In Court Over Two National Monuments’ Decimation

The Center for Biological Diversity and allies are challenging President Donald Trump’s unlawful proclamation virtually eliminating Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. In July Trump illegally redrew the boundaries of both monuments in southern Utah, reducing them by more than 90% — 1 million acres more than when he tried to slash the monuments in 2017. (We sued over those rollbacks too, but our case was put on hold when Biden restored the monuments in 2021. Now we’re seeking to reactivate it so we can challenge both sets of illegal proclamations together.)

Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante are monumentally significant to Native Tribes, renowned for their stunning geologic features, and popular for recreation. Both are home to iconic wildlife like bears and bighorns, as well as endangered birds like southwestern willow flycatchers and western yellow-billed cuckoos.

“The truth is the Trump administration is trying to sell out two of America’s most remarkable national monuments to benefit oil and mining corporations,” said the Center’s Southwest Director Taylor McKinnon.

Tell your elected officials and the Utah congressional delegation that national monuments belong to the people — not corporations owned by billionaires.

House Officials Are Targeting Us Again

Last week anti-wildlife members of the House Committee on Natural Resources launched another meritless investigation targeting the Center for our work to protect wildlife, public lands, and environmental laws. They’re attacking us for suing the government when it breaks the law — demanding written answers and an in-person interview from the Center and other groups.

“This is intimidation and bullying for the sake of intimidation and bullying,” said the Center’s Government Affairs Director Brett Hartl.

Donate to our Freedom Defense Fund so we can keep defending life on Earth.

Win: Public-Lands Data Center in Nevada Halted

After the Center and local allies filed an appeal against a massive data center near Boulder City, Nevada, a federal panel has temporarily halted construction. The Townsite data center would’ve been the country’s first on federal public land — and would’ve been built on desert tortoise habitat.

The Interior Board of Land Appeals found that our appeal was “likely to succeed on the merits” in showing that the Trump administration had approved the data center unlawfully, relying on a years-old approval process for a solar project in the same place.

“We’re thrilled this data center has been stopped,” said Patrick Donnelly, the Center’s Great Basin director. “It proves communities have the power to fight back and win.”

Courtroom Dramas: Red Knots and Pond Turtles

This month the Center went to court for one bird and two turtle species. We sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to force it to designate critical habitat for threatened shorebirds called red knots. And with allies, we also sued it for failing to finalize Endangered Species Act protection for northwestern and southwestern pond turtles.

Red knots have been federally protected for more than a decade, with no habitat protection, and are known for epic migrations from the southern tip of South America to the Arctic. In between they depend on U.S. coastal stops to fuel up on food like horseshoe crab eggs. But in recent decades they often starve to death, and their populations have declined by 94%.

Two out of only 3 freshwater turtle species native to the Pacific Coast, the pond turtles depend on wetlands that are being gobbled up by development, logging, and wildfire. When the babies hatch, they’re the size of a quarter. We first petitioned to save them from extinction in 2012; under further legal pressure from us, the Service proposed protection in October 2023. But it still hasn’t issued the final rule.

Court Nixes Decision to Build Kingston Gas Plant

Following a lawsuit by the Center and allies, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center, a federal court has ruled that the Tennessee Valley Authority’s decision to build its massive Kingston Gas Plant was illegal.

“Rather than spending billions on another polluting methane gas plant, TVA should invest in reducing energy costs for people in the Tennessee Valley without worsening climate change,” said Center attorney Howard Crystal. “This ruling should be a wake-up call for TVA to take a fresh look at how it can move forward with cleaner, cheaper alternatives.”

The Revelator: Lightbulb Moment

When Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth came out 20 years ago, many people felt the movie’s first recommendation on how to fight climate change — replace your lightbulbs — was like bringing a squirt gun to a wildfire.

But as this new Revelator article explains, it turns out Al Gore was right.

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

That's Wild: A Purple Sea Otter Skeleton

When sea otters eat a diet rich in purple sea urchins, it can turn their bones purple — an occurrence called “echinochrome staining.” But they have to binge on purple urchins for years for this to happen, reports a marine biologist who found a lavender skeleton.

And no. It wouldn’t happen to you if you ate sea urchin at a sushi bar. Sea otters eat the spines and shell (or “test”) of a sea urchin; people eat the gonads.

Read about it at Upworthy or check out the video on Instagram.

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Photo credits: Western yellow-billed cuckoo and desert bighorn lamb by Peter Pearsall/USFWS; wolf eyes via Shutterstock; desert tortoise by Sandy Redding/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0); red knot by Chuck Homler/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0), western pond turtle by Yathin S Krishnappa/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0); Kingston Fossil Plant and Clinch River by Brian Stansberry/Wikimedia Commons; incandescent lightbulbs by Wilhelm Gunkel/Unsplash; sea otter by Marshal Hedin/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0), otter skull courtesy CDFW.

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