Happy 50th anniversary to the US Endangered Species Act next week! This critical law has not only prevented the extinction of wildlife species on the brink, but it continues to help combat the climate crisis. How? Biodiversity plays a critical role in keeping our planet’s ecosystems healthy, including forests, mangroves and grasslands that store huge amounts of carbon. In fact, we know that restoring even a small, targeted group of wildlife 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. By protecting and restoring wildlife and their habitats we address biodiversity loss and climate change simultaneously in a one-two punch for planetary health. 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 Threat...