Our attorneys love the opportunity to get out in the field to visit the species and habitats they work to protect. Last week, Center attorneys Chelsea Stewart-Fusek and Lindsay Reeves toured striped newt habitat and assisted with dip net surveys in the Apalachicola National Forest with species expert Ryan Means of the CoastalPlainsInstitute. Striped newts are pond-breeding amphibians that live in the fire-dependent longleaf pine savannas of Florida and Georgia. While the team didn't find striped newts that day, they did come across several other native species that rely on the same rare habitats, such as the imperiled gopher frog. CoastalPlainsInstitute petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the striped newt under the Endangered Species Act in 2008 and runs a reintroduction program to help declining newt populations in the Apalachicola National Forest. The USFWS, under the first Trump Administration, wrongly denied the striped newt protection under the Endange...