; 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 means more than 1 in 4 birds that have disappeared from the landscape in a mere half a century, and in that same time frame, 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; Whereas the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that climate change has caused local species losses, increases in disease, and mass mortality events of plants and animals, resulting in the first climate-driven extinctions, ecosystem restructuring, increases in areas burned by wildfire, and declines in key ecosystem services; Whereas the planet is experiencing a biodiversity crisis, which many scientists conclude is the sixth mass extinction event, with plant and wildlife species across the globe facing heightened risk of extinction that is largely driven by human activity