We’re living with an Administration that sees National Forests and other public lands as places to plunder. It wants to Chop, baby chop; Drill, baby drill; and Dig, baby dig to look powerful and get rich.
Rest assured, Friends of Animals will never stop pushing back against dangerous rollbacks of laws and policies to protect wildlife and our environment. We’re seeing alarming rollbacks of key environmental protections—threatening endangered species, accelerating the climate crisis, and undermining decades of progress.
In the last 15 months, we’ve taken a leading role, submitting nearly 40 formal comments to federal agencies to defend wildlife, uphold environmental laws, and oppose dangerous policy changes. These actions are about more than just making our voices heard. Submitting well-founded, science-backed comments establishes a legal record, which is essential for holding agencies accountable in court when they ignore the law or the facts.
Some of the things we’ve pushed back against:
• Efforts to weaken critical protections such as the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and the Clean Air Act.
• Friends of Animals formally opposed the current administration’s proposal to rescind the definition of “harm” under the ESA—a move that would gut protections for species whose habitats are being destroyed. We made it clear: destruction of habitat that wildlife depends on is harm.
• We opposed the Bureau of Land Management’s plan to fell Oregon’s last great forests, the home that the northern spotted owl and other vulnerable species need to survive! Not to mention any sane person knows trees are worth more standing. FoA has been in court trying to protect barred owls since the summer of 2013 when U.S. Fish and Wildlife started shooting barred owls as part of an “experiment” to save northern spotted owls. Then in 2024, the agency approved a senseless plan that allows the mass slaughter of 450,000 barred owls over the next 30 years in California, Washington and Oregon, again to protect northern spotted owls, and FoA filed a lawsuit to stop it.
• We also opposed the EPA’s politically driven proposal to stop regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, a rollback that flies in the face of both scientific consensus and the urgency of the climate crisis, which is already pushing species toward extinction worldwide.
• We submitted comments opposing the administration’s efforts to gut NEPA, emphasizing that public input and thorough environmental analysis in all major federal actions are essential. These processes often lead to more informed decisions and better outcomes for animals, habitats, and ecosystems.
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