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Legal Intervention Aims to Protect North Atlantic Right Whales From Deadly Ship Strikes
Conservation groups today filed a motion to intervene to help fight a lawsuit aimed at overturning a seasonal speed rule protecting North Atlantic right whales from deadly vessel strikes. The groups want to defend the rule against a lawsuit brought by a New York vessel owner fined for violating seasonal speed limits. The suit alleges that NOAA Fisheries lacked the statutory authority to issue the rule.
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Final Rescission of Public Lands Rule Reverses Modern Land Management, Threatens Wildlife Habitat
The Bureau of Land Management today announced a decision to roll back the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, commonly referred to as the Public Lands Rule. The policy modernized how BLM manages our national public lands and represented the critical incorporation of ecological resilience into management alongside traditional resource extraction. The rule required science-based decision-making, conservation considerations within multiple land uses and a focus on sustaining public lands for the long-term benefit of wildlife and the American people.
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Trump Administration Cancels Critical Offshore Wind Projects and Increases Costs for Taxpayers
The Department of Interior this week announced that two offshore wind companies, Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind, have abandoned their developments. According to reports, the companies received some $900 million to walk away from the projects.
Press Releases
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Conservation Organizations File Motion to Suspend Horseshoe Crab Harvest
Today, conservation groups asked a federal district court judge to halt a planned blood harvest of thousands of horseshoe crabs in Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, arguing the annual harvest violates multiple landmark conservation laws.
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Pattern Energy Makes Significant Contribution to Protect New Mexico’s Imperiled Bird Species
Pattern Energy, an independent renewable energy company, entered into an agreement to fund extensive new research by Bird Conservancy of the Rockies to study birds associated with piñon-juniper woodlands in New Mexico. Pattern Energy’s $80,000 contribution will support scientific monitoring of the potential impacts from management activities on the pinyon jay and other declining birds associated with piñon-juniper woodlands.
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New Wild Ocelot Kitten Photographed in Texas
This week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced a new ocelot kitten in the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. This news, announced on the refuge’s Facebook page, is encouraging news for a species on the brink of extinction in the U.S. But the population remains at risk without sustained efforts to protect this wild cat and its habitat.
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Court Orders U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to Determine Whether Northern Long-eared Bat Warrants Listing as Endangered Species
A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to determine whether the northern long-eared bat warrants listing as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act by December 2022 after remanding the Service’s flawed threatened listing last year.
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Congress Urged to Boost Funding for Endangered Species Conservation by $300 Million
More than 170 groups today urged Congress to significantly increase the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s budget for endangered species conservation from $291.7 million to
jcovey@defenders.org
