Shell🌴

Respect & SaveOurEarthnOceans 🌊🐳🌏ClimateChangeIsReal | ScienceIsReal | LoVE | DMBFam

[Shell🌴 @EarthnOceans]

We owe the ocean our breath, our climate, and our wonder. Today, I'm just offering my gratitude.

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

🧵 If you found this story useful, let me know by replying to the top post.

And if you think more people should see it, please consider sharing or following.

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

A few thoughts before I end this 🧵

These lands were here before us.

The tortoise, the grizzly, the sage and the stream - they don’t know who signed what or when. They only know whether they’re safe or they’re not.

That has always been on us.

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

The fight 💪 isn't over. Environmental groups are watching the rule-making process closely and will mobilize when public comment opens. Until then here are organizations on the ground protecting what's left:

Defenders of Wildlife - https://t.co/4Ur40qI4Ae
Center for Biological Diversity - https://t.co/vQhUU8gyaR
Backcountry Hunters and Anglers - https://t.co/voAtKpbU3D
Desert Tortoise Council - https://t.co/PdwG2ZcTmv

The land is still there. The animals are still there. And so are the people fighting for them.

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

→ For every vehicle now allowed anywhere on your public lands, see the infographic👇

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

→ "Reckless and nonsensical." That's what wildlife defenders are calling this. The Guardian has the full picture of what's at stake - every species, every ecosystem, every acre. And the quote at the end from the Forest Service will make your blood boil.
https://t.co/AMPuIcwxV9

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

→ Just weeks before Trump signed this order, a federal judge shut down 2,200 miles of off-road trails in the Mojave to save what's left of the desert tortoise. The Spokesman-Review took you into that desert. What they found will stay with you.
https://t.co/YNGIG4Qewd

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

→ Backcountry hunters and anglers are sounding the alarm too - and when the hunting community and environmentalists are saying the same thing, you know something has gone very wrong. Outdoor Life breaks down exactly what was just erased and why it matters to everyone who loves wild places.
https://t.co/xgaJGRdeHa

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

Fifty years of rules keeping off-road vehicles on designated trails — GONE.

Lifted trucks, ATVs, dirt bikes, snowmobiles.

Anywhere they want. On your public lands.

Nixon protected it. Carter protected it. Trump just erased both quietly on a Friday afternoon.

A grizzly bear will abandon its habitat when there's just one mile of road per square mile. One mile. Now there's no limit on where these vehicles can go.

In the Mojave, desert tortoises have already lost 96% of their population in some monitored areas - partly because off-road vehicles crush their burrows. A federal judge just ordered 2,200 miles of trails closed to protect what's left.

Then Trump signed this.

No designated trails. No boundaries. No framework at all. When vehicles go off trail they shatter habitat into pieces too small for wildlife to survive in. They destroy stream banks. They push predators toward humans. And when that happens, the animals always lose.

There was no vote. No public comment. Just a signature.

Now the agencies tasked with writing replacement rules are the BLM, the Forest Service, and the National Park Service - all under an administration that has spent months dismantling every protection they had.

The Interior Department, led by Doug Burgum, is in charge of most of it. The same Doug Burgum who has opened public lands to drilling, mining, and grazing at every turn.

Don't hold your breath.

When the last quiet place is gone, what do we tell the children who never got to hear it?

#DemsUnited

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

Great article about families fighting for their land against Trump’s border wall ripping through Big Bend National Park.

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

These families fight for their homes w/the Big Bend border wall coming for their property. Read ⬇️ for the details.

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

A note about the image below, it’s actually a reflection of Musk’s SpaceX rocket in a puddle followed by a few thoughts weighing on my mind:

This refuge was built for ocelots and falcons and the people whose ancestors walked this corridor long before there was a United States.

Rocket explosions scattered concrete and metal six miles across it, burning nests, destroying eggs. And instead of enforcement, the government handed the land over. When the damage you cause becomes the justification for giving you more, something has gone very wrong. The Lower Rio Grande Valley deserves better than this. So do we.

📸 Reginald Mathalone / Reuters

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

The lawsuit is filed. The fight 💪 is just beginning. If you want to stand with the people on the ground:

Center for Biological Diversity - https://t.co/vQhUU8gyaR
Save RGV - https://t.co/ipaFYofFjM
South Texas Environmental Justice Network - https://t.co/azFjF9U2bJ

The Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation has been protecting this land since time immemorial. They're still here. Still fighting. That matters.

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

→ The actual lawsuit and the FOIA documents showing this deal was fast-tracked while Musk was threatening to fire the very federal workers processing it. The Center for Biological Diversity has the receipts:
https://t.co/8ck2UH8YDL

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

→ Texas Public Radio was on the ground for this one. Scorched bird eggs in empty nests. Indigenous voices. The people who've been fighting this since before most of us heard about it:
https://t.co/LyIp0SVbyC

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

→ The full breakdown of what's in this land swap - the acreage, the wildlife, the 25,000 public comments that got ignored, and who's suing to stop it. Outdoor Life did the math and it doesn't add up:
https://t.co/lkVmIKagoY

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

The U.S. government just made a land deal with the world's first trillionaire. Not a sale. A trade.

Because apparently that's how we do things now.

715 acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge - built by Congress in 1979 to protect one of the most biodiverse wildlife corridors left in North America - handed to SpaceX.

Endangered ocelots. Aplomado falcons. Piping plovers. Land the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas has called sacred since long before there was a United States.

SpaceX built a rocket launch site next door. Then came the explosions. Concrete and metal hurled six miles across refuge land. A 2024 study found that after one launch, every single monitored shorebird nest near the site suffered egg damage or loss. The Fish and Wildlife Service's response was not enforcement. It was a land swap.

FOIA documents show internal planning for this transfer started as early as April 2025 - while Musk was running DOGE and threatening to fire federal workers who didn't justify their jobs to him. The agency developed what they called "the most expedited schedule possible" to get it done.

Part of what's being handed over includes the Palmito Ranch Battlefield - the site of the last battle of the Civil War. A National Historic Landmark. Once transferred, SpaceX can restrict public access whenever they want.

25,000+ people submitted public comments. Most opposed the deal. The government moved forward anyway.

A coalition of tribal and conservation groups filed a federal lawsuit this week to stop it. Because someone has to.

Why are we cutting real estate deals with a trillionaire when we could have just made him pay for it?

#DemsUnited

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

There's a boy in a wheelchair in Nashville whose mother is afraid to go outside. Not because she did something wrong - because she asked for help keeping her son alive, and the state turned that into a paper trail leading straight to ICE. Whatever you believe about immigration policy, there is something deeply broken about a system that looks at a child with spina bifida and sees an enforcement opportunity. These kids didn't choose where they were born. They just want to grow up.

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

The June 30 deadline is two weeks away. Here's what you need to know about the fight 💪 to stop this.

The Tennessee Justice Center is preparing a lawsuit - but they need families willing to come forward as plaintiffs. And here's the gut punch: the families who would qualify are terrified to put their names on anything because doing so could make them an ICE target. If no families come forward, there is no lawsuit. No lawsuit means no injunction. And June 30 hits and these kids lose their care.

This is why YOUR voice matters right now - even if you've never called a rep in your life.

If you live in Tennessee, contact your state legislators directly. Tell them this is not what you want done in your name. It takes five minutes:
https://t.co/au4sO4uQwR

If you live anywhere else - this program receives federal funding. That makes it everyone's business. Call your own U.S. senators and representatives and tell them you're watching:
https://t.co/EO309CQgYo

To support the organizations fighting on the ground:

Tennessee Justice Center - https://t.co/S4KuKU1Ufb
Siloam Health - https://t.co/7H9jJYE33C
Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights - https://t.co/m57EQvgFGo

These organizations are showing up for children that a system just tried to make disappear.

[Shell🌴 @EarthnOceans]

@StoriesBySammi Siloam Health, a nonprofit provider of primary healthcare that primarily serves immigrant families:
“For some of these children, loss of life is not a hyperbolic outcome in this scenario,” she said. 
This is crazy!

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

→ Then the letters actually went out. Pediatricians went on record. Read what a doctor scrambling to find home ventilators for displaced children on two days' notice sounds like. See the actual letter ⬇️
https://t.co/QXY9VUSh31