The U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of the strongest laws in the world for protecting imperiled species - in large part because it gives expert agencies the authority to review federal actions and make sure they do not increase the risk of extinction for listed species. Unfortunately, opponents of environmental protection regularly propose measures that would weaken this process under the guise of making the ESA “more efficient.” These proposals could have disastrous consequences for endangered species, and now we’ve released new research in Nature Communications that provides the first evidence of just how important this program is to protect imperiled species. Read more about it here.