Save Right Whales From an AI Data Center

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is considering a company’s preliminary permit application to build an underwater AI data center off the coast of Eastport, Maine, in the Bay of Fundy. The bay is a vital feeding area, nursery, and migratory corridor for endangered species like North Atlantic right whales — who number fewer than 400 — and Atlantic sturgeons.

Even exploratory studies for the project could pollute the water and put right whales, fin whales, sturgeons, and other wildlife at risk. More vessel traffic would boost the chance of ship strikes — a leading cause of death for large whales — and testing equipment could disturb seafloor habitats. Underwater noise from surveys and engines could disrupt the lives of animals who rely on sound to survive.

Help protect New England’s ocean wildlife from the data center boom: Tell the commission to reject this preliminary permit application.

Fighting to Save Alaska Old Growth

The Center for Biological Diversity and allies just filed a motion to stop the first timber sale in a massive, Trump administration-approved logging project in the world-famous Tongass National Forest in Alaska. We asked the court to prevent the cutting of trees on Revillagigedo Island while considering our larger August lawsuit on the issue.

Along with causing immense environmental destruction, the Tongass old-growth timber sale program has cost the U.S. Forest Service hundreds of millions of dollars to run — almost all at taxpayers’ expense. This sale would likely perpetuate that trend.

And it would take place in an area prized for subsistence and recreation alike, whose old-growth trees keep ecosystems healthy for wildlife like salmon, deer, goshawks, martens, black bears, and Alexander Archipelago wolves.

The precious Tongass needs us. Help the Center stop this sale with a gift to the Future for the Wild Fund.

Win for Jaguars: New Roads Blocked in Arizona

Responding to a suit by the Center and our partners, a federal court has overturned a Forest Service plan to build new roads through three delicate canyons in Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains.

Federally protected jaguars are known to use the remote canyons, part of the Coronado National Forest. New roads would put these wild felines at risk from noise and other disturbances — while also increasing the threat of wildfires and polluting clean water.

“Arizonans are rooting for jaguars to recover, but the Forest Service is standing in their way,” said Taylor McKinnon, Southwest director at the Center. “It’s time for the agency to get with the program and ditch this illegal plan for good.”

Suit Targets Illegal Cattle Damage to Arizona Habitat

For the second time in six years, the Center and allies sued the Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to protect endangered species and riparian habitat from grazing along the upper Verde River in central Arizona. For years we’ve documented illegal cattle damage to protected critical habitat here for narrow-headed garter snakes, western yellow-billed cuckoos, and spikedace fish — all protected under the Endangered Species Act.

“The Verde River is too important to native wildlife and people to be repeatedly ruined by cows that shouldn’t be there in the first place,” said the Center’s Chris Bugbee. “It’s pathetic that we need to sue again.”

You're Invited: The Road to Better Food Systems

The global food system is broken. It relies heavily on factory farms, commercial fishing, and other industrial models that harm people, wildlife, and the planet.

The United States urgently needs to transition away from these models — especially those involving the overproduction and consumption of animal products — and toward an equitable, sustainable one supporting healthy and affordable plant-rich diets.

To help us get there, the Center and allies have published The U.S. Just Food Transition Roadmap, a framework outlining how Americans can work together to shift governments and public policy (from local to federal levels) in the right direction.

Want to be a part of the movement?

Register now for a free webinar on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at noon PT / 3 p.m. ET where you can learn more and get involved.

Once you sign up, check your email for the link to join.

The Revelator: Activists vs. Data Centers

This week we bring you The Revelator’s latest comics-format story, a collaboration with Crucial Comix. Cartoonist and activist Denali Sai Nalamalapu takes us to Virginia, where people are learning about data centers and advocating for their communities’ interests. Some are experienced community advocates, while others are organizing for the first time.

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

That’s Wild: Spiders’ Self-Sacrificial Sex Somersault

Male redback spiders — those of a species also known as Australian black widows — only mate with one female, and the females typically eat them after mating.

To maximize their chances of success, new research shows, male redbacks hand over their sperm with their armlike “pedipalps” during copulation and meanwhile perform a kind of somersault where they block the females’ mouths with their abdomens until they can deliver a second package of sperm. (Females have two sperm-storage organs.)

Some male redbacks, previous research demonstrated, can buck the fatal one-night-stand

system by finding younger females to mate with on their first try — younger females not yet well versed in eating up their partners.

Read more and watch a video.

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Photo credits: North Atlantic right whale by Alison Ogilvie/NOAA Fisheries; black bear by Courtney Celley/USFWS, Alexander Archipelago wolf by Robin Silver/Center for Biological Diversity; jaguar courtesy USFWS; western yellow-billed cuckoo by Peter Pearsall/USFWS; illustration of vegetables via Canva; art by Denali Sai Nalamalapu; Australian redback spider screenshot from a video in the study by Uludağ et al. (CC BY 4.0).

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