Center for Biological Diversity

The Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson, Arizona, is a nonprofit membership organization with approximately 1.1 million members and online activists, known for its work protecting endangered species through legal action, scientific petitions, creative media and grassroots activism. It was founded in 1989 by Kieran Suckling, Peter Galvin, Todd Schulke and Robin Silver. The Center has offices and staff in New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota, Alaska, Vermont, Florida and Washington, D.C. Given a small grant by the Fund for Wild Nature, the organization started in 1989 as a small group by the name of Greater Gila Biodiversity Project, with the objective to protect endangered species and critical habitat in the southwest. The organization later grew and became the Center for Biological Diversity. Kieran Suckling, Peter Galvin, and Todd Schulke founded the organization in response to what they perceived as a failure on the part of the United States Forest Service to protect imperiled species from logging, grazing, and mining. As surveyors in New Mexico, the three men discovered "a rare Mexican spotted owl nest in an old-growth tree",] but their discovery was overshadowed by Forest Service plans to lease the land to timber companies; Suckling, Galvin, and Schulke believed that it was within the Forest Service’s mission to save sensitive species like the Mexican Spotted Owl from harm, and that the government had not performed its duty in deference to corporate interests.
Category:Organizations