Trump Orders Massive Rollback of Environmental Protections

In a major effort to dismantle environmental protections, President Donald Trump this week signed an executive order requiring all federal agencies to repeal two regulations before implementing a new rule.

This unprecedented, illegal restriction would hamstring every federal agency's efforts to implement laws and dramatically curtail the federal government's ability to protect human health, wildlife and the environment from emerging threats.

"This new policy is as dumb as it gets," said Kierán Suckling, the Center for Biological Diversity's executive director. "How does this 'one-step-forward-two-steps-back' order work? So you'll protect my drinking water but only in exchange for allowing oil drilling in national parks and more lead in my paint?"

We'll fight this dangerous and nonsensical executive order in court anywhere it rears its ugly head. Read more in our press release.

100 Days of Resistance

The Center has released its 100 Days of Resistance plan to stop Trump's unprecedented attack on wildlife, people, civil rights and democracy.

The 25-point plan includes mobilizing 1 million people to take the Pledge of Resistance; halting the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines; fighting the confirmation of Trump's corrupt, unqualified cabinet nominees; protecting our key environmental laws and public lands; and strengthening alliances with groups fighting for gender and racial equality, American Indian sovereignty, LGBTQ rights, freedom of speech, press and religion, workers' rights and other civil rights and values.

"Trump has awoken a fierce resistance movement such as this country has never seen," said our director Kierán Suckling. "His authoritarian agenda has galvanized people from every walk of life to fight for the protection of wildlife and the environment, civil rights, equality and a democracy that serves everyone, not just the corporate elite. He should know this: We're in it for the long haul. We'll fight him every day in the courts, every week in the halls of power, and in every street of this nation."

Read our plan.

Stand in Solidarity Against the Dakota Access Pipeline

The Trump administration wants to fast-track the Dakota Access pipeline -- and has already directed the Army Corps of Engineers to abandon the full environmental review ordered by President Obama, urging the agency to speed through a final permit. If the pipeline is completed, oil spills and water and climate pollution will be inevitable, and the continued desecration of indigenous rights will be a tragedy.

Now, more than ever, we need you to stand in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe to demand a full environmental review and ultimately the end of this terrible proposal.

So please take action and demand a full review from the Army Corps today.

Reward Up to $20,000 for Info on Missing Texas Salamanders

Over Thanksgiving weekend, in a mysterious theft, hundreds of Texas blind salamanders and San Marcos salamanders went missing from a breeding facility in San Marcos, Texas. Both species are extremely endangered, and with no surveillance video available, investigators don't know what happened.

So last week the Center added $5,000 to an existing $10,000 reward offered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for helpful information on the salamanders' disappearance; this week the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation added $5,000 more.

"Losing hundreds of these amazing salamanders is a terrible blow to their conservation," said Collette Adkins, a Center attorney and biologist. "The San Marcos facility is a 'Noah's Ark' for preserving the fragile salamanders in case they go extinct in the wild. This tragic loss threatens the species' existence."

Read more in our press release.

Major D.C. Climate March Planned for April 29

In the wake of the successful Women's March on Washington, activists are planning a massive march for climate change on April 29, in D.C. and nationwide.

Organized by the coalition formed out of the 2014 People's Climate March -- which brought 400,000-plus people to New York City (and many more to other cities) -- this effort responds to President Trump's disastrous anti-climate agenda, including executive orders advancing the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines and attacks on workers, our wild spaces, healthcare, immigrants, and other crucial programs and policies.

The climate march will cap 100 days of action to fight Trump's proposals to reverse climate progressive action, dismantle our government and hand power over to the 1 percent. The Center is helping organize the march, so stay tuned for details on getting involved.

Read more in our press release.

Updated Red Wolf Recovery Plan Finally in the Works

In December the Center and allies petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to draw up a revised plan to recover red wolves, which have dwindled to fewer than 50 in the wild. This week the agency agreed to do just that, promising to update its 27-year-old plan by 2018.

Recovery plans are road maps for saving endangered species -- so this is a critical step to ensuring the survival of these unique wolves, which only live in North Carolina. They continue to be threatened by poaching and hybridization with coyotes.

The science shows that red wolves can be saved but, with fewer than 50 left in the wild, the clock is ticking. We're hoping a new recovery plan will ensure that science, not politics, drives their management.

Read more in our press release.

Wild & Weird: Zombie-making Tarantula Hawks

The U.S. Southwest's tarantula hawks -- which despite their name are wasps, not birds -- eat flower nectar as adults. But as larvae, they have quite a different diet.

Female tarantula hawks have a unique child-rearing strategy. After circling a tarantula many times her size, stinging and paralyzing it, she drags the giant spider into a burrow, lays an egg on its abdomen and seals the burrow after exiting.

Later a tarantula-hawk larva crawls out of the egg and into the spider, where it munches on the still-living prey from within, often avoiding vital organs to keep its host alive. Three weeks later the larva, having feasted on live spider, emerges as a full-grown wasp.

Watch our new video on Facebook or YouTube of a female tarantula hawk taking down a tarantula.