Endangered Earth Online: Your weekly wildlife update.
Gold Butte National Monument
Center for     Biological     Diversity   

The Fight Is On to Save Our National Monuments

Word leaked this week that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke wants President Trump to slash protections from 10 iconic national monuments. He also wants Trump to significantly shrink at least four of them: Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Gold Butte in Nevada, and Cascade-Siskiyou in California and Oregon.

Rolling back protections will open the door for more logging, mining, grazing, fracking and destruction of wildlife.

"Zinke and Trump are displaying their disdain for these magnificent public lands and the millions of people who demanded they remain protected," said Randi Spivak, public lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Trump has no authority to make any of the changes that Zinke's recommending. If he tries to, we'll see him in court."

That's just one of the many reasons the Center's launching Ignite Change this Sunday — a nationwide grassroots network to protect wildlife and wild places from Trump. Saving our public lands will be the first campaign.

Join the movement to protect our environment.

Sombra the Arizona jaguar

Sombra, the Jaguar Seen Around the World

The Center has just released footage of a beautiful jaguar — named Sombra, or "Shadow," by Tucson schoolchildren — recorded in the Chiricahua Mountains southeast of Tucson. The images were picked up and celebrated around the world in sources ranging from cat blogs in the United Kingdom to newspapers in Australia.

The 15-second video clip, shot this summer, shows a jaguar blinking, turning his head back and forth, and walking away from the camera. After we released the video, an Arizona Game and Fish biologist revealed in an email that the animal is a male.

Sombra was first photographed last November and is the seventh confirmed jaguar in the American Southwest since 1996; five have been seen in Arizona and two in New Mexico.

Check out our video now on Facebook or YouTube.

The Revelator: The Last Days of a Tiny Bat

Christmas Island bat

The Christmas Island pipistrelle, a tiny echolocating bat on an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, has been declared extinct. In The Revelator this week, John Platt has the story of the bat's mysterious decline. Scientists still aren't sure what happened but say its disappearance may have been a combination of predation by introduced species, habitat loss to invasive ants and possibly disease.

The last Christmas Island pipistrelle — the endling — was seen in August 2009. The International Union for Conservation of Nature declared it extinct last week. Read the story.

Mexican gray wolf

Feds Kill Mexican Wolf in Arizona

Officials revealed that Wildlife Services — the USDA's "predator-control" program — killed a Mexican gray wolf in Arizona. Mexican wolves are among North America's most endangered animals, with just 113 surviving in the Southwest. The female from the Diamond pack was the first Mexican wolf shot by the government for over a decade for killing cattle.

Her shooting may be a harbinger of many more wolf-killings if Trump's draft Mexican wolf "recovery" plan is finalized without changes.

"The government killed this wolf in secret and is hoping that her death won't cause a stir," said the Center's Michael Robinson.

Read more in The Santa Fe New Mexican.

Ignite Change logo

Ignite Change on Sunday — Can You Be There?

The Center is launching our Ignite Change network on Sunday. There are dozens of events planned around the country, and we hope you can take part.

Ignite Change is a nationwide, grassroots network of volunteers ready to stand up and save wildlife, wild places and a livable planet for all. The first campaign will be focused on saving public lands — the Trump administration has just announced plans to strip protections from 10 national monuments.

If you've been waiting to dive into the resistance, here's your chance to get involved. You'll get everything you need to take action at Sunday's launch.

Check out this map of Ignite Change events on Sunday and RSVP to join one in your community.

Grizzly bear mural

Grizzly Bears in Oakland: New Center Murals Unveiled

We celebrated the unveiling of three new California grizzly bear murals in Oakland's Laurel District on Friday — the latest paintings in the Center's national endangered species mural project.

"When we lose wildlife, we lose a lot of what makes a place unique, and we lose our connection to history," said Roger Peet, our mural project director. "These murals represent the holes left in our landscapes when iconic species like the grizzly bear disappear."

A grizzly graces California's flag, but the animals have been gone from the state for almost a century, since they were hunted into regional extinction. Now the Center and our allies are campaigning to bring the great bears back to their ancient homes in remote parts of the state.

Read more about our Endangered Species Mural Project.

Dixie Valley toad

Emergency Safeguards Sought for Dixie Valley Toad

The Center this week filed an urgent petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking Endangered Species Act protection for the Dixie Valley toad. This large-eyed, freckly-bodied amphibian — only recently discovered to be a unique species — lives on less than 1,500 acres in remote wetlands in central Nevada, where the tiny toad is imminently threatened by a proposed geothermal energy project.

"It's horrible to think we may lose this new toad just as we're beginning to learn about it," said Jenny Loda, a Center attorney and scientist. "Protecting it under the Endangered Species Act is essential to the animal's survival."

Read more in our press release.

Los Angeles traffic

Why Is the EPA Trying to Kill Clean Car Standards?

More bad news from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt: He has proposed to roll back clean car standards that reduce carbon pollution, save fuel and help us avoid the worst effects of climate change.

The rest of the world is sprinting to deploy electric vehicles and cleaner cars and trucks. But if Pruitt has his way, the U.S. auto industry could go back to selling more gas-guzzling cars without pollution controls. We shouldn't allow them to rake in short-term profits at the expense of our health and the environment.

Take action today — tell Pruitt to do his job and protect our environment from the dirty, dangerous vehicles that are making people sick and disrupting our climate.

Records Sought on Trump Ditching Plane-pollution Standards

Airplane

Why did the Environmental Protection Agency abandon its plan to curb airplane pollution? The Center has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt quietly stopped an initiative to require emissions reduction for new plane models. Aircraft rank third in transportation-related CO2 emissions. "It's alarming that the Trump administration stopped work on reducing these skyrocketing emissions," said Center attorney Vera Pardee. "It shows a reckless disregard for climate threats like the Florida and Texas superstorms." Read more.

Watching wildlife videos

Wild & Weird: The Jaguar and the Four-year-old

The Center's wildlife videos are produced by Russ McSpadden, who drives hours over bumpy roads to set up the remote cameras and visits them to download footage of rascally coatis, hungry javelinas and baby skunks. He edits those together to educate others about Arizona's amazing borderlands.

This summer Russ took his four-year-old son on a hike to check some critter cameras he'd set in the Chiricahua Mountains. To their surprise and delight, one of those cameras provided footage of a startling and beautiful visitor: a wild jaguar.

Watch our video for a glimpse into the process of getting rare footage of Arizona wildlife — and the four-year-old who walked in the tracks of a jaguar and yelled, "Holy moly!"

Watch on Facebook or YouTube.

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Photo credits: Gold Butte National Monument by Bob Wick/BLM; jaguar video still by Russ McSpadden/Center for Biological Diversity; Christmas Island bat by Lindy Lumsden, courtesy IUCN; Mexican gray wolf by mtsofan/Flickr; Ignite Change logo courtesy Center for Biological Diversity; California grizzly bear mural by Roger Peet; Dixie Valley toad by Patrick Donnelly/Center for Biological Diversity; Los Angeles traffic by Jay Peeples/Flickr; airplane by David Leiser/Flickr; watching wildlife videos by Russ McSpadden/Center for Biological Diversity.

Center for Biological Diversity
P.O. Box 710
Tucson, AZ 85702