Kieran Suckling, Peter Galvin, and Todd Schulke founded the organization in response to what they perceived as a failure on the part of the United States Forest Service to protect imperiled species from logging, grazing, and mining. As surveyors in New Mexico, the three men discovered "a rare Mexican spotted owl nest in an old-growth tree", but their discovery was overshadowed by Forest Service plans to lease the land to timber companies; Suckling, Galvin, and Schulke believed that it was within the Forest Service’s mission to save sensitive species like the Mexican spotted owl from harm, and that the government had not performed its duty in deference to corporate interests. Suckling, Galvin and Schulke went to the media to register their outrage with success: the old-growth tree was allowed to stand, and this success led to the founding of the Center for Biological Diversity.