Court Order Sought to Halt Destruction of Sage-grouse Habitat

The Trump administration is gearing up to allow drilling, mining and other destructive activities across 51 million acres of greater sage-grouse habitat in the West.

We're not about to let that happen.

That's why the Center for Biological Diversity and allies just asked a federal judge to block those plans in seven western states: Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, California and Oregon. Our motion argues that the land-management plans approved by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt last month would gut protections for the birds' dwindling populations and destroy their homes.

"Bernhardt's despicable plan is to open every last acre of sage-grouse habitat to fracking," said the Center's Randi Spivak. "He's stripping away critical protections, holding fire sales of our public lands and pushing these beautiful birds to extinction. We're asking the court to preserve sage-grouse protections until our claims can be heard."

Read more in Willamette Week.

Our New Study: Success and the Endangered Species Act

There's a reason we're always talking about the Endangered Species Act: It works. A Center study published this week shows this crucial law has saved roughly 99 percent of protected wildlife since its 1973 creation.

Of the 1,700-plus animals and plants protected by the Act, just four species went extinct after receiving protection; 22 others are classified as possibly extinct. Another 71 are extinct or possibly extinct but were last seen before they were legally protected. The rest have avoided extinction.

"There's no question that without the Endangered Species Act, we would have lost species like bald eagles, California condors, black-footed ferrets and many, many more," said the Center's Noah Greenwald.

Read more in our press release.

Thanks to everyone who joined the Center and musician Esperanza Spalding Monday night for Don't Shoot, a Facebook Live performance. It was a fantastic evening for raising awareness about wolves. If you missed it, you can watch it here. And please consider making a donation to our Predator Defense Fund.

Suit Launched to Save West Coast Salamander

Siskiyou Mountains salamanders are purely terrestrial — their babies hatch fully formed, skipping the aquatic, larval stage. But these delicate, slow-breeding creatures live only in old-growth forests in southern Oregon and Northern California, where they're rapidly losing ground to logging and wildfire. And under the Trump administration, federal land agencies are pushing to log more of their vital habitat.

So the Center and allies launched a lawsuit Monday to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to respond to our urgent 2018 petition to protect them.

"This rare salamander needs protection before it disappears forever," said the Center's Jeff Miller. "With the Trump administration dragging its feet on safeguarding this species, we have no choice but to go to court."

Read our press release.

Center Op-ed: Burning Man Needs to Go Greener

Burning Man and its participants are duly concerned about proposed federal conditions for the annual event, says a Center op-ed in The Reno Gazette Journal. The Bureau of Land Management's call for concrete barriers, dumpsters and drug searches don't jibe with Burners' ethos of self-reliance.

But the festival may grow to 100,000 people, and the public lands of Nevada's Black Rock Desert are clearly vulnerable to damage. Litter, air pollution and the disruption of delicate ecological processes are all problems.

The BLM shouldn't use its environmental-review process to push punitive, arbitrary controls — but Burning Man also needs to accept that it may be getting too big for the Black Rock playa, and new rules may be necessary.

Read the op-ed now.

The oceans are so overwhelmed with plastic pollution that if the Great Pacific Garbage Patch were a country, it'd be the 19th largest in the world. Check out our new video on Facebook or YouTube.

Climate Refugee Deaths: Don't Turn Away

In the new nature documentary series "Our Planet," narrated by David Attenborough, one devastating scene shows walruses who've lost their sea-ice refuge struggling onto high cliffs to rest — and later plunging to their deaths below.

It's heartbreaking to watch the walruses fall. Netflix, which produced the show, warns it may be too upsetting for some. But we can't turn away, Center Climate Science Director Shaye Wolf writes at The Hill. With climate deniers running the country, it's more important than ever that we push hard to phase out fossil fuels and save the future.

When we ignore other creatures' suffering, says Shaye, we ignore our own. In the end, we are the walrus.

Read the op-ed now.

Wild & Weird: Endangered Cat Herding

Newly released body-camera footage from a Florida Fish and Wildlife officer shows wildlife agents engaged in a bit of cat herding. After discovering that an endangered Florida panther was trapped on the wrong side of a fence between the highway and a wildlife refuge, officers temporarily shut down the highway. Then — using their bodies, a truck and a call to "C'mon! Git!" — they slowly corralled the cat toward an opening in the fence, where it fled to safety.

Check out the body-cam video on Facebook or YouTube.