The Trump administration took steps Wednesday to weaken popular support. Endangered Species Act in an attempt to restore changes made during the President's first term that were later blocked by a federal judge.
The proposed changes include eliminating the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's “blanket rule” that automatically protects animals and plants when they are classified as endangered. Instead, government agencies will have to develop species-specific protection rules, a potentially lengthy process.
The administration's announcement comes in response to long-standing calls for an overhaul of the 1973 Endangered Species Act from Republicans in Congress and a variety of industries, including oil and gas, mining and agriculture. Critics argue that the law is applied too broadly to the detriment of economic growth.
But environmentalists have warned the changes could lead to years of delays in efforts to save species such as monarch butterfly, Florida manatee, California spotted owl and North American wolverine.
“They're trying to take us back to when they first weakened the law,” said Rebecca Riley, managing director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We fought it, and the Biden administration has reversed many of the worst changes it made and is going to put them back in place.”
Scientists and government agencies they say extinctions have accelerated worldwide due to habitat loss and other pressures. Previous proposals will be revised during Trump's second term definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act and potentially bypass species protections to registration of projects in national forests and on public lands.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement that the administration is restoring the original purpose of the Endangered Species Act while respecting “the livelihoods of Americans who depend on our land and resources.”
“These amendments end years of legal confusion and regulatory abuse, providing certainty to states, tribes, landowners and businesses while ensuring that conservation efforts remain grounded in sound science and common sense,” he said.
Another change proposed Wednesday would direct officials to weigh possible economic impacts when deciding what habitat is critical to a species' survival, something environmental groups say is expressly prohibited by the 1973 law.
In practice, this could result in species being listed as endangered while allowing practices that further threaten their survival to continue.
“The Trump administration is trying to add this, let's say you protect the spotted owl – how much is that going to cost? They're trying to force it to take into account something that up to this point hasn't been part of decisions to protect critical habitat species,” said Noah Greenwald, co-director of the endangered species program at the Center for Biological Diversity.
The case of the Milfoil spiny lizard in the Southwest illustrates the potential consequences of the administration's proposals. Rapidly rising temperatures have devastated the lizard population in Arizona's Mule Mountains, pushing the reptiles further up the mountain slopes to the highest peaks and possibly extinction.
The petition, filed Wednesday, seeks protection for the lizard and designation of critical habitat. Advocates say economic impact analyzes could delay protections. Designating critical habitat could be another hurdle, as the main threat to this population of spiny lizards is climate change.
“We think this species should be listed as endangered. We're actually kind of shocked that it's not already extinct,” said John Vince, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who co-authored the petition.
In March, the Property and Environmental Research Center (PERC) and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation sued the Department of the Interior over the blanket protection rule. Both groups argued that the rule is illegal and that it discourages states and landowners from helping with species recovery efforts.
Species designated as “threatened” under the general rule are automatically entitled to the same protections as species assigned the more stringent “threatened” designation. This can lead landowners to become indifferent to the plight of the species because even if they work to downgrade the species' endangered status to critically endangered, the easing of government restrictions may not occur.
PERC Vice President Jonathan Wood said Wednesday's proposal was a “necessary course correction” following the Biden administration's actions.
“This reform recognizes the illegality of the blanket rule and puts recovery back at the core of the Endangered Species Act,” Wood said.
Trump officials during his first term also rolled back protections for certain species, including northern spotted owl And gray wolf.
The spotted owl decision was reversed in 2021 after officials said Trump political appointees used faulty science to justify opening millions of acres of West Coast forest to potential logging. Protection of wolves throughout much of the United States has been reinstated by federal court in 2022.
The fifty-year-old Endangered Species Act remains widely popular. A survey overview this year it was found that 84% of Americans support protecting the law.
