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Mexican gray wolves
Center for     Biological     Diversity   

Lawsuit Challenges Trump's Emergency Declaration

The fight is on. Not even 24 hours after Trump signed a "national emergency" declaration to get his border wall, the Center for Biological Diversity and allies took him to court.

Our lawsuit, filed on Saturday, asserts that the president is violating the U.S. Constitution by abusing his executive authority to grab $6 billion to build walls on the southern border. Trump also illegally invoked the National Emergencies Act by shifting around money in a non-emergency situation to fund a policy goal.

"The only emergency here is Trump's assault on the Constitution," said the Center's Brian Segee. "If he gets his way, it'll be a disaster for communities and wildlife along the border, including some of our country's most endangered species."

Read more in The Hill and consider donating to our Trump Resistance Fund.

Rubber Dodo

Trump Wins 2018 Rubber Dodo Award as Top Eco-villain

No shocker here: President Trump has won the Center's 2018 Rubber Dodo award. We award the statue each year to the person who has most aggressively sought to destroy America's natural heritage or drive endangered species extinct.

"Trump has wrecked, poisoned and polluted our environment on an unprecedented scale," said Kierán Suckling, the Center's executive director. "There's never been a president with such a vicious and ignorant approach to slashing protections for water, wildlife, lands and oceans."

Thanks to the 12,000-plus people who voted in this year's contest. Other nominees were Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, Interior Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt and Homeland Security Director Kirstjen Nielsen.

But, really, how could the winner be anyone but Trump?

Read more in our press release.

Can California's Redwoods Survive Climate Change?

Coastal redwoods

California's iconic redwoods attract visitors from around the world and serve critical ecosystem functions. But will they survive a warming world?

For an answer to this question, The Revelator's Tara Lohan sat down for a conversation with researcher Emily Francis, who's studying how redwoods are responding to drought and climate change.

Read the interview and sign up for The Revelator's weekly newsletter for breaking environmental stories.

Laiken Jordahl at new border wall construction

In this video the Center's Borderlands Campaigner Laiken Jordahl shows how a newly constructed stretch of Trump's border wall cuts off essential migration paths for wolves, jaguars, bobcats and other wildlife. This is the first in our #BorderViews series shot on the frontlines in the fight to protect species and habitat from Trump's destructive border wall. Watch on Facebook or YouTube.

Bee

Tell Trump's EPA: Stop "Emergency" Pesticide Spraying

Trump's EPA keeps approving so-called "emergency" exemptions to allow more pesticide spraying. Just last week the Center learned that in 2018, the EPA issued so-called "emergency" approvals to spray sulfoxaflor — an insecticide the agency considers "very highly toxic" to bees — on more than 16 million acres of crops known to attract bees.

Meanwhile, emerging scientific studies show that insect declines are even more serious than previously thought. A study published earlier this month found that more than 41 percent of the world's insect species are on the fast track to extinction, and that a "serious reduction in pesticide usage" is key to preventing extinction.

Tell EPA to stop rubber-stamping "emergency" uses of pesticides that wreak havoc on our environment.

Lawsuit Launched to Protect Disappearing Caribou

Southern Mountain caribou

Last week the Center and partners launched a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to protect Southern Mountain caribou.

These extremely rare mammals, which migrated between British Columbia and Idaho, were the last caribou left in the lower 48. In November the few individuals left in the U.S. were brought into captivity in Canada. But if we can win Endangered Species Act protections for these caribou, we may be able to bring them back.

Get more from The New York Times.

Baldwin Hills Park and oil field

Climate Win: Court Rejects Retaliatory Lawsuit

Good news in the fight against climate change: Last week a California appeals court dismissed an oil-industry lawsuit against youth groups from South Los Angeles and Wilmington, the Center for Biological Diversity and the city of Los Angeles.

A group representing Exxon, Chevron and hundreds of crude-oil and natural-gas producers and related entities filed the suit after we won protections against neighborhood oil drilling in Los Angeles.

"Using lawsuits to shut people up has long been a part of the oil industry's playbook, but the tides are turning," said Kassie Siegel, director of the Center's Climate Law Institute. "This decision affirms that communities have the right to demand protection from pollution without fear of retaliation from polluters."

Read more in our press release.

Suit Launched to Protect Lesser Prairie Chickens

Lesser prairie chicken

The Center and partners have launched a lawsuit against the Trump administration for missing its deadline to make a decision to protect lesser prairie chickens under the Endangered Species Act.

Lesser prairie chickens once numbered in the millions, but their population has declined to just about 38,000 individuals. "The Trump administration's foot-dragging is placing these unique, dancing birds at serious risk of extinction," said the Center's Noah Greenwald.

Get more from the Houston Chronicle.

Duke Energy's Cowans Ford Dam

Citizen Campaign Aims to Break Duke Energy's N.C. Monopoly

Duke Energy is the largest U.S. power provider, emits more carbon pollution than any other utility in the country, and generates 90 percent of North Carolina's electricity — much of it from dirty coal and fracked gas. So local communities and national groups have launched a statewide campaign to end the company's monopoly control of state energy.

It's a rare citizen-led effort to break up the monopoly of a corporate utility.

"Duke's energy monopoly, where dirty power is king, needs to end," said Jean Su, the Center's energy director. "The climate crisis demands we ditch fossil fuels as fast as possible, but Duke's stranglehold on North Carolina is blocking that clean energy transition. It's time to break Duke's monopoly, and its dirty addiction to fracked gas."

Read more at WRAL.

Alpine newt larva

Wild & Weird: The Single-cell Origin of a Newt

Giant blue whales, intrepid humans and limpid newts — each one of us starts as a single cell.

Filmmaker Jan van IJken spent months trying to capture the first moments of life. Mixing time-lapse and macro videography, he created a short film titled "Becoming," in which he shows the delicate beginning of an alpine newt.

Watch it at National Geographic.

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Photo credits: Mexican gray wolves by mtsofan/Flickr; Rubber Dodo Award courtesy Center for Biological Diversity; coastal redwoods by trevorklatko; Laiken Jordahl at the border wall by Leslie Ann Epperson and Russ McSpadden; bee and flower by Christian Birkholz/Pixabay; caribou by Steve Forrest/USFWS; Baldwin Hills Park and oilfield courtesy The City Project; lesser prairie chicken by antpitta/Flickr; Duke Energy's Cowans Ford Dam in N.C.; alpine newt larva by Piet Spaans/Wikimedia.


Center for Biological Diversity
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