Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Defenders can’t thank our supporters enough for everything you do to help us fight to protect threatened and endangered wildlife. Your donations of time, money, and effort make it all possible.

We also recognize that, these days, it can be a lot harder for many to find that time, money, and effort. But did you know there’s a quick, affordable, and convenient option that can still let you make a real difference to the wild animals and special places we all care about so much?

Text SSW to 90999 to make a $5 donation and help save something wild.

That’s all there is to it! The donation will be added to your mobile carrier’s bill, and you don’t need to fill out any forms or dig out your credit card to find the number.

The Value of Five Dollars

Every contribution you make—even five dollars—will help Defenders fight to protect wildlife on the ground, in the courts, and in government offices. Here are some examples of the great successes our supporters have already helped us achieve this year!

• Last summer, Defenders’ Jonathan Proctor and Lacy Gray spent time in Wyoming’s Thunder Basin, helping to relocate prairie dogs to an area where they would be free from poisoning.
• Just a few weeks ago, polar bears received positive court rulings from two cases Defenders was directly involved with: one involving the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and the other involving trophy hunting.
• From mobilizing our supporters to write to their lawmakers to working directly with state and federal government officials on policies affecting wildlife, Defenders has been instrumental in several legislative successes this year. For example: Banning the shark fin trade in California, passing a pioneering wolf coexistence and compensation law in Oregon, removing the horrible “extinction rider” from a must-pass Congressional funding bill.

We have many more battles to fight to protect our treasured wildlife. And now with just 5 seconds and 5 bucks, YOU can help us win!

$5.00 donation to Defenders of Wildlife will appear on your wireless bill. Message and Data Rates May Apply. Text HELP to 90999 for HELP. www.mGive.org/T.

Jamie Rappaport Clark takes the helm as president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife. Clark has been with Defenders for seven years as the executive vice president.

As a woman, mother, wildlife biologist, advocate and former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Clark brings a wealth of expertise and passion to Defenders.

“My whole life, I have felt a moral obligation to conserve wildlife and our natural resources. This is not a job to me, this is my life’s mission and a pursuit of what I love to do,” Clark said.

Clark followed her lifelong passion and chose a career in wildlife biology. In her early years, she released peregrine falcons into the wild as part of a successful recovery effort — so successful, in fact, that 20 years later she had the honor of removing them from the list of endangered species as director.

Clark came to Defenders after a 20-year career with the federal government, mostly with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed her as director of the service, a post she held until 2001. During her tenure as director, she oversaw the addition of 27 new refuges and two million acres to the National Wildlife Refuge System, and she presided over the recovery of key endangered species such as the bald eagle, gray wolf and the Aleutian Canada goose.

My whole life, I have felt a moral obligation to conserve wildlife and our natural resources. This is not a job to me, this is my life’s mission and a pursuit of what I love to do.

Clark’s tenure as director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was also marked by the adoption of innovative policies to encourage landowners to voluntarily conserve wildlife, including the safe harbor program and expanded habitat and candidate conservation programs. Under her leadership, the Fish and Wildlife Service worked with Congress to pass the landmark National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997, which established wildlife conservation as the primary purpose of all wildlife refuges.

As executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife for the past seven years, Clark provided added credibility to the organization with her years of on the ground expertise and as a leader of a national wildlife agency. She is recognized as a leading expert on endangered wildlife.

Her passion for wildlife is shared by her family. Jim Clark, her husband of 22 years, was a national wildlife refuge manager and is presently an award-winning nature photographer and author. Her 12-year-old son, Carson, named after the renowned environmental writer Rachel Carson, is also an award-winning nature photographer and author of a series of children’s books featuring “Buddy the Beaver.”

Clark holds a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Towson State University in Towson, Maryland, where she also did post-graduate work in environmental planning. She holds a master’s degree in wildlife ecology from the University of Maryland.

Famed conservationist Jeff Corwin looks back on 20 years of leadership from Defenders of Wildlife’s retiring president Rodger Schlickeisen.

I remember when I first met Rodger.

It was 2003 and we were standing on the steps of the US Capitol building. The sun was shining but there was a distinct chill in the air. Beside us was an impressive assortment of environmental leaders and members of Congress. In front of us sat about 30 school children, equal parts nervous and excited. Our purpose that day? To celebrate the 30^th Anniversary of the Endangered Species Act.

And I remember how eloquently Rodger spoke about the Act – the bipartisan support it enjoyed, the creatures it had saved, the threats it faces – and I realized this man wasn’t just reading words on a page. He could have been working without prepared text at all, because this man was clearly moved. He felt what he was saying and he felt it deep and it was apparent to all. I have made the conservation of wildlife my life’s work and I knew right away, listening to Rodger, I had found a kindred spirit. It was the beginning of my proud association with Defenders of Wildlife and the beginning of what I hope will be a lifelong friendship with its departing leader, Rodger Schlickeisen.

Rodger isn’t just the head of one of the nation’s top environmental groups, he is the consummate hands-on, make-things-happen leader. He is as much at home in the Oval Office chastising the president as he is clad in a winter parka, releasing wolves back into Yellowstone. And you are just as likely to find him in a powerful Senator’s office as you are the wilds of Africa, tracking collared lions with Masai warriors.

And his brand of leadership has served Defenders well. When he joined the organization in 1991, it had 60,000 members. Now? The list of members and supporters tops one million. When he joined Defenders, the US Geological Service had no arm devoted to addressing the impacts of climate change on wildlife. Now they do. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the wildlife conservation programs, public and private, that were not in existence before Rodger made creating them a priority for Defenders.

When Rodger got started, environmental conservation had Democratic and Republican champions alike. And he deftly maneuvered back and forth across the aisle, exhorting champions from both sides to support key conservation programs. A decade later, when wildlife conservation became a political hot potato, Rodger read the writing on the wall, formed the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, and began taking on some of the environment’s worst enemies at the ballot box. Richard Pombo, Sarah Palin, Steve Pearce, Marilyn Musgrave, all soon found that you cannot run roughshod over the environment without hearing about it from Rodger.

Leadership, foresight, flexibility, proven accomplishment, all things we look for in a leader, all things Rodger delivered.

But as Rodger moves on from Defenders, I find myself thinking back to that fall day in 2003. And I think about another leadership quality: dedication. On that day, I saw the intense dedication he shows to the cause he so clearly believes in and the organization he cares so deeply about. And I am left to ponder how rare such devotion is in many of the leaders we see today. Truly, lots of people run organizations, but few people actually lead with such dedication. Rodger did. And we − along with the natural world − are the better for it.

A win for wildlife! Earlier today, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB971, the pro-sea otter bill that Defenders co-sponsored with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This law reestablishes the California Sea Otter Fund on state income tax forms for another five years.

This fund is the main source for investigating the problems southern sea otters face in California through a great research collaborative that is studying many aspects of the population.

The following is a statement from Jim Curland, Defenders’ marine program associate:

“This is a great day for sea otters! We are very grateful to Assemblyman Bill Monning for introducing this legislation reestablishing the California Sea Otter Fund for another five years. This Fund is critical to understanding the problems facing sea otters in California and figuring out ways to recover and protect this fragile population. Defenders of Wildlife greatly appreciates Governor Brown signing this bill into law today.”

Read Assemblyman Monning’s Press Release (PDF) about this great success.

This blog post is a joint collaboration by Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Sea Otter, The Humane Society of the United States, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

A coalition of organizations welcomed news that California’s struggling sea otters may soon get a big boost thanks to a draft plan released by federal wildlife officials today. The plan would end a controversial “no-otter” zone on the California coast and allow the marine mammals to re-colonize their traditional habitat.

California sea otters are protected as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In 1986, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) implemented a translocation program that removed otters from the shoreline of Southern California and relocated them to San Nicolas Island, with the hope of establishing a second viable population that would protect the species in the event of any environmental disaster. At the same time, FWS implemented a “no-otter” zone south of Point Conception in which otters would be removed and transported back north of the zone’s boundary.

Translocation failed to promote otter recovery, and FWS subsequently determined that enforcement of the “no-otter” zone violates the ESA by jeopardizing the species’ recovery due to harm to the species during transport. FWS has long recognized that natural range expansion is necessary to achieve species recovery for the California sea otter.

For the next 60 days, FWS is soliciting public input on the proposal before making a final decision. Conservation groups that have been focused on efforts to aid the otter’s recovery were quick to commend FWS’ proposal to end the translocation program and allow for the species’ natural range expansion.

Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Sea Otter, The Humane Society of the United States, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, issued the following statement:

“Today is a good day for California sea otters. We support an end to the ineffective and harmful translocation program and “no-otter” management zone. For sea otters to have a real shot at recovery, they must be allowed to return to their historic range off the coast of Southern California. If sea otters thrive again throughout their historic range, the entire marine ecosystem will benefit.”

How you can help:

The Fish and Wildlife Service is scheduled to open its 60-day comment period in the next week or so. We will provide a link on our www.saveseaotters.org web page when it’s available so you can let the FWS know that you want the no-otter zone gone!

Montana's Glacier National Park has been losing its namesake glaciers since the park's establishment in 1910. They are predicted to disappear completely by 2030.

Blog post by Astrid Caldas, climate change and wildlife scientist with Defenders of Wildlife. This blog originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

You have probably heard about melting Arctic ice and the drastic decrease in glacier size. You may have seen it yourself during a trip to a favorite spot, and mourned the loss of beautiful snow covered views. And while you may be aware that the increase in greenhouse gases is to blame, at least in large part, for our planet’s warming, you may not realize that a substance called black carbon is an accomplice, affecting everything from polar bear habitat in the Arctic to glacial-fed drinking water in the Himalayas. A recent peer-reviewed study found that “Most of the change in snow and ice cover — about 90 percent — is from aerosols. Black carbon alone contributes at least 30 percent of this sum.”

Black carbon is an aerosol produced during poor combustion of carbon-based fuels (as opposed to carbon dioxide, which is produced in all circumstances), and together with organic carbon is one the major components in soot. Sources include diesel engines in various types of vehicles, furnaces, cook stoves, and forest fires, as well as some industrial processes. Some 25% to 35% of emissions occur in China and India (from combustion of wood, coal, and other fuels for household uses), whereas Europe, North America and eastern European countries emit about 13% of all black carbon, mostly from contained combustion.

Black carbon absorbs visible light and transfers the energy to the atmosphere, warming it. While carbon dioxide can stay in the atmosphere for 100 years, black carbon has a short atmospheric lifetime, making its effects more concentrated near the areas where it is emitted, especially in terms of atmospheric warming and health issues due to inhalation. It settles quickly from the atmosphere, and when it lands on snow and ice, the darkened snow and ice absorb more heat and melt more quickly. Because most emissions occur above 40⁰N, where they are likely to be transported to the Arctic (see Princeton University Report), black carbon has been linked to the melting of Arctic ice and Himalayan glaciers.

What can we do? Read the full blog on the Huffington Post to learn how we can address black carbon emissions in what may be the fastest, cheapest way to cool the planet.