Help Us Stop the Most Brutal Attack Ever on Endangered Species

It’s not just about snow leopards in Russia or Elephants in Namibia, it’s about the ecosystem in your own backyard. We strive to teach your friends and family about the wildlife, birds, fish and plants that live near you, because a better awareness of these species and the threats against them is a critical step. From worms in the garden to  pollinating butterflies to bats that control the mosquitos, there are many ways that our daily habits at home affect these creatures.

With the Endangered Species Act now being gutted by the Trump administration, your emergency donation will help us keep up the fight to protect our life sustaining biodiversity here in Wisconsin and beyond!

Here’s what you need to know:

• The new rules change how, when and where species should be protected — in favor of narrow corporate interests. At least 47 species have gone extinct waiting for protection, and unless we act now, that number will go higher.
• It’s going to be much harder to protect the habitat of imperiled species — a gift to Big Oil that will let them drill and mine in places like the Arctic, which would doom polar bears.
• This attack doesn’t just weaken protection for endangered animals and plants. It also ensures imperiled species awaiting protection either never get safeguards or face new, life-threatening delays.

Right now, the Endangered Species Act is a crucial lifeline for more than 1,700 animals and plants in the United States and its territories. For first time since the ESA became law, the Trump administration will now be taking into account the economic cost of protecting a particular species.

Ecosystems provide humans with a number of services, including air and water purification, flood and drought control, pollination of crops and other vegetation, dispersal of seeds, and nutrient cycling. In addition, 40 percent of all medicines are derived from plants, animals, and microbes.

Every time a plant, animal, or microbe becomes extinct, biologists lose whatever knowledge we might have been able to gain by studying it. These services have an economic value. If humans had to pay for ecosystem services based on their market value, biologists estimate that the cost would be approximately $33 trillion annually.

No matter where you live, how much money you have, or whether you are even consciously aware of it, biodiversity is consistently working for you. But it is a mistake to reduce conservation solely to concern for our own well-being, or to assume that it is acceptable to extinguish species that do not appear to benefit humans.

Such an overly econocentric approach to conservation is immoral, and is the last thing we want when the very existence of so many other life forms is at stake. Fairly sharing the lands and waters of Earth with other species is primarily a matter of justice, not economic convenience.

We must come together and create a turning point at this great moral crisis of our time. As Dian Fossey once said “She could not see that these people, who were part of the problem, could ever be part of the solution.”  We hope that’s not true.

Yesterday, the Trump administration took an axe to the Endangered Species Act. Today it’s easier for special interests to harm wildlife across this country in their pursuit of profits. It’s not too late to stop the extinction crisis, but we need a strong Endangered Species Act to do it, and we need your help…

We plan to fight this move every step of the way, but WE NEED YOUR HELP. Please make an urgent donation to our Endangered Species Act Protection Fund today.