The Endangered Species Act has been federal law since 1973. It has legal deadlines. It has mandatory processes. And right now, the administration is not following them.

In Trump's second term, zero species have been added to the ESA's protected list. Not one. In his first term, which already held the record for the fewest listings of any administration since the Act was passed, 22 species were added. The current number is zero. Meanwhile, roughly 400 species are sitting in a federal backlog, waiting for a listing decision that the law requires but that the agency is not making.

Some of those 400 species will not survive the wait.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the Act, has seen a 20% drop in staff under Trump alongside significant funding cuts. The Center for Biological Diversity is currently involved in multiple lawsuits challenging the administration's attempts to circumvent the Act, including its pattern of missing legally mandated deadlines for considering and listing species. Those deadlines are not suggestions. They are legal requirements, and missing them is not a policy preference. It is a failure to follow the law.

The Endangered Species Act is one of the most successful conservation laws in American history. Ninety-nine percent of species listed under it have avoided extinction. The bald eagle. The American alligator. The gray wolf. The humpback whale. These are species that exist today because the law worked. They are species that would not exist today if the current approach had been applied in the decades when their survival hung in the balance.

There are 400 species in that balance right now. They are plants and animals whose populations have declined to the point where federal scientists have determined they need review. They are waiting in a queue that grows longer as staff are cut and budgets are reduced and deadlines pass without action. And every day they wait without the legal protections the Act was designed to provide is a day their populations can shrink further, their habitats can be destroyed, and the window for recovery can narrow toward closing.

This is not an accident. It is the predictable result of cutting the agency responsible for implementing the law by 20 percent while simultaneously allowing its legal deadlines to lapse. Congress funded the ESA. Congress passed the ESA. Congress has both the authority and the obligation to demand that it be enforced.

Sign this petition to demand Congress restore U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staffing and funding to levels sufficient to fulfill its legal mandates, require the FWS to clear the 400-species listing backlog within a defined timeline, and establish independent oversight of ESA listing decisions to ensure they are made on scientific grounds rather than political ones.