We're Suing to Save the World's Most Endangered Wolf

As few as 18 red wolves still roam wild on Earth, in a single population in eastern North Carolina. So the Center for Biological Diversity launched a suit against the Trump administration Wednesday to force it to make a new recovery plan for them.

In response to our 2016 petition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pledged to update the decades-old recovery plan last year. It failed to do that.

"The red wolf can still be saved," said Collette Adkins, our carnivore conservation director. "I'm hopeful this lawsuit will spur a new plan where science, not politics, drives management of the world's most endangered wolf."

Read more in our press release.

The EPA Unveils Its Dirty Power Plan

President Trump's Environmental Protection Agency just released its final rule scrapping the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and letting states decide whether, and how, to regulate carbon pollution from power plants.

The 2015 plan imposed the first-ever nationwide limits on that pollution.

"This deadly rule rejects science in a groveling effort to satisfy the fossil fuel lobby," said Clare Lakewood, a Center lawyer. "Trump's EPA is hell-bent on propping up coal at the expense of human health, the survival of endangered species, and a livable climate. We're confident this attack on our lungs and our planet won't survive in the courts."

Read more in our press release.

Tomorrow, June 21, is World Giraffe Day. These tallest of all land mammals are suffering a silent extinction. Africa's giraffe population has dropped by almost 40 percent in the past 30 years. The species is gravely imperiled by habitat loss and fragmentation, civil unrest and overhunting, and the international trade in giraffe parts. Along with our partners across the globe, the Center is fighting to stop the slide into extinction for these amazing animals. Watch our video on Facebook or YouTube.

Take Action to Save Monarchs and People

Glyphosate — the active ingredient in Monsanto's weed-killer Roundup — seriously threatens monarch butterflies' survival and people's health. But Trump's EPA has just proposed to re-approve it without any important new restrictions.

More than 300 million pounds of glyphosate are used each year on U.S. crops, and the consequences are devastating. Glyphosate kills milkweed, monarch caterpillars' only food. These backyard beauties have declined by 80 percent in the past 20 years, and without new restrictions on glyphosate use, they won't recover.

The harms don't stop with monarchs. Both the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer and the state of California have identified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.

Tell the EPA to rein in out-of-control use of glyphosate.

Congress Must Stop Bernhardt From Wrecking the Climate

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt is waging war on the planet by leasing out public lands for fossil fuel extraction, writes the Center's Taylor McKinnon at The Hill.

In addition to locking in nearly a billion tons of future global warming pollution with new oil and gas leases, his move to restart federal-land coal leasing ignores the secretary's sworn duty. His department is supposed to "protect the quality of ... air and atmospheric ... values" and manage public land to "best meet the present and future needs of the American people." Congress needs to take action to make Bernhardt do his job.

Read Taylor's piece.

Wild & Wonderful: Mega Malabar Tree Nymph

With a wingspan up to 6 inches, the Malabar tree nymph (Idea malabarica) is a large, almost cumbersome butterfly. Its flight is slow and fluttery, and it seems built to glide. Members of this insect's genus are also called "paper kites."

Check out this footage of two large Malabar tree nymphs in a forest in southern India on Facebook or YouTube.