rice’s whales and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles.

“What a relief that the court recognized the brutality of allowing thousands of endangered animals to be sacrificed to the oil and gas industry,” said Kristen Monsell, our oceans legal director. “I’m looking forward to a new analysis that truly defends the Gulf ecosystem.”

Help fund the Center’s future work for whales, sea turtles, and other animals and plants with a donation to our Saving Life on Earth Fund.

Protect Beloved Amboseli Elephants

Ranging between Kenya and Tanzania, the Amboseli-West Kilimanjaro elephants are a cherished, long-studied population that’s been safe from trophy hunting for 30 years.

Not anymore. Over the past nine months in Tanzania, hunters slaughtered five iconic males for trophies — including several males with tusks weighing 100 pounds or more. Now some 20 to 25 other super-tuskers are in trophy-hunters’ crosshairs.

The United States is the largest global importer of such trophies, so the Center and allies have petitioned the federal government to stop hunters from bringing Amboseli-West Kilimanjaro elephant trophies into this country. We need your support.

Tell the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to ban all trophy imports from this famed elephant population.

Then watch and share our new elephant video on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Progress for Painted Bats — but They Still Need Help

Following thousands of comments from Center supporters, Etsy has banned the sale of rare and beautiful painted woolly bats — in fact, all bats — who are collected from their native south Asia to be killed, stuffed, and hung on walls thousands of miles from their homes.

But the online sale of these unique orange-and-black mammals is still a huge problem, especially in the United States. To curb their decline we have to get everyone to stop selling their bodies.

Tell Amazon and eBay to join Etsy and stop selling painted woolly bats so their populations can flourish again in the wild — where they belong.

Op-Ed: Let’s Make California Safer for Wildlife

Workers are getting ready to pour concrete on the long-awaited Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, writes Center staffer J.P. Rose with Linda Parks in a column for the VC Star. It’s the perfect time to commit to protecting wildlife across California, and one state bill to do just that — the Room to Roam Act, cosponsored by the Center — passed on Tuesday.

On Wednesday the California Senate passed another bill we backed, the Poison-Free Wildlife Act. Once the governor signs it into law, this legislation will expand the state ban on rat poisons to save a wide array of animals from poisoning, including Swainson’s hawks and San Joaquin kit foxes.

The Revelator: The Rights of a River

After more than a century of struggles by the Māori people, in 2017 New Zealand’s Te Awa Tupua became the world’s first river to get the rights and powers of a legal person.

Head to The Revelator to learn from three scholars making a case for expanding that model across the globe.

After you read the article, make sure you’re subscribing to the free weekly Revelator e-newsletter for more wildlife and conservation news.

That's Wild: Orangutans' Nest-Building School

Sumatran orangutans start learning to build their treetop nests when the babies are around 6 months of age, according to a new study, and perfect the craft until they gain independence from their mothers at age 7 or 8.

The youngsters graduate from making casual day nests to working on the advanced, elaborate nests they need for night sleeps. The night nests are in essence complex beds — involving pillows and blankets — and are routinely rebuilt daily.

Check out this marvelous story and video.

Have a friend who'd like this email?

Follow Us

Center for Biological Diversity | Saving Life on Earth

Donate now to support the Center's work.

Photo credits: Gray wolf pups courtesy of Shutterstock; Rice’s whale courtesy of NOAA; Craig the elephant, Amboseli ecosystem, courtesy of Amboseli Trust for Elephants; painted woolly bat by Abu Hamas/Wikimedia; San Joaquin kit fox courtesy of California Department of Water Resources, California mountain lion courtesy of NPS; Te Awa Tupua by Tim Proffitt-White; orangutans by Ray Muzyka/Flickr.

View our privacy policy.

Center for Biological Diversity
P.O. Box 710
Tucson, AZ 85702
United States