Action Alerts

Let’s tackle the biodiversity crisis

What's At Stake

The world is facing a biodiversity crisis. In the coming decades, a million of the Earth’s species face the possibility of extinction due to climate change, pollution, and habitat loss. Even species that are not yet on the brink will face huge population declines. This extinction crisis means fewer pollinators for agriculture, depleted fisheries, and disappearing places like old-growth forests and wetlands that provide a long-term, low-cost source of clean air and water. This crisis threatens not only the plants and animals that we know and love but all of us. Our fate is inextricably linked with the ecosystems that the world’s species depend on. The Biden administration can lead the U.S. in reversing the biodiversity crisis but it must act.

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World leaders have committed to protect 30% of the world’s lands and oceans by 2030. At this pivotal moment, the Biden administration must focus on actions the U.S. can take to protect biodiversity. It must act to restore, fully fund, and enforce the Endangered Species Act; protect 30% of our land and waters by 2030; create new protections for mature and old-growth forests; and ensure protections for wetlands.

We cannot delay. Across the globe, momentum is growing to address the biodiversity crisis. We must ensure that the United States implements every initiative at its disposal to expand the safety net for life on this planet, including by restoring the Endangered Species Act to its full strength. 

A manatee calf with its mother at Three Sisters Springs in Florida.
A manatee calf with its mother at Three Sisters Springs in Florida. Manatees are a threatened species protected under the Endangered Species Act. (James R.D. Scott / Getty Images)

Interior Secretary Debra Haaland and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo

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Your Actions Matter

Your messages make a difference, even if we have leaders who don't want to listen. Here's why.

You level the playing field.

Elected officials pay attention when they see that we are paying attention. Read more.

They may be hearing from industry lobbyists left and right, but hearing the stories of their constituents — that’s your power.

Our legislators serve at the pleasure of the people who gave them their job — you.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. When you contact your elected official, you’re putting a face and a name on an issue.

Whether or not you voted for them, they work for you, for the duration of their term.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. (Find your local, state, and federal elected officials.)

Your action is with us in court.

If a federal agency finalizes a harmful action, the record of public comments provides a basis for bringing them into court. Read more.

Throughout each of the public comment periods we alert you to, Earthjustice’s attorneys are researching and writing in-depth, technical comments to submit — detailing how the regulation could and should be stronger to protect the environment, our communities, and our planet.

We need you to join us — your specific experiences, knowledge, and voice are crucial to add to the Administrative Record through the comment periods.

Lawsuits we file that challenge weak or harmful federal regulations rely on what was submitted during the comment period. The court can only look at documents that are in the Administrative Record — including the public comments — to decide if the agency did something improper.

Your actions aid our litigation. Taking action and submitting comments during a comment period is substantively important.

It’s the law.

Federal agencies must pause what they’re doing and ask for — and consider — your comment. Read more.

Many of us may have never heard of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but laws like these require our government to ask the public to weigh in before agencies adopt or change regulations.

Regulations essentially describe how federal agencies will carry out laws — including decisions that could undermine science, or weaken safeguards on public health.

Public comments are collected at various points throughout the federal government’s rulemaking process, including when a regulation is proposed and finalized. (Learn about the rulemaking process.) These comments become part of the official, legal public record — the “Administrative Record.”

When the public responds with a huge outpouring of support for environmental protections, these individual messages collectively undercut politicians' attempts to claim otherwise.

What this means is each of us can take a role in shaping the rules our government creates — and ensuring those rules are fair and effective.