Today marks the 50th anniversary of the US Endangered Species Act, a critical law that has not only prevented the extinction of wildlife species on the brink but continues to help combat the climate crisis. Biodiversity plays a critical role in keeping our planet’s ecosystems healthy, including forests, mangroves and grasslands that store huge amounts of carbon. Restoring even a small, targeted group of wildlife species known as ecosystem engineers—because they help maintain functioning landscapes—would help ensure we keep the global rising temperature below the 1.5-degree Celsius tipping point. Like the United States, many countries have their own science-based list of threatened species that are in need of conservation action. The world’s authority on threatened species—the IUCN SSC Red List of Threatened Species—assesses the global extinction risk for animals, plants, and fungi so that conservationists, governments, and other stakeholders can develop plans to protect threatened ...