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biodiversity
House GOP Accused of 'Waging War on America's Wildlife' With Proposed Spending Cuts
"This budget proposal shows yet again the extremes to which anti-wildlife members of Congress will go to sacrifice endangered species," said one conservationist.
Jul 14, 2025
As Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives begin work on spending legislation for fiscal year 2026, conservationists and congressional Democrats are blasting a key appropriations bill released Monday.
"House Republicans are once again waging war on America's wildlife in yet another giveaway to their industry allies," said Stephanie Kurose, deputy director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. "Extinction isn't inevitable, it's a political choice. The Appropriations Committee has one job to do, which is to fund the government, not decide whether our most vulnerable animals get to survive."
The bill that the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee is set to consider on Tuesday morning would not only slash funding for the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—by 23%—and the Fish and Wildlife Service, but also strip Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections from animals including gray wolves, the center noted.
"This budget proposal shows yet again the extremes to which anti-wildlife members of Congress will go to sacrifice endangered species," declared Robert Dewey, vice president of government relations at Defenders of Wildlife. "The bill is loaded with riders that attack the Endangered Species Act and would put some of America's most iconic species, including the grizzly bear and wolverine, at serious risk of extinction."
"The bill and all who support it are compromising the crucial habitats, outdoor recreation areas, and natural resources that Americans and wildlife rely on."
The legislation would block funding for listing the greater sage-grouse as well as money to protect the northern long-eared bat, the lesser prairie-chicken, and captive fish listed under the ESA. It would also block the Biden administration's rules for the landmark law.
"By blocking protections for public lands while also providing short-sighted lease sales for the benefit of oil and gas corporations, the bill and all who support it are compromising the crucial habitats, outdoor recreation areas, and natural resources that Americans and wildlife rely on," Dewey said.
Democrats on the committee put out a statement highlighting that, along with attacking wildlife, worsening the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, and jeopardizing public health by favoring polluters, the GOP legislation would hike utility bills, promote environmental discrimination against rural and poor communities, and cut national park funding.
"With the release of the FY26 Interior bill, it's clear House Republicans are once again pushing an agenda that accelerates the climate crisis, upends our national parks system, and leaves local communities to fend for themselves—all while undermining the power of the Appropriations Committee and of Congress," said Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), ranking member on the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee.
"We are still living with the fallout of last year's failure to negotiate a full-year funding bill. Instead of correcting course, the bill released today delivers more of the same: It cuts water infrastructure funding, slashes EPA programs, and wipes out environmental justice and climate initiatives. It even blocks the EPA from completing its risk assessment on PFAS in sewage sludge," she continued, referring to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also called forever chemicals. "On top of the environmental attacks, Republicans are taking aim at the arts and cultural institutions that enrich communities and drive local economies."
Pingree asserted that "any arguments that these irresponsible cuts are somehow fiscally responsible ring hollow in the wake of Republicans adding $3.4 trillion to the national deficit thanks to their disastrous so-called 'One Big Beautiful Bill.' I urge my Republican colleagues to come to the table and support the essential work of this subcommittee: Protecting public health, conserving our lands and waters, investing in resilience, and ensuring that every community—from rural Maine to urban centers—has access to a healthy environment and a vibrant cultural life."
House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) pointed out that President Donald Trump "promised to address the cost-of-living crisis, but instead, he and House Republicans are making it worse."
"House Republicans' 2026 Interior funding bill raises utility bills and energy prices to benefit billionaires and big corporations," DeLauro said. "Republicans are threatening the air we breathe and the water we drink and taking steps that damage our public lands, promote dirty energy, and hinder our ability to confront the climate crisis."
"In addition to these dangerous cuts, Republicans' proposal would mean fewer trips to national parks and less access to museums and the arts," she warned. "House Republicans are more focused on lining the pockets of big oil companies than lowering prices for working-class, middle-class, rural, and vulnerable families; protecting our public health; and preserving the planet."
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'Ticking Time Bomb': Study Says Ocean Acidification Crossed Planetary Boundary
"We're gambling with both biodiversity and billions in economic value every day that action is delayed," said one expert.
Jun 09, 2025
As this year's United Nations Ocean Conference began in France on Monday, scientists published a study showing that another "planetary boundary," or barriers that ensure the Earth is a "safe operating space for humanity," has been crossed.
Researchers said in 2023 that 6 of the 9 boundaries—biogeochemical flows, biosphere integrity, the climate, freshwater, land use, and novel entities—had been crossed. Last year, they issued a "red alert" about ocean acidification, the topic of the new study, Ocean Acidification: Another Planetary Boundary Crossed.
As the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explains, humanity's burning of fossil fuels and land use changes have caused the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to soar, and the ocean absorbs some of it. The resulting chemical interactions make seawater more acidic.
In the new study, scientists from NOAA, Oregon State University, and the United Kingdom's Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) wrote that "we improve upon the ocean acidification planetary boundary assessment and demonstrate that by 2020, the average global ocean conditions had already crossed into the uncertainty range of the ocean acidification boundary."
"This analysis was further extended to the subsurface ocean, revealing that up to 60% of the global subsurface ocean (down to 200 m) had crossed that boundary, compared to over 40% of the global surface ocean," they continued. "These changes result in significant declines in suitable habitats for important calcifying species, including 43% reduction in habitat for tropical and subtropical coral reefs, up to 61% for polar pteropods, and 13% for coastal bivalves."
"As our seas increase in acidity, we're witnessing the loss of critical habitats that countless marine species depend on, and this, in turn, has major societal and economic implications."
The study's lead author, North-East Atlantic Ocean Acidification Hub chair and PML professor Helen Findlay, said in a Monday statement that "looking across different areas of the world, the polar regions show the biggest changes in ocean acidification at the surface. Meanwhile, in deeper waters, the largest changes are happening in areas just outside the poles and in the upwelling regions along the west coast of North America and near the equator."
"Most ocean life doesn't just live at the surface—the waters below are home to many more different types of plants and animals. Since these deeper waters are changing so much, the impacts of ocean acidification could be far worse than we thought," Findlay noted. "This has huge implications for important underwater ecosystems like tropical and even deep-sea coral reefs that provide essential habitats and nursing refuge for many species, in addition to the impacts being felt on bottom-dwelling creatures like crabs, sea stars, and other shellfish such as mussels and oysters."
Fellow PML professor and Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network co-chair Steve Widdicombe, who provided the study authors with comments on a draft, said Monday that "ocean acidification isn't just an environmental crisis—it's a ticking time bomb for marine ecosystems and coastal economies."
"As our seas increase in acidity, we're witnessing the loss of critical habitats that countless marine species depend on, and this, in turn, has major societal and economic implications," he warned. "From the coral reefs that support tourism to the shellfish industries that sustain coastal communities, we're gambling with both biodiversity and billions in economic value every day that action is delayed."
The 2024 Planetary Boundaries report showed 6/9 boundaries breached with the 7th, Ocean Acidification, in danger. A new study shows that this too has now been crossed. The implications are huge!onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...#climatechange #oceanacidification #planetaryboundaries #oceans
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— Dr Tom Harris (@drtomharris.bsky.social) June 9, 2025 at 9:22 AM
Costa Rica and France are co-hosting the U.N. summit in the French coastal city of Nice this week. The theme is "accelerating action and mobilizing all actors to conserve and sustainably use the ocean."
Greenpeace USA oceans campaign director John Hocevar, who will be attending the meeting, said Monday that "this conference couldn't come at a more critical time. The ocean is reeling from the combined impacts of industrial fishing, plastic pollution, and climate change. And just when bold leadership is most needed, the U.S. has walked away from the global stage, opening the floodgates to destruction through a barrage of Trump administration executive orders that threaten both domestic and international waters."
"We can't afford any more delay," he stressed. "The decisions made in Nice will set the tone for key global efforts to stem the ocean crisis in the coming months, including the plastics treaty, the global ocean treaty, and deep-sea mining talks at the International Seabed Authority. Whether this conference marks a turning point or takes our oceans further down the road to ruin will depend on the strength and ambition of the commitments made by the international community to stand up for science, uphold international law, and advance environmental justice."
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The Time Has Come to Establish the International Arctic Ocean Sanctuary
In addition to accelerating efforts to reduce global carbon emissions to reverse global warming, governments must urgently adopt strong, permanent protections for the entire Arctic Ocean.
Jun 08, 2025
On World Ocean Day, and the eve of the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France opening Monday, the Arctic Ocean ecological crisis needs to be top of the list for attention by governments.
Given the well-documented, catastrophic decline of the Arctic Ocean sea ice ecosystem in recent decades due to climate change, coupled with the increasing threats and impacts from industry and military activity in the region, it is imperative that governments establish an International Arctic Ocean Sanctuary to preserve this extraordinary ecoregion as a global commons for peaceful, non-commercial, scientific purposes.
Covering approximately 5.4 million square miles, the Arctic Ocean is one of the most extraordinary and vibrant regions of the global ocean, and plays an important role regulating Earth’s climate.
Combined with the effects of climate change, industrialization and militarization would further accelerate the ecological and social collapse of the struggling Arctic Ocean region.
The Arctic marine ecosystem is globally unique, productive, and remains relatively unexplored. The ocean biome supports more than 7,000 identified species, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth—polar bears, walrus, several kinds of ice seals, narwhals, beluga whales, bowhead whales, some of the largest populations of seabirds in the world, and many unique fish and invertebrate populations. It hosts cold seeps, hydrothermal vents, stunning benthic habitats, a rich pelagic ecosystem that remains surprisingly active during winter darkness, and supports the subsistence cultures of coastal Indigenous Peoples.
However, this unique polar marine ecosystem is now one of the most endangered regions of Earth’s biosphere, suffering effects of climate change more severely than anywhere else. Arctic sea ice has declined by more than half in the last 50 years, losing about 1 million square miles in both summer and winter, has thinned from an average of four meters to about one meter, and could disappear entirely in summer by 2035. Multiyear sea ice has all but vanished. This remarkable decline has been caused by global carbon emissions from human activity, mainly fossil fuel use.
The loss of Arctic sea ice over the last half-century constitutes one of the largest declines in ecological habitat on Earth, rivaling the loss of tropical rainforests. The resultant Arctic Ocean ecological crisis is now severe, and predicted to get much worse in coming decades.
In addition to devastating impacts of climate change in the Arctic Ocean, commercial interests are clamoring to exploit ice-free offshore areas for oil and gas, methane hydrates, minerals, commercial fishing, shipping, and tourism. And Arctic coastal nations have made Extended Continental Shelf (ECS) seabed claims (pursuant to U.N. Law of the Sea, Article 76) beyond their 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), a dangerous territorial expansion into international waters with an eye toward resource extraction.
As Arctic nations and others (China, India, etc.) advance their own parochial interests across the region, there is a growing competitive race to exploit Arctic offshore resources and to project military power across the region to secure these competing national interests. As such, the risk of military confrontation across the Arctic Ocean is escalating. Combined with the effects of climate change, industrialization and militarization would further accelerate the ecological and social collapse of the struggling Arctic Ocean region, and would clearly compromise the ability of the bioregion and its people to survive the 21st-century climate crisis.
In fact, the resource and political tensions in the Arctic Ocean today are remarkably similar to the Antarctic after World War II, that were resolved then by the leadership of U.S. (Republican) President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposing and negotiating the historic 1959 Antarctic Treaty. The international Treaty, now with 58 nation-state members, permanently protects the extraordinary 5.5 million square-mile Antarctic continent as a global commons for peaceful, scientific purposes, free from nuclear testing, military operations, economic exploitation, and territorial claims. The Antarctic Treaty remains the single greatest conservation achievement in history.
The same opportunity now presents itself with the Arctic Ocean. In addition to accelerating efforts to reduce global carbon emissions to reverse global warming, governments must urgently adopt strong, permanent protections for the entire Arctic Ocean to give this region and its people the best chance possible to survive the 21st-century climate crisis. Given the pace of decline, this may be our last best chance to do so.
While Arctic nations have begun protecting some areas off their coasts, still less than 5% of Arctic Ocean waters are in permanently protected status. This is clearly insufficient.
The proposed circumpolar Arctic Ocean Sanctuary must fully protect not only international waters beyond coastal state 200-mile EEZs across the 1.1 million square mile Central Arctic Ocean (as is currently proposed), but also the highly productive waters within the EEZs of Arctic coastal nations—Canada, Norway, Denmark and Greenland, Russia, and the U.S., where most ecological activity, human impact, and threat occurs. The sanctuary should permanently prohibit oil and gas leasing, mineral leasing, commercial fishing, military activities, improve shipping safety, reduce pollutants, and enhance scientific research.
To be sure, it is a big ask of the five Arctic coastal nations to contribute some of their claimed territory into a globally protected area, but this was the right thing to do in 1959 in the Antarctic, and it is the right thing to do now for the Arctic.
While the current federal administrations in the Russia and U.S. habitually oppose any and all environmental conservation proposals, perhaps presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump might see this as a historic legacy in the midst of the environmental havoc they have caused, a chance to be remembered as Eisenhower is today for his leadership in negotiating the Antarctic Treaty. And just to note, former President Joe Biden ignored this request entirely, enacted no comprehensive permanent protections in the U.S. Arctic Ocean off Alaska, and made no effort to begin discussions on the International Arctic Ocean Sanctuary.
Global society has a historic choice to make with the imperiled Arctic Ocean. Should we continue our competitive industrial and military expansion into one of the last wild areas of the world, further degrading a region already unraveling due to human-caused climate change? Or should we protect and sustain this magnificent place for all time, giving it and its inhabitants, human and non-human, the best chance possible to recover from climate change this century?
How we answer this question will tell us a lot about ourselves and our future.
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