No. 1280, January 16, 2025

Historic Agreement Helps Tule Elk

The Center for Biological Diversity and allies just signed a momentous agreement with the National Park Service and livestock operators, retiring all dairy ranches and three-quarters of private commercial beef cattle operations at California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, home to majestic native tule elk. The Park Service has revised its Point Reyes management plan to prioritize conservation and let tule elk roam freely, multiplying without a population cap.

We’re on a roll defending these charismatic, antler-crowned ungulates. The agreement comes only weeks after our last major tule elk victory: freeing Point Reyes’ largest herd from a 2-mile fence that was causing mass deaths.

“I’m looking forward to the improved management approach for natural ecosystems that this agreement can usher in,” said the Center’s Jeff Miller. “This is a historic opportunity to expand elk herds, restore coastal prairie habitats, and protect endangered species.”

Manatees Forsaken in Florida

Despite a devastating die-off, this week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected our petition to upgrade Florida manatees’ Endangered Species Act status from threatened to endangered. Over the past few years, more than 2,000 Florida manatees have starved to death as water pollution decimated their seagrass supply. The Service initially announced it might increase their protection — but its new decision reverses course.

The good news? In that same decision, it did propose to protect Puerto Rico’s Antillean manatees as endangered.

In 2017 the Service ignored conservation groups’ warnings and “downlisted” West Indian manatees — manatees in both Florida and Puerto Rico — to threatened. We’ll keep fighting to get the Florida subspecies properly protected.

Give manatees a future by donating to our Future for the Wild Fund now.

Tribes Win Two New California National Monuments

Thanks to years of tireless work by Tribal advocates — with the backing of allies like the Center and you supporters — President Biden just created two new national monuments in California, preserving diverse landscapes that are important habitats for critically endangered wildlife.

In Northern California the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument covers a landscape of forests and waterways sacred to the Pit River Tribe and home to Pacific fishers and northern spotted owls.

In Southern California Chuckwalla National Monument includes lands sacred to five groups of Native peoples that harbor wildlife the Center has defended for decades — including bighorn sheep, desert tortoises, desert kit foxes, and the monument’s namesake lizards.

LA Fires and the Dangerous Spread of Disinformation

As Angelenos and their allies work to quench the flames, everyone who cares about the planet must grapple with another threat sparked by the Los Angeles wildlfires: anti-environmental disinformation.

A chorus of voices from the right — including those of Donald Trump and Elon Musk — are wrongly blaming the disaster on environmental regulations and protections, including forest management and habitat protection for endangered Delta smelt. One of the dangerous falsehoods they’re peddling is that protecting those natural resources directly led to the devastation in Los Angeles.

Since you’re reading this, you probably already know that’s a lie and why it’s a lie. Protecting ecosystems also protects people. Humans aren’t separate from the wild — we’re connected to it and part of an intricate, delicate web of life.

The real reasons for the California conflagration are complex and longstanding. You can learn about them in the Center’s Built to Burn report about how to make better land-use decisions and reduce threats to communities posed by climate-fueled wildfires.

For all those personally affected by the fires, our hearts are with you.

Center Op-Ed: Wild Oklahoma at Risk

In a beautiful, biodiverse corner of southeast Oklahoma live dozens of species, from mussels and bats to reptiles and fish, writes the Center’s Tara Zuardo with Oklahoman Seth Willyard in The Oklahoman.

But this unique place is threatened by a hydropower project that would flood 1,500 acres of habitat, imperil protected species, and harm local communities — despite the objections of state, local, and Tribal leaders. The project would likely even wipe out the Ouachita rock pocketbook mussel, a species dear to the Choctaw Nation.

Last week the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected the study proposal behind the project, citing its many deficiencies. That’s the first step in defeating the project. Now the company backing it has until Feb. 7 to file a new study proposal — or the project can’t advance. We’ll keep the pressure on.

Revelator: National Parks Are for Bighorns

Fifty years ago bighorn sheep had disappeared from the Colorado National Monument, wiped out in much of the Southwest by hunting and livestock diseases. They were reintroduced to the monument in the 1980s. Then, during the pandemic, their populations soared without people around to disturb them.

Now people have returned — and bighorns are suffering.

Read more in The Revelator. And if you don’t already, subscribe to the free weekly e-newsletter for more wildlife and conservation news.

That’s Wild: Part Animal, Part Vegetable

Costasiella sea slugs, or Costasiella kuroshimae — nicknamed “leaf sheep” or “sheep slugs” — are tiny, shell-less gastropod mollusks who indirectly perform photosynthesis.

They spend much of their time grazing on marine algae. But instead of digesting it normally, their bodies separate out the algae’s chloroplasts — plant organelles that convert sunlight into chemical energy — and embed them in the leaf sheep’s own tissues.

With their little dark eyes and wavy horn-like “rhinophores” poking from the tops of their heads, they're surely the cutest photosynthetic animals out there.

Watch a herd of them grazing on YouTube.

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Photo credits: Tule elk by Aditithe Stargazer/Flickr; manatee by Ramos Keith/USFWS; chuckwalla lizard by Nicholas Stadie/Wikimedia Commons; Eaton fire courtesy CAL FIRE/Flickr; Ouachita rock pocketbook mussel by Chris Davidson/USFWS; bighorn ram by Hilary Clark; Costasiella sea slug by Robin Gwen Agarwal/Flickr.

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