Standing Up for Endangered Species—and the Endangered Species Act

NWF President & CEO Collin O’Mara weighs in on longstanding conservation protections recently challenged by the ‘God Squad’ and federal agencies

By Collin O’Mara
NWF News
Sep 23, 2026

Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, listed as endangered since 1970, nest along the Gulf.

EXTINCTION IS FOREVER. Once a species is gone, there is no undoing its loss.

This simple, sobering truth has inspired millions of Americans to stand up for wildlife and demand our leaders do the same. It’s the reason many majestic species still roam freely across our lands and swim off our shores.

Thanks to the modern conservation movement, our leaders created bedrock Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections that have saved scores of imperiled species on the brink of extinction. Today we are entering a new era of collaborative, proactive species recovery, which will be catalyzed by the bipartisan Recovering America’s Wildlife Act and will provide critically needed resources for states, Tribes and territories.

But conservation is not inevitable. Nor is the security of our wildlife permanent.

More than half a century ago, Congress came together with overwhelming bipartisan support to pass the ESA. An emergency room for species at extreme risk, the ESA has protected thousands of species and remains the most effective biodiversity conservation law in the world.

Recent regulatory actions, however, severely threaten this hard-fought progress on multiple fronts. First, the Endangered Species Committee, often dubbed the “God Squad,” convened for the first time in decades to broadly exempt offshore oil and gas development across the Gulf Coast under the guise of national security, bypassing commonsense protections for imperiled species including Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, manatees and the fewer than 100 remaining Rice’s whales.

Second, federal agencies have finalized rules to rescind the ESA’s regulatory definition of “harm,” to strip away protections against indirect habitat destruction and effectively to green-light unchecked development.

Most recently, multiple proposals would strip away vital protections for wetlands, the very ecosystems that sustain hundreds of aquatic species and birds.

We are working closely with the National Wildlife Federation’s state and territorial affiliates and conservation partners to push back aggressively and unequivocally on all of these fronts to defend wildlife. These damaging rollbacks perpetuate a false choice between wildlife and the economy, when in fact economic development and wildlife often can coexist harmoniously. We work diligently to ensure strict safeguards are in place to guarantee that operations, from traditional energy to offshore wind, minimize impacts on fragile ecosystems.

Wildlife deserve better than administrative shortcuts that needlessly jeopardize their survival. Extinction in the name of expediency is a price we cannot afford to pay—and one future generations must not inherit. Thank you for continuing to support our essential wildlife work across the country and in Washington, D.C. Together, we will ensure that “forever” stays exactly that.