A Gallery of Wild Places

A federal judge temporarily blocked border-wall construction and other ground-disturbing work in Texas' Big Bend sector. The injunction includes a dispute involving Big Bend National Park and the Rio Grande landscape.

President Trump directed the Interior secretary to determine within 90 days whether gray wolves and Mexican wolves should be downlisted or removed from Endangered Species Act protections. The order does not itself change protections, but a status change could expand lethal removal and encourage states to weaken their own wolf safeguards. Mexican wolves have not met either federal recovery pathway: the U.S. population recently reached 319 wolves but has not sustained the required level, and severe genetic limitations remain unresolved.