Summary:

• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concludes that the sage grouse could face extinction if it doesn’t receive protections under the Endangered Species Act
• However, the agency says it is currently too busy working on more urgent cases to move forward with listing the birds at this time
• The prairie and sagebrush lands that the rare birds depend on have increasingly become targets for oil, gas and wind energy development as well as increased agricultural use and grazing
• Sage grouse have already vanished from nearly half of their historic territory

Predator derbies awarded points and prizes for killing wolves and other wildlife

• More than 145,000 sign petition telling Cabela’s and Sportsman’s Warehouse to end their sponsorship of unsportsmanlike “predator derbies”
• Predator derbies are killing contests in which participants win points for bagging wolves and other wildlife
• The proceeds from these derbies went directly to funding anti-wolf litigation
• Attempts to place ads in Cabela’s hometown and neighboring towns in Nebraska were rejected due to “content,” – including The Omaha World Herald (Nebraska's largest and most influential paper).

Dour economy dents contributions to sea otters in 2009; fund is off to a slow start this year

Summary:

• After missing last year’s target, the California Sea Otter Fund must raise $258,563 this year to remain on the state tax form in 2011 – a $17,500 increase over last year’s earnings
• In 2009 the California sea otter population 3-year-average declined for the first time in over a decade
• The Sea Otter Fund supports vital sea otter research and conservation

Defenders of Wildlife says a scientific recovery plan is desperately needed

(Albuquerque, N.M., February 5, 2010) — Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that the Mexican wolf population plummeted by 20 percent in 2009, according to its annual year-end survey of the recovery area spanning New Mexico and Arizona. This recent survey counted only 42 wolves and two breeding pairs brings them closer to a second extinction in the wild.

The following is a statement from Eva Sargent, Ph.D., the Southwest program director for Defenders of Wildlife.

Right whales' only known calving grounds threatened by Navy project

ATLANTA—Conservation groups today challenged the U.S. Navy's decision to build its $100 million Undersea Warfare Training Range next to the only known calving ground for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. The Southern Environmental Law Center, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Humane Society of the United States, and nine other conservation groups brought the challenge.

A timely, scientific recovery plan could mean the difference between life and death for U.S. jaguars

Summary:

• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will draw up a recovery plan for endangered jaguars in the Southwest.
• Jaguars have roamed the Southwest for thousands of years, but suffered some of their most significant range losses in the U.S.
• Defenders of Wildlife says that a scientific recovery plan is an essential first step toward jaguar recovery.

FLORIDA – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that new critical habitat protections are warranted for Florida’s endangered manatee, but the agency will wait for increased funding before it takes action. The notice, published in today’s Federal Register, is in response to a petition to revise the manatee’s critical habitat filed by Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity, Save the Manatee Club, and the Wildlife Advocacy Project. According to the petition, revised habitat protections are warranted based on a vast body of science developed over the past three decades, which has better identified the areas essential to the survival and recovery of manatees, as well as the important features of each area.