Speak up: Tell your representatives to oppose these attacks on wildlife and the Endangered Species Act!

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) and vulnerable animals are under attack in the House of Representatives.

An alarming series of eight Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions would target newly issued regulations that strengthen the ESA and could block important recovery measures for animals like grizzly bears, the dunes sagebrush lizard, and several imperiled freshwater mussels.

This overreach by Congress is injecting politics into conservation decisions that should be made by experts. We cannot allow extremists to fracture the ESA and make politically motivated decisions about which species can be protected and put on the path to recovery!

Sign a message to your representative today and ask them to oppose these resolutions attacking imperiled animals and the protections they need to survive!

Message

Dear Representative {contact_data~lastName},

As a constituent and a strong wildlife supporter, I am writing to urge you to vote NO on eight anti-wildlife resolutions expected to be considered soon on the House floor.

Some of these resolutions would leverage the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to disapprove the Biden administration’s Endangered Species Act (ESA) rules, published April 5, 2024, which restored several key regulatory provisions implementing the ESA rolled back by the Trump administration in 2019. Other resolutions use the CRA to target recent U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) rules to reintroduce grizzly bears to the North Cascades Ecosystem in Washington, list the dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered under the ESA, and list seven imperiled mussels species in Texas as endangered or threatened under the ESA.

Please vote NO on H.J. Res 155, H.J. Res 156, H.J. Res 157, H.J. Res 158, and H.J. Res 159. These harmful resolutions would gut important aspects of successful ESA implementation restored by the Biden administration, including:

•	The blanket 4(d) rule, which automatically extends certain ESA protections for endangered species (including protections against “take” of a species like harassing, killing, or collecting) to threatened species under the management of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Without the restoration of the blanket rule, threatened species lack these protections unless the Fish and Wildlife Service publishes a species-specific rule. The blanket 4(d) rule has protected dozens of threatened species like the piping plover, Florida manatee, and Canada lynx for over four decades.

•	Clarification that listing, delisting, or reclassifying species as threatened or endangered should be made solely based on the best available scientific and commercial information, without reference to the economic impacts of such determination. Whether a species is threatened or endangered is a scientific question to be resolved solely based on the best available science. Economic impacts may be considered in other, later aspects of implementation — i.e. the designation of critical habitat — but have no place in the initial listing decision.

•	Incremental improvement in provisions on interagency consultation for listed species under ESA Section 7. Robust mechanisms guiding interagency consultation are important for improving ESA conservation outcomes, since Section 7 helps ensure that federal agency actions are not likely to adversely affect listed species and their critical habitats.

•	Improved language in particularly harmful areas of the Trump administration’s 2019 ESA regulations. For example, The Services are required to list species as threatened if they are likely to become endangered in the “foreseeable future”, which is particularly important when planning for the impacts of climate change. The Trump administration put in a definition of “foreseeable future” that made it more difficult to make that finding; the Biden administration replaced it with an improved definition.

Additionally, please vote NO on H.J. Res 149, H.J. Res 162, and H.J. Res 169. These damaging resolutions would prevent needed federal action and protections for nine imperiled species.

•	H.J. Res 149 would strike down a 10(j) rule in service of a finalized FWS plan to reintroduce grizzly bears to the North Cascades Ecosystem (NCE), an area the species once roamed in abundance before extirpation from overhunting. In April 2024, FWS and NPS published a final Restoration Plan/Environmental Impact Statement announcing their intent to restore grizzly bears to the NCE through translocation of bears from existing healthy populations. Soon after, FWS published a final 10(j) rule, designating an experimental population of NCE grizzlies. Passage of H.J. Res 149 would mean a moratorium on the agencies' historic NCE grizzly reintroduction that is potentially permanent due to the CRA’s mechanism of preventing issuance of a “substantially similar” rule ever again.

•	H.J. Res 162 would overturn the dunes sagebrush lizard’s endangered species status under the ESA. The FWS finalized a long-overdue endangered listing for the dunes lizard in May 2024. Preventing the dunes sagebrush lizard from retaining its critically needed ESA protections would likely mean the species will go extinct, as oil companies and other industries will be given free rein to destroy its habitat.

•	H.J. Res 169 would erase ESA protections for seven threatened and endangered freshwater mussel species in central Texas. These small mussels may be easily overlooked but play an outsized role in fulfilling important ecological needs like purifying water sources, acting as an indicator for water quality, and supporting diverse aquatic communities that are beneficial for native fish species. Protecting imperiled mussels and their dwindling habitat under the ESA is paramount to preventing their extinction.

At a time when our nation is faced with dual biodiversity and climate crises, Congress should be upholding – not undermining – the Endangered Species Act, our most effective tool for preventing extinction. Again, I urge you to fight for wildlife by voting NO on all eight of these damaging anti-wildlife resolutions: H.J. Res 149, H.J. Res 155, H.J. Res 156, H.J. Res 157, H.J. Res 158, H.J. Res 159, H.J. Res 162, and H.J. Res 169.

Sincerely,
{user_data~First Name} {user_data~Last Name}

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