Nature's Voice Summer 2025

NATURE ’ S VOICE

For the 3 million Members and online activists of the Natural Resources Defense Council

COURT NIXES OFFSHORE LEASES

Siding with NRDC and our allies, a federal court has ruled that a massive offshore lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico under the previous administration was illegal. Specifically, the court found the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management failed to adequately assess the risks the sale posed to the climate and to critically endangered Rice’s whales. “Justice prevailed here,” says NRDC Senior Attorney Julia Forgie. “As the Trump administration embraces a ‘drill, baby, drill’ mentality, now more than ever it’s imperative that the courts continue to uphold the law.”

MONARCH PROTECTIONS POSED

Thousands of NRDC Members and online activists rallied in support of monarch butterflies as part of a nationwide outpouring calling on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to follow through on its proposal to list the pollinators as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and to designate critical habitat for the species. The proposal, made under the Biden administration, would grant urgently needed protections to the butterflies, whose populations have plummeted owing to pesticides such as highly toxic neonics as well as habitat loss and climate change.

KLAMATH RIVER RUNS FREE

The first wild salmon in more than a century have returned to the upper Klamath Basin in Northern California and Oregon, much sooner than expected following the largest dam removal project in U.S. history. Completed last fall, the removal of four hydroelectric dams marked a historic victory for the Yurok, the Karuk, and other Native Tribes, who had fought for decades to restore a free-flowing Klamath River, once the third-largest salmon-producing river in the West and vital to the cultural and spiritual well-being of the region’s Native peoples.

NRDC FIGHTS DELUGE OF TRUMP ATTACKS

For Josh Mogerman, the day began like any other—or, at least, like most mornings since Inauguration Day. But if the 17-year veteran of NRDC’s communications department had grown accustomed to warily scanning his news feed for the latest Trump administration anti-environment outrage, nothing could prepare him for the day ahead. “An absolute blitzkrieg,” as Mogerman describes it. “Like nothing we’d ever seen.” Keeping with the new administration’s Elon-Muskwielding-a-chainsaw ethos, Lee Zeldin, Trump’s recently installed pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), unleashed a fusillade of proposed rollbacks. On the chopping block: dozens of critical environmental and public health protections—from slashing restrictions on air and water pollution to shuttering every EPA

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environmental justice office to torching the legal underpinning of the agency’s efforts to address climate change.

Mogerman and his team sprang into action. Marshaling NRDC’s deep bench of legal, science, and policy experts, they hit back hard in the media, countering the administration’s disinformation with the facts about the real-world consequences if this egregious assault—the most extreme attack on the EPA in its 50-year history—were to go unchallenged. Meanwhile, NRDC’s digital team turned to activating our rapid-response Action Network, sounding the alarm via email and text, ultimately prompting tens of thousands of Members and online activists to demand that their elected representatives oppose the Trump administration’s attempt to gut the EPA.

Besieged by calls from reporters trying to make

sense of the flurry of rollbacks, Mogerman’s team swiftly organized a virtual press briefing, assembling a panel of senior NRDC experts to answer questions about the assault directly from the national media, including the Associated Press, USA Today, PBS NewsHour, Bloomberg, and other

Global Plastics Treaty Talks Set to Resume

Negotiations aimed at finalizing the first-ever international treaty to tackle the plastics crisis will resume in August in Geneva, less than a year after progress toward a meaningful agreement at the last round of talks was derailed by a coalition of nations closely allied with the fossil fuel industry. “Even though more than a hundred countries agreed to curb plastic production, some oil-producing nations led by Saudi Arabia and Russia repeatedly blocked progress,” says Renée Sharp, NRDC’s director of plastics and petrochemical advocacy, who was part of our delegation that attended the negotiations in South

Korea last fall. “Ambitious countries around the world refused to accept the prospect of a toothless agreement and stood firm in their commitment to end plastic pollution.”

Sharp, along with Senior Advisor David Lennett, will be back in Geneva, pushing for a strong treaty that, among other key goals, reduces plastics production, phases out the most harmful chemicals used in plastics, and eliminates the most problematic and toxic forms of plastics. “The stakes are high here,” says Lennett. “The Geneva meeting will likely determine whether a strong global agreement under the auspices of the United Nations is possible.”

WINNING LEGAL TEAM ANCHORS BATTLE AGAINST TRUMP AGENDA

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major outlets. If Zeldin thought his attempt to dress up the administration’s EPA hatchet job as anything other than a massive giveaway to America’s dirtiest industries might fly, he had another thing coming. By the end of the week, NRDC experts had appeared in the media nearly 1,700 times, providing a powerful—and imperative—rebuttal to the administration’s bogus spin. “Nobody voted to make America sick again from pollution, but that’s exactly what this agenda will do—a slew of industries will have a free pass to pollute our air and water because of these rollbacks,” Guillermo Ortiz, senior advocate for clean vehicles, told CBS in Los Angeles. Matthew Tejada, senior vice president of environmental health and himself a 10-year veteran of the EPA, told the New York Times: “If anybody needed a clearer signal that this administration gives not a damn for the people of the United States, this is it. This doesn’t make America healthier or greater. It makes us sicker, smaller, and uglier than we have been in at least a generation.”

It hardly seemed a coincidence that Zeldin announced his rollback blitz during the same week the oil and gas industry converged in Houston for one of its biggest annual gatherings, dubbed the “Coachella of oil.” As seismic as the administration’s attack on the EPA is, dismantling the agency is but one bullet point in Project 2025, the blueprint for the Trump agenda that was largely bankrolled by Big Oil and other corporate polluters. The barrage of executive orders signed by President Trump since day one follow that playbook to a T: fast-tracking fossil fuel extraction on our public lands and in our oceans; pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement and reversing our climate progress; abandoning

frontline and fence-line communities in their fight for environmental justice; taking aim at the Endangered Species Act and other critical wildlife protections; and more.

The sweep and scale of the assault on so much of our hard-won environmental progress can feel overwhelming, admits NRDC President and CEO Manish Bapna. “We’re as angry and heartsick as anyone. If you care about the health of our planet, about making the earth a better place for our kids, how could you not be?” he says. “But I’ve long believed the antidote to despair is action. And let me tell you—whether we’re talking about the court of law or the court of public opinion—nothing gives me more hope for our movement than to see my colleagues at NRDC fighting for what they believe

in. I hope our Members feel that, too. The headlines have been dire, but when it comes to beating back the Trump agenda, we’re just getting started.”

Just shy of a month after Trump took office, NRDC and our allies filed the first environmental lawsuit against the administration, challenging Trump’s executive order that revokes protections for more than 625 million acres of ocean. The order would open vast areas of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas leasing, including some of the country’s most ecologically sensitive marine environments and important habitats for endangered species, such as the North Atlantic right whale.

NRDC and others successfully challenged a similar order by Trump during his first term. That

suit was but one of scores we filed in response to the anti-environment onslaught of the first Trump administration—more than 160 in fact, an average of one every 10 days. In the cases resolved, we won victories in nearly 90 percent of them.

For Chief Litigation Officer Michael Wall, that remarkable track record remains a source of great pride and a powerful testament to the rule of law, even in the face of an administration so often contemptuous of it. Still, he says, “We can’t take anything for granted. They learned from their past mistakes; they’re determined to make our job harder this time around.” Yet for folks who have found themselves despairing from the dizzying

“During the next four years, there won’t be a single day when NRDC is not in court fighting this disastrous agenda.”

spate of anti-environment executive orders, pronouncements, and rollbacks coming out of the current administration, Wall cautions: “Many of these are nothing more than the president or his appointees giving agencies marching orders—go forth and eliminate pollution regulations, say, or open up our national forests to more commercial logging. When federal agencies try to implement those directives—going through what we call the rulemaking process—that’s when we can sue.” Major battlelines are rapidly being drawn. Wall’s litigation team is keeping an eagle eye on the administration as it tries to dismantle the EPA

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and gut core environmental protections, ready to haul them to court the minute they break the law. Another key battlefront: defending our public lands from Trump’s reckless “drill, baby, drill” agenda. When Trump tried eight years ago to throw open the crown jewel of our wildlife refuges, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to oil and gas leasing, NRDC sued to stop him. That suit was paused after President Biden reversed Trump’s order; now, NRDC stands ready to defend the refuge in court once again. Trump’s executive orders also take aim at the landmark protections NRDC Members helped to win last year for more than 10 million acres of unspoiled wildlife habitat in the Western Arctic. In the Lower 48, NRDC is in court fending off an attempt by anti-conservation forces to abolish two magnificent national monuments in Utah’s redrock wilderness—Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante—that were previously targeted by Trump during his first term and restored by Biden. “A lot is still unfolding,” says Wall. “But what I can say with near certainty is that, during the next four years, there won’t be a single day when NRDC is not in court fighting this disastrous agenda.”

Join NRDC’s rapid-response Action Network to take action against the latest Trump administration attacks and fight back in real time. nrdc.org/join-us TAKE ACTION

Buzzy News for Endangered Bee

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has proposed to designate critical habitat for the rusty patched bumblebee, one of the country’s most endangered pollinators. The proposal includes approximately 1.6 million acres across 33 counties in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. FWS made the proposal in response to a lawsuit filed by NRDC and our allies after the agency originally declined to designate critical habitat for the struggling bees in 2020. That suit was the fourth lawsuit over the

course of a decade aimed at winning life-saving protections for a native bee that has disappeared from nearly 90 percent of its original range.

As Lucas Rhoads, NRDC senior project attorney, notes, this isn’t just a victory for the rusty patched bumblebee; it’s a big win for habitat protections for vulnerable species across the board. “In making its original decision, FWS relied on a number of dangerous assumptions that would have undermined habitat protections under the [Endangered Species Act] for many species. The court’s opinion rejected these assumptions, helping to ensure that the ESA remains one of our most important and effective tools for combating the biodiversity crisis.”

NRDC Moves to Defend Landmark Climate Fund

What has been lauded as a transformative investment in our clean energy future has become a punching bag for the Trump administration, and NRDC is helping lead the fight to defend it. Created as part of the historic climate law passed by Congress in 2022, the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) provides capital for clean energy projects with an emphasis on benefiting disadvantaged communities. What’s more, the fund is designed to catalyze private investment, with every federal dollar delivering an impressive seven additional dollars of private capital. But that hasn’t stopped Trump’s EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, from

U.S. Bans Seafood That Harms Marine Mammals

In a landmark win for whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals, the United States will no longer allow the importation of sea- food that fails to meet strict standards for their protection. The move follows years of NRDC advocacy and comes in response to a lawsuit brought by NRDC and our conservation allies. The ban is set to go into effect January 1, 2026.

Each year more than 650,000 marine mammals are caught and killed in fishing gear around the globe, a tragic fate known as “bycatch” and the leading cause of marine mammal deaths. Federal law has long prohibited the importation of seafood that does not adhere to the same strict standards to reduce bycatch that U.S. fisheries must follow. Yet until now, the National Marine Fisheries Service has declined to implement such a ban. A 2023 report by NRDC and our partners found that 11 major exporters of seafood to the United States failed to meet U.S. bycatch standards in at least some—if not all—of their fisheries.

“Not only does this ban ensure some long-overdue relief for threatened marine mammals suffering from bycatch,” says Zak Smith, director of global biodiversity conservation at NRDC, “it levels the playing field for fishermen working hard to protect marine mammals, and it gives consumers more confidence that the seafood they consume does not needlessly kill the whales and dolphins they love.”

attempting to dismantle the program. As litigation proceeds over Zeldin’s unsubstantiated and unprecedented attack, NRDC has launched the GGRF Defense Hub aimed at supporting the hundreds of stakeholders impacted by the administration’s assault—and at fighting back.

“Congress approved these investments in clean energy to stimulate economic development in all corners of our country,” says Adam Kent, director of blended and inclusive finance at NRDC. “We’re not about to stand by while this administration tries to claw this money back to fund tax cuts for billionaires.”

Surge in Bee Die-Offs Raises Alarm as Evidence Mounts Against Neonics

U.S. beekeepers are ringing alarm bells over what appears to be a dramatic spike in the collapse of honeybee colonies during the past year. As Nature’s Voice goes to press, the extent of the die-offs is still being tallied, but preliminary reports put losses in the range of 60–70 percent, with some beekeepers reporting that all of their colonies collapsed in 2024–25. “What we’re hearing is shocking—shocking even for a crisis that has been unfolding for two decades now,” says Dan Raichel, director of NRDC’s Pollinators & Pesticides program. Beekeepers have routinely experienced annual losses of 30–50 percent over the past 20 years, an already-alarming trend that has caused widespread concern over the security of our food supply. More than three-quarters of crops depend to some extent on pollination, and research shows that production of many key crops is already limited by a lack of bees and other pollinators.

“We’ve seen articles pop up suggesting the bee crisis has been overblown, that in effect, ‘the bees are alright.’ The numbers we’re seeing dramatically underscore that, no, the bees are not alright,” says Raichel. “Beekeepers continue to struggle

mightily to maintain honeybee populations. With colonies weaker than ever, our food system could be one new disease or parasite away from a sudden-onset catastrophe.”

The skyrocketing use of neonics—today the most widely used class of insecticide—has long been identified as a major factor in the collapse of honeybee colonies and the precipitous declines of wild bees and other pollinators.

Dr. Jennifer Sass, NRDC senior scientist, recently coauthored two articles that add to the growing body of evidence linking neonics to risks to

human health as well. Using data obtained from the EPA, Sass and her colleagues found the neurotoxic chemicals were associated with a number of health harms, including significant threats of long-term neurological and developmental damage to children, especially to those exposed in the womb.

“The evidence is clear: these are dangerous chemicals—no matter how the agrochemical industry tries to spin it,” says Sass. “The more we learn about neonics, the more we know we’re doing the right thing in fighting for no-nonsense restrictions on their use.”

Trump’s Attempts to Bring Back Coal Will Fail

By Christy Walsh, Federal Markets Director, Climate & Clean Energy

President Trump is promising to artificially prop up the coal industry. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Trump tried to bail out coal during his first term in office—and failed. Given the realities of the market, whatever he tries to do this time should fail as well. The fact is, the federal government has only a limited and indirect ability to decide what types of electricity will be used; that’s the role of the states. But if Trump’s efforts to revive coal gain traction, it would mean higher bills for customers and more toxic air pollution harming our children’s health. Instead of trying to prop up the fuels of the last century, this administration should be working

to build the grid needed for the 21st century.

To put it mildly, coal is on the decline. Two decades ago, coal powered 50 percent of the U.S. power fleet. Last year, solar and wind power combined to produce more electricity than coal-fired power. Nearly half the coal-fired generation fleet has retired, and the plants that remain are old and past their retirement age.

At this moment when the presidential podium has turned into a bully pulpit for this declining industry, it’s worth remembering: coal is downright dirty. Coal power pollution was responsible for 460,000 deaths between 1999 and 2020. Even after coal plants had

to reduce their pollution in 2007, there have been roughly 70,000 deaths—do we really want to add to this count?

Coal plants have been retiring in record numbers because, in layman’s terms, they’re too expensive to run. Political decisions aren’t changing this; in fact, three of the five years with the highest annual coal plant retirements were in the first Trump administration. If the current administration forces old, expensive coal plants to stay open, it will increase electricity costs for everyday Americans at a time when we simply can’t afford that. The free market is choosing something else: safe, reliable, affordable clean energy.