Protecting endangered animals and plants is the Center’s core mission. From miniscule, near-invisible fairy shrimp to gray whales and towering redwoods, we believe all species have an intrinsic right to live.

ABOUT OUR BIODIVERSITY WORK

What took 3 billion years to evolve is vanishing in the blink of an eye.

Under relentless pressure from exploding human populations, species are going extinct at 100 to 1,000 times the natural rate. The diversity of life that sustains both ecological systems and human cultures around the world is collapsing, and the Center’s programs to save unique species and lands now reach beyond American borders from the Antarctic to the North Pole and Asia to North Africa. In the United States, our goal is to secure legal protection for all species in danger of extinction and to enact conservation strategies that will save them. The Center is the nation’s leader on endangered species, having secured Endangered Species Act protection for hundreds of species and millions of acres of land and water.

HOW WE DO IT

• Scientific analysis
• Listing species
• Protecting species
• Critical habitat for species
• Policy advocacy
• Government oversight
• Creative media

MILESTONES

Our Biodiversity Program:

• Has gained first-time protection, through listing petitions and litigation, for more than 350 species under the Endangered Species Act.

• Has secured agreements to protect tens of thousands of river miles and 70 million acres of critical habitat for endangered species, ranging from habitat for the Arkansas River shiner in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas to California habitat for the red-legged frog and Alaska habitat for spectacled and Steller’s eiders.

• Defeated powerful attempts to gut the Endangered Species Act by supplying sound ESA science and statistical analysis to policymakers in both the 108th and the 109th Congresses.

• Negotiated a 2001 agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to expedite protection of 29 species and numerous critical habitat areas under the Endangered Species Act.

• Published groundbreaking scientific articles and comprehensive reports on subjects such as species recovery in the northeastern United States — ours was the first study to quantify population trends of multiple endangered species — and what critical habitat means for endangered species.