The Trump Administration is rolling out changes to the Endangered Species Act that critics argue will make the law borderline useless in protecting vulnerable species.
The changes concern the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issuing a new rule on how to implement the Endangered Species Act, specifically redefining the Act’s definition of harm. In 1975, the FWS expanded the definition of “harm” from direct harm to include environmental degradation, arguing that Congress, in the Purposes section of the Endangered Species Act, asked to “provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered and threatened species depend may be conserved.”
The new update from the Forest and Wildlife Service fully rescinds the 1975 amendment to the definition of “harm,” instead basing regulations on the threats to endangered species on a definition of the word “take” in the 1933 version of the Endangered Species Act that means “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.”
Secretary of State Doug Burgum supported the change by arguing the definition of “harm” in the Endangered Species Act was “weaponized to stop almost any new project in America,” including projects that would allegedly inflate costs for families, undercut American technology development, and sabotage national security. President Donald Trump went a step further on his social media platform Truth Social and claimed “Radical Climate Activists” held the U.S. “hostage.”
The move marks a trend of the Trump administration opening areas like the Gulf of Mexico, nationally protected forests, and national monuments to increased human development.
Despite the Trump administration’s rhetoric, the consensus of international organizations is that habitat destruction contributes significantly to species threats, either as the single greatest threat to biodiversity in the world or as an important component in a deluge of other extinction pressures.
Wildlife advocates widely criticized the Trump administration’s move. Director of research for the Wilderness Society, Mariah Meek, bluntly called the rule change “Gutting the Endangered Species Act.” Arlene Montgomery, director of Friends of the Wild Swan, said, “It’s a dangerous precedent when the government thinks that they can just change a regulation that’s implementing an act without changing the act.”
In a press release following the approval of the new rules, Earthjustice Attorney Kristen Boyles said that habitat modification usually means destroying habitats where species “…live, raise their young, or search for food.” The press release also cites criticisms from U.S. Senators, scientists, a group of 25 lawyers, and a group of 131 environmental organizations, all calling for the restoration of the previous rules under the Endangered Species Act.
Earthjustice also announced it would file a lawsuit on behalf of Sierra Club, WildEarth Guardians, National Parks Conservation Association, Conservation Council for Hawai’i, and Humane World for Animals.
The Swinomish and Squaxin Island Tribes of Washington state separately filed another lawsuit against the rule change. In the tribes’ press release announcing their lawsuit, Swinomish chairman Steve Edwards argued that the habitat modification permitted by the rule change will make the tribes unable to protect habitat of ESA-protected Chinook Salmon that comprise “a pillar of our Treaty rights and our cultural lifeways.”
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