In response to a scientific petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity in November, the federal government announced today that Alaska’s Iliamna Lake seals may need protection under the Endangered Species Act. They are threatened by the development of the proposed Pebble mine as well as by climate change. The National Marine Fisheries Service will now launch a year-long status review of the freshwater seals.

Conservation groups filed a lawsuit today challenging a California Department of Transportation highway-widening project that threatens ancient redwoods, endangered salmon runs and public safety along the wild and scenic Smith River Canyon in remote Del Norte County. Caltrans approved a project to widen existing narrow sections of highways 197 and 199 to provide access for oversized trucks, without adequate environmental review of the impacts under the California Environmental Quality Act.

The federal agency that oversees offshore drilling is finally going to analyze the effects that intense, underwater seismic blasts have on whales and dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico. In a notice published today, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced that it will evaluate the effects of seismic surveys used to detect oil under the seabed in an environmental impact statement.

The leaders of six of the nation’s most prominent conservation groups today called on the U.S. Department of the Interior to cancel plans by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove federal Endangered Species Act protections for wolves across nearly the entire lower-48 states, stating the plan would be disastrous for gray wolf recovery in the United States.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service revised its proposed listing rule today for the lesser prairie chicken — a rare grouse — to include a special rule that would weaken protections for the bird once it is listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The prairie chicken was proposed for Endangered Species Act protection in December, but under a special rule added to the proposal today, habitat-destroying activities would be allowed to continue in the bird’s range.

Endangered loggerhead sea turtles won a federal commitment to protect critical nesting-beach and ocean habitat in a legal settlement filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court between conservation groups Center for Biological Diversity, Oceana and Turtle Island Restoration Network and the U.S. government.