From Hawaii to Washington D.C., Americans today are celebrating the sixth annual Endangered Species Day and the 40th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act. The Act is one of the world’s most successful environmental laws, preventing extinction for 99 percent of the animals and plants under its care and putting hundreds on the road to recovery.

Conservationists went before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today, in a lawsuit filed by Earthjustice challenging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) initial management plan for the Vermilion Cliffs and Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monuments.

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.