|
Since last year's Earth Day you -- the Center's members and supporters -- have helped us win some huge victories for endangered species and wildlife. Take a look below and share this impressive list with your networks.
With you beside us, we:
- Garnered more than 150,000 signatures that helped us bring a swift stop to the burning of imperiled sea turtles during cleanup operations in the Gulf of Mexico;
- Secured the biggest critical habitat area in history for besieged polar bears, who were granted 120 million acres of protected habitat to settle a Center-led lawsuit -- and then, just two weeks ago and after years of advocacy, achieved another record protection, this time 2 million acres of critical habitat for the Cook Inlet beluga whale;
- Won a legal settlement protecting 1 million acres of roadless lands in four national forests in Southern California (home to spotted owls, arroyo toads and other vulnerable species) from development;
- Launched a powerful, national boycott through our Bluefin Brigade -- with more than 20,000 people behind it so far -- of sushi restaurants that serve high-end bluefin tuna, a practice that's driving the majestic ocean predator to the brink of extinction;
- Won Endangered Species Act protection for more than 70 species spanning four continents (Africa, Australia and North and South America), including seven penguins, dozens of Hawaiian species, and several mollusks in the severely stressed southeastern United States.
During the coming year we have our work cut out for us with a Congress hostile to wildlife and a presidential administration that's far too often unwilling to stand up to bullies in defense of endangered species and wild places. On this Earth Day, we take courage knowing you'll be with us to fight the fight -- we can't thank you enough.
Happy Earth Day,
 |
|
P.S. Help us save the Earth's most vulnerable species today by sharing this message with friends and family, and urge them to join our fight.
In a huge victory for the Arctic's endangered species, today Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and President Barack Obama announced that Shell Oil company won't be allowed to drill for oil in Alaska's Beaufort and Chukchi seas this year. Shell was scheduled to begin drilling in just 34 days. The win comes in response to intense protests and court challenges by the Center for Biological Diversity and its allies, and the incredible outpouring of emails from our supporters to Obama calling to stop the drilling. Thank you for your unflagging commitment to protect the Arctic.
This morning, President Obama also announced that he's instituting a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling to review what happened with the BP explosion and spill, to ensure another disaster doesn't happen. It's an important first step, and we support the effort. But the President is allowing shallow-water drilling activities -- in less than 500 feet of water -- to continue. A spill in shallow water can be just as dangerous as deepwater drilling, and the Minerals Management Service's own data, collected over a 15-year period, demonstrates that "well control performance for deepwater drilling was significantly better than for shallow water operations." If the odds of a drilling spill happening at Deepwater Horizon are lower than for the drilling the President is still allowing, we have a lot more work to do.
Today the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Minerals Management Service to strike down the agency's exemption of 49 Gulf of Mexico offshore drilling projects from all environmental review. Just like BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling plan, all 49 plans in the suit state that no environmental review is necessary because there's essentially no chance of a large oil spill -- and if a spill were to occur, it would be quickly cleaned up with no lasting damage. The plans involve drilling off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, which provide habitat for many imperiled species, including Kemp's ridley and leatherback sea turtles, sperm whales, piping plovers, and bluefin tuna. And they're the very same areas now being devastated by the BP spill. 
With the Gulf spill spewing millions of gallons of oil into key habitat for the Atlantic bluefin tuna, it's more urgent than ever to protect the fish -- so this week, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a scientific petition to place it on the endangered species list. Overfishing has already erased more than 80 percent of the fish's North Atlantic population, and the Gulf disaster is threatening to devastate the western Atlantic population just as it swims to the spill area to spawn. The oil may coat eggs and larvae floating in the sheen, harm adult tuna that breathe oil into their gills, and move up the food chain from algae to tuna in the next few months. BP's heavy use of dispersants known to be deadly to fish only make the outlook worse for the bluefin -- one of the fastest, largest, and most majestic fish in the sea.
To save one of the most critically endangered marine mammals on the planet, this Tuesday the Center for Biological Diversity and allies filed suit to earn expanded habitat protections for the great North Atlantic right whale. In 2009, we petitioned to expand the whale's federally protected "critical habitat" to include areas key to the creature's survival -- calving grounds, critical feeding habitat, and the migratory route between calving and feeding grounds. But despite a legal requirement to take action on our petition within 90 days, the National Marine Fisheries Service hasn't responded to it at all. North Atlantic right whales, threatened by commercial fishing, ship strikes, habitat degradation, ocean noise, global warming, ocean acidification, and pollution, now number just 350 individuals. 
Posts
