July, 22 2025, 04:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Kristen Monsell, kmonsell@biologicaldiversity.org
Lawsuit Challenges Trump's Failure to Protect Endangered Animals From Gulf Oil Drilling
Oil spills put birds, nesting sea turtles at risk
The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a new legal claim in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s failure to comply with the Endangered Species Act in assessing harm to endangered and threatened species from offshore oil and gas extraction.
“Federal officials have forgotten the lessons of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, because they’ve missed obvious threats to some of the Gulf’s most vulnerable critters,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This analysis falls far short of what the law and science demand, which is why we’re challenging it in court. Our government is required to protect manatees and sea turtles and other threatened animals Americans adore. Officials need to redo these assessments with a much larger dose of reality and much less deference to oil and gas interests.”
Monday’s lawsuit challenges two U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service analyses, issued in 2018 and 2025, because they fail to adequately consider a range of harms from oil extraction to several endangered species living in the Gulf. These include major oil spills, collisions with drilling rigs, light pollution and habitat degradation. The Service is required under the Endangered Species Act to complete a consultation on oil and gas operations that could harm threatened and endangered species.
In April 2024 the Center filed a lawsuit challenging the 2018 consultation, known as a biological opinion. That analysis claims to consider the effects of 50 years of Gulf oil and gas extraction on West Indian manatees, nesting Kemp’s ridley and loggerhead sea turtles, whooping cranes, Mississippi sandhill cranes, several other bird species and beach mice.
Monday’s filing seeks to amend the 2024 lawsuit to also challenge the 2025 consultation the Trump administration prepared. The purpose of the new consultation is to consider whether new information about the harms of Gulf oil drilling invalidates the 2018 biological opinion and to evaluate the potential harm from drilling to the newly listed black-capped petrel.
In the 2018 analysis, the Service ignored the potential harms from a major oil spill. Although the analysis admitted that up to one oil spill greater than 420,000 gallons in size “is likely to occur,” the agency claims no endangered species would be harmed. The 2025 addendum did not correct that claim, or evaluate the effects of a larger spill, despite evidence indicating a larger spill is likely to occur. Instead, the 2025 consultation reaffirms the conclusions in the 2018 analysis, despite a host of new science demonstrating its conclusions are invalid.
The Gulf contains a massive amount of federal oil and gas extraction, including more than 2,070 active oil and gas leases. Those leases enable thousands of platforms and rigs, tens of thousands of miles of pipelines, and tens of thousands of oil and gas wells.
In 2010 the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion killed 11 people and caused more than 200 million gallons of oil to spill into the ocean. Millions of marine mammals, sea turtles, birds, fish and other wildlife were killed, and the damage continues to this day.
The Center is part of a separate May 2025 lawsuit challenging a biological opinion conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service regarding the effects of Gulf oil and gas activities on endangered sperm whales, Rice’s whales, corals and other species.
“History is a valuable guide, and it’s negligent to ignore the possibility of another disastrous Gulf oil spill,” Monsell said. “Sea turtles nesting on the shore and birds relying on Gulf coast marshes are depending on us to keep them safe from oil and gas extraction.”
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
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