Biden-Harris conservation funding is empowering the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to help endangered species recover.
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Reasons For Hope
Pictured above: USFWS images of the ohia lehua plant, the Quino checkerspot butterfly, Texas hornshell mussels, and Apache trout.
You probably know that the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August 2022 thanks to the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris, has supercharged an unprecedented clean energy and manufacturing boom across America. It’s not as well known that the IRA was also one of the biggest investments in wildlife conservation in American history, directly appropriating $250 million in new funding for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service projects focused on climate resilience and endangered species recovery.
On the IRA’s second anniversary in August 2024, the USFWS received $20 million of that funding to support conservation in four focus areas among America’s biodiverse treasures: Southwest desert fish, freshwater mussels, butterflies and moths, and Hawaiian and Pacific Island plants.
“Today we celebrate the second anniversary of the Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and its historic investments to recover our nation's threatened and endangered species.
This funding allows the Service to focus on recovering special species like Hawaiian and Pacific Island plants, butterflies, moths, freshwater mussels and southwest desert fish and helping clean water, pollination and communities at the same time.”
-Martha Williams, Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Saving each of these endangered species groups brings profound “ripple effects” helping sustain America’s ecosystems and communities in the age of climate change.
Hawaiian native plants are unique biological marvels, often with rich cultural importance. The new funding will empower the USFWS to find new, more climate-resilient spots to translocate 425 Hawaiian native plants, helping them survive changing conditions.
Butterflies and moths can be vital pollinators, for both wild plants and some agricultural crops like cotton. The new funding will support USFWS work already saving butterfly species from extinction.
Freshwater mussels, in addition to their fascinating life cycle (the larvae live inside fish gills!), play a vital role in rivers across America as superb water purifiers, filtering out sediment, cycling nutrients, and ensuring good water quality for the whole ecosystem. The USFWS is developing mussel hatcheries to ensure their future.
And Southwest desert fish serve as “indicator species” for fragile waterways vulnerable to drought, while conservation efforts like monitoring water quality provide valuable information for the ecosystem as a whole.
These projects aren’t very well-known, but they’re important, and legislators should know that their constituents care about them.
Wonderful news! So lovely to have hope rise again. Thank you to Joe and Kamala and their amazing team. Let’s show them we appreciate their work for our home !