Trump Moves to Kill Forest Roadless Rule

On Tuesday, just as it said it would a year ago, the Trump administration proposed to scrap the Roadless Area Conservation Rule: the country’s most significant tool for protecting national forests. The move would open nearly 45 million acres of intact forest across 37 states to road building, logging, and development. It would pose a catastrophic threat to all kinds of wildlife — including 88 federally protected species, from grizzly bears to Canada lynx and spotted owls.

“Trump is pushing for the largest evisceration of public lands protection in U.S. history and against what Americans want,” said Randi Spivak, the Center’s public lands policy director. “These are some of the last truly wild forests left in the country, places that shelter endangered wildlife and protect drinking water. We’re going to fight like hell to safeguard these wild places for future generations.”

Check your inbox tomorrow for a chance to speak up against this devastating proposal.

In the meantime you can help us defeat it with a gift to our Future for the Wild Fund.

Judge Blocks Izembek Refuge Land Exchange

Thanks to a lawsuit by the Center and three Alaska Native Tribes, a federal judge just overturned the Trump administration’s decision to trade away and privatize federal public lands in Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. This cancels a land exchange that would’ve facilitated construction of a road through the heart of the refuge’s wilderness.

Besides being home to grizzly bears, caribou, salmon, sea otters, and sea lions, Izembek provides an essential stopover for millions of migratory birds — including nearly the entire population of Pacific black brant and many emperor geese who are also a key subsistence resource for the Alaska Native Tribes in our lawsuit.

“It’s been a long, hard-fought battle,” said the Center’s Alaska Legal Director Rebecca Noblin. "I’m thankful these lands, endangered wildlife, and migratory birds remain protected for future generations.”

California to End Use of Deadly Paraquat

Following years of advocacy by the Center and allies, California has started a two-year phaseout of paraquat, a deadly pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease and banned in 70 countries.

California is the largest U.S. user of paraquat. State research shows that the chemical may threaten birds and mammals — including imperiled San Joaquin kit foxes and Swainson’s hawks — and confirms its association with human health issues like thyroid disease and reproductive harms. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has yet to confront the paraquat problem at the federal level.

“Paraquat is on its way out,” said the Center’s Environmental Health Director Nathan Donley. “The question now is how long it will take the EPA to start protecting people instead of pesticide companies’ profits.”

Take action: Tell the agency to ban paraquat and other pesticides that other countries already consider too dangerous to use.

Oregon Martens Win Off-Road Vehicle Protections

In response to Center litigation, a federal court just ruled that the U.S. Forest Service failed to protect threatened coastal martens from off-road vehicles in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. The court imposed a nightly riding curfew and ordered the installation of signs and fencing to keep vehicles out of key habitats for these stealthy, bushy-tailed carnivores.

Coastal martens are federally protected thanks to multiple Center lawsuits. We also won them 1.2 million acres of critical habitat (including 28,843 acres in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area).

“This win will protect marten mothers and their young to ensure a future where they can continue to hunt, climb, play, and thrive in these beautiful shore-pine forests,” said Center attorney Tala DiBenedetto.

Ft. Lauderdale Dredging Halted — for Now

Less than a week after our coalition lawsuit challenging the feds’ permitting process, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to temporarily halt dredging for Broward County’s Port Everglades sand-moving project — a threat to vanishing staghorn corals and threatened queen conches. The Corps promised to consult other agencies to figure out how it might minimize ecological damage.

“I hope the Army Corps’ decision to stop dredging for now is a good sign that the federal government is ready to take the conservation of Florida’s coral and queen conch seriously,” the Center’s Alex Muir told the Miami Herald. “We won’t stop our work until these threatened marine species and their habitat are given the protection they’re entitled to.”

Revelator: The Fish Maw Market

The early days of the shark-fin trade saw a feeding frenzy of illegal fishing that harmed shark populations around the world. Now the mostly unregulated market for dried fish swim bladders is similarly booming — and devastating many large and at-risk marine species.

This deadly trade has mostly flown under the radar so far, but as this new article reveals, we still have a chance to stop it.

If you haven’t yet, subscribe to The Revelator’s free weekly newsletter for more wildlife and conservation news.

That's Wild: Demogorgon Fish Found Below Army Base

Near Huntsville, Alabama, in a cave beneath a U.S. Army base that happens to be contaminated by chemical weapons and is therefore well studied, scientists have discovered a kind of sightless cavefish hiding in plain sight.

Named after the monster from Stranger Things — the cavefishes’ Latin name is Demogorgonichthys arcanus — the newly described creatures appear to have evolved into sightlessness in a different way from nearby, similar species and may be among the most geographically restricted fishes in the world.

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Photo credits: Canada lynx by Emily Mesner/NPS, grizzly bear by marneejill/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0); emperor geese in Izembek Lagoon by Katrina Liebich/USFWS; Swainson’s hawk by Patrick Myers/NPS, San Joaquin kit fox by Timothy Ludwick/USFWS; humboldt marten by Mark Stevens/Marten Connectivity Research Project in southern Oregon and northern California; queen conch by Jennifer Doerr/NOAA SEFSC Galveston; dried fish maw courtesy Yvonne Sadovy, PhD, fish market in Hong Kong by Sue Fisher/Animal Welfare Institute; demon cavefish by Matthew L. Niemiller et al, from "Surprising cryptic cavefish diversity in a long-studied karst cave ecosystem of northern Alabama" (CC BY 4.0).

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