No. 1,345, April 16, 2026

Trump Aims to Gut Endangered Species Act

A Trump administration proposal to weaken the country’s strongest legal tool for protecting rare and vanishing species moved to White House review Friday. In a regulatory sleight of hand, the administration is trying to eliminate most habitat protections from the Endangered Species Act by striking habitat destruction from the definition of harm, which is strictly prohibited by the Act.

Of course we can’t save species from extinction if we let their homes be destroyed.

"Habitat destruction remains the leading cause of extinction and species endangerment,” said Noah Greenwald, the Center for Biological Diversity’s codirector of endangered species. “There's no way to protect these species without protecting the places they live."

Also moving forward last week were proposals to take away threatened species’ protections, limit designation of critical habitat, and strip safeguards from grizzly bears across the lower 48 states.

Read more at Politico or ABC News and stay tuned for what’s next.

Suits Defends Panthers From Massive Development

The Center and allies just sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Army Corps of Engineers to protect endangered Florida panthers from a 10,264-acre development in crucial southwest Florida breeding habitat.

There are already likely fewer than 200 adult Florida panthers left in the wild, and dozens are killed every year as development and roads gobble up their last territory.

“Our state’s struggling panthers depend on a thriving southwest Florida population and the ability to expand northward, which are both threatened by this development,” said the Center’s Jason Totoiu. “We’re suing to stop these cats from sliding closer to extinction.”

Help us fight with a gift to the Future for the Wild Fund.

Court Blocks Off-Road Vehicles at Oceano Dunes

Responding to a Center lawsuit, a federal court just ruled that the California Department of Parks and Recreation broke the law by letting off-road vehicles harm and kill imperiled snowy plovers at the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area.

Despite a long list of incidents where vehicles ran over snowy plovers, for decades state officials have kept greenlighting motorized vehicle use at Oceano Dunes without a proper permit. That has to stop, the court said.

“The court’s ruling makes it clear that off-roading in snowy plover habitat violates the Endangered Species Act,” said Center attorney Zeynep Graves.

Arizona Court Win on Cattle: Feds Broke the Law

A federal court has ruled in favor of wildlife in a Center suit over Agua Fria National Monument, deciding that the Bureau of Land Management and Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by ignoring years of damage from illegal livestock grazing to rare desert stream habitat for imperiled fish and birds.

“I’m hopeful this will shock slumbering agencies into finally fixing the problem and working to save Gila chubs and yellow-billed cuckoos,” said the Center’s Chris Bugbee. “It’s not too late to repair our public lands and keep wildlife from sliding into extinction.”

Protect Bears and Wolves in Alaska

The U.S. National Park Service has proposed a sweeping plan to strip critical wildlife protections across millions of acres of national parklands in Alaska.

The plan would remove restrictions on cruel and unethical hunting and trapping methods for species like bears, wolves, and caribou. It would allow bear baiting (using food to make bears an easy target) and let hunters use artificial light to illuminate dens and conveniently gun down bears — including mothers and cubs — when they're most vulnerable.

Watch an adorable Alaska bear family in this video on Facebook and Instagram.

And if you haven’t taken action yet, don’t worry — the deadline for public comments has been extended. Raise your voice now to protect Alaska's wildlife.

Revelator: Saving Bull Kelp

Today is Bull Kelp Day, an opportunity to showcase the importance of this threatened marine species — and what people can do to help — as warming oceans and a wasting disease throw ecosystems out of whack.

Read more in The Revelator.

And if you haven’t yet, make sure you’re subscribed to The Revelator’s free weekly newsletter. {{if --[[FOOD]] SavedSearch_501969}}

The Need for a Just Transition to a Better Food System

The U.S. food system is broken — but there’s a path to fixing it. Learn about the Center’s new U.S. Just Food Transition Roadmap, a framework to guide us away from the current industrial animal agriculture model toward a fair, sustainable, plant-rich food system.

Read a new blog post by the Center’s Leah Kelly discussing how we can move forward as a movement to build better policies that support all people, animals, and the planet.

Make sure you’re following Rooted in Policy, her monthly blog making the connections between policy, agrifood systems, and biodiversity.

And you can help the just transition by fighting policies that push us in the wrong direction — like the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s proposal to reduce or eliminate slaughterhouse line speeds, which puts us all at risk.

That’s Wild: The Search for the Snail Holy Grail

Hawai‘i boasts an extraordinary rich heritage of land snails who live nowhere else on Earth, but more than half have been driven extinct through habitat loss and exotic species in the wake of colonization.

Researchers and conservationists are hard at work trying to captive-breed some of the most precariously endangered of the remaining snails — for eventual re-release into the wild — but a central problem is figuring out exactly what foods let the animals not only survive but thrive.

In recent years biologists have been helicoptering into high-elevation Hawaiian forests to bring back just the right leaves, with just the right kinds of microbes on them, to suit the gastropods’ fancy. But the expeditions aren’t without hazards; sometimes microbes introduced with the vegetation disrupts the balance in captivity, playing a part in fatalities. So now the scientists are even sequencing the DNA on the leaf microbes to learn more about what the snails need — and have started to grow cyanobacteria in the lab to feed them.

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: Grizzly bear via Shutterstock; Florida panther by Connie Bransilver/USFWS; snowy plover courtesy USFWS Pacific Southwest Region; yellow-billed cuckoo by Peter Pearsall/USFWS; screenshot of bear video by Lisa Hupp/USFWS; bull kelp by Steve Addison/iNaturalist; {{if --[[FOOD]] SavedSearch_501969}}U.S. Just Food Transition Roadmap cover courtesy Center for Biological Diversity and World Animal Protection; Guam streaked tree snail courtesy USFWS.

View our privacy policy.

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