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For Immediate Release
October, 29 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Alex Petersen, Conservation Advocate, (203) 313-7699, apetersen@environmentamerica.org
Josh Chetwynd, Communications Manager, (303) 573-5558, jchetwynd@publicinterestnetwork.org
Trump Administration's Decision to Strip Protections for Gray Wolves Threatens a Species Numbering Only 6,000 in the Continental U.S.
These wolves need space to roam, and now state boundaries will dictate whether a wolf might be shot or protected.
WASHINGTON
The Trump administration finalized its decision to delist the gray wolf from protections under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The largest canine native to North America, gray wolves were once common throughout more than two-thirds of the lower 48 states. But they were nearly wiped out in the mid-20th century due to habitat loss and deliberate eradication efforts.
When the ESA was passed in 1973, gray wolves were among the first species to be listed. The law, which has successfully protected 98 percent of listed species from going extinct, has been critical to reintroduction efforts. In the 1990s, the wolves were brought back to Central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. Today, roughly 6,000 wolves can be found in parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
With this delisting, states will be left to determine the future of these animals within their boundaries. Wolves were delisted in 2011 in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, where during a three-year window an estimated 1,500 were killed before protections were put back in place.
On March 15, 2019, when the delisting was initially proposed, more than 1.8 million public comments were submitted in opposition to the rule.
Alex Petersen, Conservation Advocate for Environment America, issued the following statement:
"The administration's plan to delist gray wolves just doesn't make sense. We do not live in a world where these important creature's numbers have safely rebounded, meaning this decision puts them at serious risk. Wolves were nearly hunted to extinction, and, even today, with years of protections, their population still only sits at around 6,000 in the continental U.S. Let's learn from history: Removing legal protections is a disaster for gray wolves.
"Instead of this wrong-headed move, we need a bold national plan, if not a continental one, to safeguard these wolves. Gray wolves need plenty of space to roam, and it just doesn't make sense to create arbitrary boundaries for them. Do we really want to lose the hearty howl of the gray wolf on our watch?
"The planet is a fundamentally better place when we share it with iconic wildlife, including wolves, and we have a responsibility to preserve them. Congress should move to overturn this delisting."
With Environment America, you protect the places that all of us love and promote core environmental values, such as clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and clean energy to power our lives. We're a national network of 29 state environmental groups with members and supporters in every state. Together, we focus on timely, targeted action that wins tangible improvements in the quality of our environment and our lives.
(303) 801-0581LATEST NEWS
Reporting Says Rubio 'Deliberately' Lying to Trump About US-Cuba Talks
According to Drop Site News, said one organizer, "Marco Rubio is personally overseeing the starvation of an entire nation."
Feb 10, 2026
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long sought regime change in Cuba, and new reporting from Drop Site News on Monday suggested he may be intentionally misrepresenting the Trump administration's current policy in the communist country to achieve his goal.
The outlet reported that, based on the accounts of five Cuban and US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the "deal" that President Donald Trump has said is likely to be finalized soon is not being pursued in any high-level, official diplomatic discussions.
Soon after issuing an executive order that labeled Cuba an extraordinary threat, accused it of harboring terrorists, and threatened other countries with sanctions if they provide oil to the Cuban government, Trump said his administration is "talking to the people from Cuba, the highest people in Cuba, to see what happens."
But one senior White House official explained to Drop Site that "he’s saying that because that’s what Marco is telling him."
If the public and the president himself believe that high-level negotiations are taking place, "in a few weeks or months, Rubio will be able to claim that the talks were futile because of Cuban intransigence," Drop Site reported, asserting that Rubio is "deliberately" blocking Trump from the talks and misleading him.
A lie like the one Drop Site's sources alleged, said reporter Ryan Grim, "would be a defining scandal in any other administration."
The idea that talks are taking place has been "accepted as fact" in Washington, DC, reported the outlet, which pointed to Politico's recent reporting that said the son of former Cuban President Raúl Castro traveled to Mexico for talks with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Politico's article was sourced to a Cuban dissident blogger and a "single, fantastical Facebook post made by a Spain-based Cuban journalist."
Drop Site noted that while Trump is currently threatening Cuba's economy and the lives and livelihoods of millions of people with an oil blockade, having cut off the Venezuelan oil supply to the island after ordering an invasion of the South American country over a month ago, he doesn't appear to be driven by an "ideological confrontation with Cuba" and in fact holds potential financial interests in normalizing relations with the country because he holds a registered trademark for a Trump property in Havana.
Rubio, whose family immigrated to the US from Cuba before the Cuban Revolution—but didn't flee Fidel Castro's takeover as he claimed early in his political career—has long called for regime change in the country.
The US State Department refuted the accounts of Drop Site's five sources and told the outlet that diplomatic talks—which Cuban leaders have said they are entirely open to holding—are taking place, but did not provide evidence or details.
“As the president stated, we are talking to Cuba, whose leaders should make a deal. Cuba is a failing nation whose rulers have had a major setback with the loss of support from Venezuela and with Mexico ceasing to send them oil," the State Department press office said.
That claim contradicted a comment from Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, Cuba's deputy minister of foreign affairs, who told CNN last week that the government has had "some exchanges of messages" with the White House.
"We cannot say we have set a bilateral dialogue at this moment,” he said.
Drop Site News' reporting indicates, said Cuban-American organizer and New York City Council candidate Danny Valdes, that "Marco Rubio is personally overseeing the starvation of an entire nation," while Cuban leaders "want dialogue and a way forward, without surrendering their sovereignty."
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Shortsighted Business-as-Usual Is Crushing Nature, Warns Landmark Report
"The growth of the global economy has been at the cost of immense biodiversity loss, which now poses a critical and pervasive systemic risk to the economy, financial stability and human wellbeing."
Feb 10, 2026
A new report confirms that unchained economic growth driven by corporations seeking profits with too little concern for downside harm is having devastating impacts on biodiversity and natural systems across the planet while also undermining the health of the global economy in the long run.
The landmark new report published Monday by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was backed by over 150 nations after three years of research and analyses by 79 leading experts from 35 countries across all regions of the world.
What the research found is that "the current conditions in which businesses operate are not always compatible with achieving a just and sustainable future, and that these conditions also perpetuate systemic risks" with far-reaching implications.
"The growth of the global economy has been at the cost of immense biodiversity loss, which now poses a critical and pervasive systemic risk to the economy, financial stability and human wellbeing," warned the IPBES in a statement.
“We must place true value on the environment and go beyond gross domestic product as a measure of human progress and wellbeing. Let us not forget that when we destroy a forest, we are creating GDP. When we overfish, we are creating GDP.” —António Guterres, UN Secretary-General
With natural resources "being depleted and degraded faster now than any period in human history," the report is designed to warn humanity, equip policymakers with knowledge, and provide solutions that could mitigate the crisis of biodiversity loss.
The report notes that "unsustainable economic activity and a focus on growth as measured by the gross domestic product, has been a driver of the decline of biodiversity... and stands in the way of transformative change."
According to Alexander De Croo, an administrator with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), an IPBES partner organization, "Businesses are inseparable from the ecosystems they operate in: they both depend on them and profoundly impact them. As significant drivers of today’s planetary crises, businesses have contributed to climate change, biodiversity loss and cultural erosion."
At the same time, he added, these companies "have a critical role to play in advancing more sustainable solutions, a role already reflected in a growing number of initiatives." The real problem, the report finds, is how intractable the business-as-usual approach has been, with corporations resistant to changing their operations to put them more in line with nature and too little pressure coming from governments to force through more sustainable practices.
According to the report:
Current conditions perpetuate business-as-usual and do not support the transformative change necessary to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. For example, large subsidies that drive losses of biodiversity are directed to business activities with the support of lobbying by businesses and trade associations. In 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature, were estimated at $7.3 trillion, of which private finance accounted for $4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies of about $2.4 trillion.
In contrast, $220 billion in public and private finance flows were directed in 2023 to activities contributing to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity, representing just 3% of the public funds and incentives that encourage harmful business behaviour or prevent behaviour beneficial to biodiversity.
“The loss of biodiversity is among the most serious threats to business,” said Prof. Stephen Polasky, co-chair of the assessment. “Yet the twisted reality is that it often seems more profitable to businesses to degrade biodiversity than to protect it. Business as usual may once have seemed profitable in the short term, but impacts across multiple businesses can have cumulative effects, aggregating to global impacts, which can cross ecological tipping points."
But Polasky goes on to say that the report "shows that business as usual is not inevitable," and that with better policies, "as well as financial and cultural shifts, what is good for nature is also what is best for profitability."
The IPBES assessment arrived alongside fresh warnings about the disastrous results that have stemmed from obsessive allegiance to gross domestic product (GDP) as the key economic indicator by governments and businesses worldwide.
In an interview with the Guardian on Monday, UN secretary general António Guterres suggested that the obsession with GDP was driving humanity toward a cliff.
“We must place true value on the environment and go beyond gross domestic product as a measure of human progress and wellbeing," Guterres said. "Let us not forget that when we destroy a forest, we are creating GDP. When we overfish, we are creating GDP."
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‘There’s a Bunch of Sick F*cks’: Lawmakers in Both Parties Stunned and Disgusted After Viewing Unredacted Epstein Files
“Initially my reaction to all this was, I don’t care, I don’t know what the big deal is," the Trump-supporting Sen. Cynthia Lummis said. "But now I see what the big deal is."
Feb 10, 2026
Members of Congress were given a chance to scour unredacted versions of the Department of Justice's files on Jeffrey Epstein for the first time on Monday.
There are more than 3 million pages available for lawmakers to comb through following their release to the public with heavy redactions. Meanwhile, despite a law requiring all the files to be released in December, the DOJ is still sitting on another 3 million pages that have yet to be published.
Lawmakers have so far only scratched the surface of the information available. But what they've seen after just one day has even some of President Donald Trump's biggest defenders reevaluating their dismissal of the Epstein scandal.
“Initially, my reaction to all this was, I don’t care, I don’t know what the big deal is," Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) told independent journalist Pablo Manríquez on Monday. "But now I see what the big deal is and it was worth investigating. The members of Congress who were pushing this were not wrong!”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who have led the charge in Congress for the files to be released, said on Monday that six individuals who were “likely incriminated” in Epstein’s crimes had their identities blacked out by the DOJ in the files that were released publicly.
“In a couple of hours, we found six men whose names have been redacted, who are implicated in the way that the files are presented,” Massie told reporters outside the DOJ office where lawmakers viewed the files.
They did not initially specify the individuals' names, but Massie said at least one was a US citizen and some were “high‑up” foreign officials.
Massie later revealed that one of the men on this list was Les Wexner, the ex-CEO of L Brands, which owns Victoria's Secret. Wexner appears in the files thousands of times and was infamously one of Epstein's most intimate financial clients.
After Massie questioned why Wexner's name was blacked out, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced it had been unredacted and said the DOJ was "hiding nothing." The other five names remained redacted as of Tuesday morning.
The FBI closed its investigation into Epstein in July, concluding that while the financier himself abused several underage girls, along with his partner Ghislane Maxwell—who is currently serving 20 years in prison—he was not running a sex-trafficking ring that included other powerful figures.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said the files he and other lawmakers reviewed yesterday told a much different story.
“It’s disgusting," he said. "There are lots of names, lots of co-conspirators, and they’re trafficking girls all across the world."
Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) put it more succinctly when a Drop Site News reporter caught her on the way back from the DOJ office and asked what she learned from viewing the files.
"There's a bunch of sick fucks," she said.
Lawmakers also said the documents contradicted Trump’s claims that he booted Epstein from membership at his Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, and disassociated from him in the early 2000s because the predator was poaching young female workers from the resort. Trump has said that one of them was the late Virginia Giuffre, then a 17-year-old locker room employee, who’d go on to become one of Epstein’s victims and most prominent accusers.
According to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), "for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason,” the DOJ concealed a summary of statements allegedly made by Trump, provided by Epstein's lawyers, in which the president said he never asked Epstein to leave the club.
Balint confirmed she saw the same document.
"One [document] was related to whether or not Trump had ever kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago, as he claimed," she said. "It's not true. It's a lie."
The law passed in November requiring the files' release mandates that victims of Epstein's abuse have their privacy protected, but forbids the DOJ from redacting information to protect prominent individuals, including government officials, from embarrassment.
“The broader issue is why so many of the files they’re getting are redacted in the first place,” Khanna said. “What Americans want to know is who the rich and powerful people are who went to [Epstein's] island? Did they rape underage girls? Did they know that underage girls were being paraded around?”
Massie and Khanna said they were disappointed to find that many of the files that were supposed to be available were still heavily redacted. Massie lamented that the DOJ had not yet provided access to the FBI’s 302 forms, which contain official summaries of interviews with witnesses and victims.
Raskin said viewing the files affirmed many of the concerns about the DOJ "over-redacting" files.
“We didn’t want there to be a cover-up, and yet, what I saw today was that there were lots of examples of people’s names being redacted when they were not victims,” Raskin told CNN. "There are thousands and thousands of pages replete with redactions. There are entire pages in memos where you can't see anything."
Lawmakers were given permission to view the files in a letter sent by the DOJ on Friday, following mounting criticism about the extensive number of redactions in the public release. They are required to sift through the files in a tightly-secured DOJ office and are barred from making copies available to the public, though they are allowed to take notes.
Raskin said that the office contains only four computers, making the process of sorting through more than 3 million files agonizingly slow.
"Working 40 hours a week on nothing else but this, it would take more than seven years for the 217 members who signed the House discharge petition to read just the documents they've decided to release," he wrote in a post on social media.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee about the handling of the files on Wednesday. Massie said he plans to grill her about why so many potential co-conspirators had their names redacted in the public release.
“I would like to give the DOJ a chance to say they made a mistake and over‑redacted and let them unredact those men’s names," he said. That would probably be the best way to do it.”
Blanche has responded to the criticism on social media, saying, "The DOJ is committed to transparency."
Khanna, who appeared on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday morning, said that based on what he saw in the public release, the opposite is true.
" Donald Trump had the FBI scrub those files in March," he said. "And the documents we saw already had the redactions of the FBI from March. So we still have not seen the vast majority of documents unredacted that have the survivor statements of the rich and powerful men who committed these crimes."
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