No. 1273, November 28, 2024

1.6 Million Acres Proposed for Rare Bumblebees

Thanks to a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, NRDC, and Friends of Minnesota Scientific and Natural Areas, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service just proposed to protect 1.6 million acres of critical habitat for rusty patched bumblebees.

Rusty patched bumblebees are social pollinators living in colonies of up to 1,000 workers. Every fall the workers die and mated queens head underground to hibernate, emerging in spring to start new colonies with eggs fertilized by sperm stored in their bodies.

Although the species once thrived across the upper Midwest and Northeast, these fuzzy flyers have declined dramatically since the 1990s due to habitat loss, pesticides, and more.

After the Service made strenuous efforts to deny them critical habitat — and after our legal victory — the agency has now proposed protecting habitat in 33 counties in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, mostly on private lands in the urban areas where agricultural pesticides haven’t wiped them out. The final critical habitat decision will rest with the Trump administration, so we’ll keep fighting to ensure that rusty patched bumblebees get the protections they need to dodge extinction.

Right now, you can help. Defend these bees and other wildlife against pesticides in some of their last homes: wildlife refuges.

Suit Seeks Records on Species-Protection Meddling

The Center just sued the Biden White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for refusing to share documents related to protecting endangered wildlife and their habitat.

Our lawsuit seeks records on delays in protections caused by the White House’s review of critical habitat for red knots, Miami cave crayfish, Florida bonneted bats, and four species of freshwater mussels, as well as vital ship-strike protections for Atlantic right whales.

Help the Center fight for these and so many others with a matched gift to our Future for the Wild Fund.

Call for New National Monuments in California

Indigenous leaders are calling on President Biden to designate three new national monuments to protect habitat and safeguard historic cultural resources.

The proposed Sáttítla National Monument, sacred to the Pit River Tribe, would encompass a stunning landscape of forests and waterways in the Medicine Lake Highlands of Northern California — including volcanically formed aquifers providing clean water to Pacific fishers, northern spotted owls, and millions of people too.

In the Southern California desert, the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe seeks protection of its ancestral lands as Kw’tsán National Monument, habitat for sensitive species like desert tortoises, Yuma kingsnakes, and desert kit foxes.

And right next to the Kw’tsan lies what could soon be Chuckwalla National Monument, the Iviatim, Nüwü, Pipa Aha Macav, Kwatsáan, and Maara’yam peoples — and home to wildlife like bighorn sheep and the monument’s namesake Chuckwalla lizards.

This Native American Heritage Month, we ask you to support the fight to protect public lands from energy development, mining, and other threats.

Sign our Indigenous allies' petitions to designate the Sáttítla, Kw’tsán, and Chuckwalla national monuments.

Arizona Petition Takes Aim at Dog-Pack Hunting

Arizona lets trophy hunters use packs of dogs to track mountain lions, bears, bobcats, and other mammals. Those dog packs have also caused harm to endangered species, like jaguars and ocelots. Many hunters use GPS collars, smartphone apps, and satellites to chase the animals down — often from vehicles.

It’s unsporting and unfair. So the Center and allies just petitioned the state to ban the use of dog packs for hunting and make Arizona’s rules more humane.

Join Us: Securing a Hopeful Future for Nature

Anti-wildlife forces will soon control all three branches of our federal government. The work ahead will be hard, but we know we can defend the wild.

In a live virtual gathering on Thursday, Dec. 5 at 11 a.m. PST / 2 p.m. EST, Center Executive Director Kierán Suckling will join author, activist, and Center board member Terry Tempest Williams. They’ll talk about how we can transform our values and passion into action to protect wildlife and wild places from the dangerous attacks we know are coming.

Together we can tap into our collective energy and muster the resilience and tenacity we’ll need for the months and years ahead. Our greatest asset is each other and an unwavering love for the other animals and plants that sustain us all.

If you haven’t yet, sign up now to join us for this important and vital hour to celebrate what unites us — and what will keep us strong as we hold the line for life on Earth.

Simplify the Holiday Season

The winter holidays are almost here, and with them come all the pressures of holiday shopping. The Center’s Simplify the Holidays campaign offers an antidote to holiday stress with sustainable gift guides, tips for alternative giving, and resources to transform the season into one of more fun and less stuff.

This year we’re urging people to participate in Secondhand Sunday. Held this weekend, it’s an alternative to the hyperconsumption and waste of Black Friday and Cyber Monday — and is a day to embrace secondhand gift-giving and all its benefits.

Check out our digital toolkit to help spread the word. Together we can reduce the holidays’ environmental footprint (and financial stress) and get back to what really matters.

Revelator: Trojan Seahorses and Vampire Birds

This month in conservation science, journals looked at “fabulous but forgotten” ecosystems, hungry monkeys, roaming lions, a “seahorse harbor,” lead-poisoned birds, microplastics, and more.

Get the lowdown in The Revelator.

If you don’t already, subscribe to the free weekly Revelator e-newsletter for more wildlife and conservation news.

That's Wild: Meet the Wolves Who Eat Nectar

Ethiopian wolves, graceful animals who look much like coyotes — only red — live in the highlands of Ethiopia and are Africa’s most endangered carnivore, with only a few hundred left on Earth. They mostly eat rodents, but extraordinarily, they also graze on flowers: They’ve been spotted licking the nectar of Ethiopian red hot poker flowers, and they may visit 20-30 stalks a night.

Whether the wolves, whose muzzles get covered in pollen as they snack, act as pollinators isn’t yet known.

Watch a video of a wolf enjoying a flower, which looks delicious.

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Photo credits: Rusty patched bumblebee by Trisha Leaf/iNaturalist; red knot shorebird by Stephan Sprinz/Wikimedia Commons; northern spotted owl by Karen and John Hollingsworth/USFWS, bighorn sheep by Ryan Hagerty/USFWS; mountain lion courtesy NPS; jaguar via Shutterstock; gifts by Rachel Claire/Pexels; pygmy seahorse by Christian Gloor; Ethiopian wolf by Charles J. Sharp/Sharp Photography.

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