Protecting endangered species and their habitat is part of the foundational work that the Sierra Club was built around – and it’s working. Today there are more gray wolves, grizzly bears, and California condors than there were a generation ago thanks to Sierra Club members and supporters.
The Endangered Species Act is one of the most important and effective conservation laws in history. The bipartisan bill passed Congress with almost unanimous support on December 28, 1973, preventing the extinction of roughly 291 species since its passage. Today, more than 80% of the public supports it.
The Endangered Species Act has helped save 99% of species listed for protection from extinction, including the humpback whale, grizzly bear, and bald eagle. Because of its success, gray whales still swim our coasts, peregrine falcons still soar our skies, and polar bears still roam the Arctic tundra. The Act is currently helping protect more than 2,000 species of plants and animals that are threatened or endangered.
The Endangered Species Act is considered one of the greatest success stories of the environmental movement and serves as a model for conservation efforts around the world.
41%
40%
of animals in the US risk extinction
The Trump administration and Congress continue to take unprecedented measures to limit or get rid of the Endangered Species Act, despite the fact that it is one of the most popular environmental laws in America. The Act has protected imperiled wildlife and wildlife habitat from activities like industrial development for over half a century. Science demonstrates that habitat loss is the primary driver of species extinction. The United States alone loses a football field’s worth of natural space every 30 seconds to development.
Sierra Club is working hard to fight back against attacks to the Endangered Species Act from the Trump Administration and Republicans in Congress. Our chapters and volunteers are also pressuring local decisionmakers to save endangered species, restore keystone species to historic habitats, and protect and connect important habitats so that imperiled wildlife can thrive in the face of climate change and other human-caused threats.
We are leveraging our grassroots power to protect regional species like Florida panthers and grizzly bears in the Northern Rockies. We are also working with Indigenous partners to ensure that Native communities have the resources available to them to manage wildlife on their lands and to restore culturally important species like bison and salmon. In recent years, we have also worked to educate policymakers and the public on how the extinction and climate crises, and the solutions to these crises, are interconnected.
59% complete
Send Your Message
We recently saw a big win for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies. Thanks to legal action by the Sierra Club and partners, Northern Rockies wolves are one step closer to Endangered Species Act protections after a federal judge found the Trump administration's denial unlawful.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, against a backdrop of recent reports of global mass extinction, the Trump administration released final regulations weakening the Endangered Species Act, the nation’s most effective tool in saving wildlife from extinction.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Trump administration today is expected to publish new conservation plans for the endangered greater sage grouse. The revised plans, which will apply to lands managed by the Forest Service, follow rollbacks adopted by the…
Rock Springs, WY-- The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission will meet on July 18th and 19th to decide whether or not to require hunters to carry bear spray in grizzly bear habitat, how to control the spread of chronic wasting disease, and adopt…
Almost two million Americans stated their opposition to the Trump administration’s proposal to strip endangered species protections from gray wolves in a comment period that closed today. This is one of the largest numbers of comments ever submitted…
MINNEAPOLIS, MN— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service held its only public hearing on the Trump administration proposal to end federal protection for nearly all gray wolves in the lower 48 states in Brainerd, Minn. Dozens of wolf activists gathered at…
