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Lyle Lewis

@race2extinct.bsky.social
4.7K followers 1.8K following 7.2K posts

Former U.S. Fish & Wildlife endangered species branch chief with more than three decades of experience in wildlife conservation and ecological policy. substack.com/@lylelewis1?r=3fnb3k&u…

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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
“Utilizing Landscape Restoration to Build Sustainable Socio-Ecological Systems.” Somewhere along the way, conservation stopped being about protecting wild places and became a competition to see who could say almost nothing while sounding extraordinarily important.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Colorado’s wolf population has “stalled” at 45. Colorado is roughly 104,000 square miles. That works out to about one wolf for every 2,300 square miles. And we’re already debating how many of them need to be killed.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
People often underestimate the oversized role predators play in ecosystems. New essay Sunday: How Mountain Lions Destroyed the West
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The story of how a common animal disappeared without notice. Substack essay this evening: The Quiet Disappearance of Porcupines
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
More than 1,500 idle ships may soon carry marine species from the Persian Gulf to ports around the world. By land and sea, humans have become the planet’s great dispersal mechanism—spinning ecological roulette wherever we go. insideclimatenews.or...
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
While conservation waits for the perfect lawsuit, destruction proceeds without delay. New essay: Waiting for the Perfect Environmental Lawsuit — Sunday
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
The American West isn’t just managed by ecology and politics. It’s also managed by mythology. New essay: Myth and Mirrors — Sunday.
Wild horses on western rangelands.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Some people take “reconnecting with nature” a little too literally.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Shifting environmental baseline on steroids. Here is the difference between the “recovered” forest and the original forest.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
This administration has reduced the role of the US Fish and Wildlife Service to Pictionary status.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
This badger wasn’t photographed in a zoo or a wildlife refuge. It was photographed earlier this month in the Trout Creek Mountains of Oregon. This is also the landscape being considered for a new lithium mine. Every mine begins as someone else’s habitat.
Young badger in the Trout Creek Mountains of Oregon.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Imagine an animal the size of a black bear living in wetlands from Alaska to the Gulf Coast for tens of thousands of years. Now imagine that animal disappears. What happens next? New essay Sunday.
Wetland landscapes similar to those once occupied by giant beavers across North America.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Heavy trucks are tire-wear machines. Studies in some countries find trucks and buses generate more than half of all road-transport tire wear despite being a minority of vehicles. One of the largest sources of microplastics isn’t packaging. It’s transportation.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
It’s hard to argue with this kind of logic.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
This is not dust. It is centuries of accumulated fertility leaving a field in a single afternoon.
Agricultural field near Burns, Oregon during high wind conditions.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
This is what fire-proofing looks like in many places now. Remove the forest. Leave the trees. And pretend the system is still intact.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
We talk about a water crisis while ignoring livestock overgrazing—the process that strips soil cover and turns infiltration into runoff. It’s like worrying about your health while smoking and living on fast food. The problem isn’t just water. It’s how we’re managing land.
Cattle grazing near the lakeshore of Pyramid Lake, Nevada.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Typical large wind turbine foundation: • 1,000–2,500 tons of concrete • 30–60 ft diameter • 10–30 ft deep Concrete accounts for ~8% of global CO₂ emissions. It persists for centuries. It may be the most environmentally consequential material humans have ever invented.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
:) You just can’t make this up. I almost didn’t need to do anything but quote and voila……satire.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
This essay was inspired by Katherine Hayhoe and her podcast guest last Fall.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
😊
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Yesterday, I posted satire about the “God Squad.” Today, it isn’t satire. A federal panel has voted to exempt oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico—home to the last ~50 Rice’s whales. This committee exists to decide when extinction is acceptable.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
For the past several days I’ve introduced species that have spent years “getting in the way.” Today the God Squad meets. The Endangered Species Act protects species from extinction. The God Squad exists for the moments when we decide not to.
Cladonia perforata, Martin County, Florida 7

This lichen is the Florida Perforate Cladonia. It is one of two Federally Endangered lichens in the U.S.

Photo credit: Alan Cressler
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
Rice’s Whale — another potential candidate for the God Squad. It lives only in the Gulf of Mexico. Fewer than 100 may remain. The God Squad meets tomorrow to consider exemptions for offshore drilling in the same waters.
Credit: NOAA Fisheries
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
Red-cockaded Woodpecker — another potential candidate for the God Squad. It depends on old longleaf pine forests in the Southeast. Those forests once covered tens of millions of acres. Most are gone.
Photo credit: Renee Bodine / USFWS
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Florida Panther — another potential candidate for the God Squad. It survives in a shrinking corner of south Florida. The problem isn’t the panther. The problem is that millions of people also want to live there.
Photo: Larry Richardson / USFWS
Location: Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Desert Tortoise — another potential candidate for the God Squad. It lives in the Mojave Desert, where solar projects, transmission lines, and development are expanding rapidly. The future is green. The tortoise is not so sure.
Photo credit: Brad Weaver
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Delta Smelt — another potential candidate for the God Squad. This small fish lives in California’s Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. For years it’s been blamed for water shortages. The real problem is that we promised more water than the rivers can provide.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Northern Spotted Owl — another potential candidate for the God Squad. It became the symbol of the old-growth logging wars in the Pacific Northwest. But the owl didn’t stop logging. It revealed how little old forest remained.
Northern spotted owl
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
The Greater Sage Grouse—another God Squad nominee. In the 1990s states formed working groups to keep it from declining to the point it needed listing. I hired a Nevada biologist in 2000 who had been on one. That was 25 years ago.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
The Lesser Prairie Chicken—another potential God Squad nominee. When I worked at U.S. Fish & Wildlife it was a candidate species. Conservation agreements were supposed to protect it so listing wouldn’t be necessary. That was decades ago.
Photo: Greg Kramos / USFWS
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard—a potential God Squad nominee. It lives in the Permian Basin sand dunes — one of the most productive oil regions on Earth. I worked on this species years ago at U.S. Fish & Wildlife. Conservation agreements were supposed to protect it. A few decades later, here we are.
Sand dunes lizard in shinnery oak dunes habitat.
Photo: Ryan Hagerty / USFWS
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
One of the largest industrial systems on Earth operates almost entirely outside environmental accounting: the global military. War is not only a humanitarian catastrophe. It is an ecological one.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
War is usually measured in lives lost and cities destroyed. Rarely in forests burned, soils contaminated, rivers poisoned, and wildlife displaced. But the biosphere pays a price for every conflict.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
In 1981 the federal grazing fee was $2.31. In 2026 it was raised… to $1.69. During that same time: • U.S. home prices rose ~6× • Gas prices nearly tripled • Household income more than tripled A subsidy hiding in plain sight.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
Wildlife policy has entered a strange phase where killing is marketed as education, profit is framed as stewardship, and eradication is sold as management. Wolves are a complex part of functioning ecosystems being turned into a revenue stream. This isn’t conservation. It’s commodification.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
NYT: These Four States Are in Denial Over a Looming Water Crisis Reality: These six continents are in denial over a looming biosphere collapse.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
Your Bible verse for the day. 🫤 Mission Accomplished!
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
A 4000+ year old Mediterranean cypress It survived in spite of us, not because of us. It endures alone, but no longer functions.
A Mediterranean cypress in Iran that is over 4000 years old.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
If ~84% of wildfires are started by humans, why do wildfire “solutions” keep focusing on forests instead of people? Because blaming forests is a political winner. Managing human behavior is not.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
I’ve spent decades in ecosystems labeled “sustainably managed.” There was none that weren’t deteriorating.
Recently logged area along the Oregon coast.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
In a moment of compassion, my doctor gave me this pamphlet.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
The problem wasn’t the trees. It was the idea that an ecosystem is something you can mass-produce. Billions of planted conifers can dry soils, lower water tables, and shift rainfall. Green doesn’t always mean alive.
These are deciduous conifers — likely larch or dawn redwood — planted at massive scale in China.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Ground sloths: not an Ice Age curiosity; a missing force in vanished ecosystems. I’ll share an article this Saturday.
Close-up of a fossilized ground sloth claw; thick, deeply curved, and massive; illustrating the scale and strength of an extinct Ice Age herbivore that once reshaped entire ecosystems.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
AI isn’t being built to fix ecological problems. It’s being built for convenience, speed, and entertainment. The energy use is a feature, not a bug. The problem isn’t AI. It’s wanting more of everything on a finite planet.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
Ecosystem collapse doesn’t always start with extinction. It often starts with timing failure. Flowering, pollination, migration, dormancy; increasingly out of sync. Systems can look intact long after they’ve stopped functioning.
Bee pollinating a flower.
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
The best Christmas decorations are the ones that don’t need to be taken down: Golden-crowned kinglet, high-elevation forest. Merry Christmas! 🎄
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Lyle Lewis @race2extinct.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
The fossil record preserves bones, not biodiversity. But extinction happens at the scale of bacteria, fungi, mosses, microfauna, parasites, soil invertebrates. Entire kingdoms of life disappear without leaving a mark.
Two species of fungi peeking through pine needles.
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