; Whereas the Endangered Species Act provides added benefits to people by maintaining healthy natural systems that provide us with clean air and water, food, medicines, and other benefits that we all need to live healthy lives; Whereas the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services published a study in 2019 that estimated 25 percent of assessed taxa of plants and animals and 10 percent of insects, which account for 75 percent of all species, could be threatened with extinction; Whereas, globally, 1,000,000 animal and plant species face extinction within the coming decades, and millions more are declining as habitat loss, climate change, wildlife exploitation, pollution, and other human activities continue to threaten their survival; Whereas North America alone has lost nearly 3,000,000,000 birds since 1970, which is more than 1 in 4 birds that have disappeared from the landscape in a mere half a century, and in that same timeframe, global wildlife populations have declined by an average of 69 percent; Whereas, in the United States, nearly half of all ecosystems are at risk of range-wide collapse; Whereas, as of October 2023, a total of 2,363 species of animals and plants were listed as either endangered or threatened, and 1,668 of all listed species occur in the United States and its territories, and the remainder (695 species) occur solely in other countries; Whereas the unraveling of the natural world remains a fundamental threat to the well-being of all humanity, which depends on millions of species and the countless services that the web of life provides, and each extinction brings closer the collapse of these planetary life-support systems, including carbon sequestration, pollination, water purification, oxygen production, and disease regulation