On November 19th, the Trump administration proposed four new rules to the Endangered Species Act, eliminating the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s “blanket rule” that automatically protects animals and plants when they are classified as threatened. This is not the first time the Trump administration has tried to weaken the law. According to NBC News, the proposal was made in an attempt to restore changes that were made during the president’s first term that were later blocked by a federal judge. It was also an attempt to reinstate some of the policies that weakened the act that had been reversed by the Biden Administration.
The four new rules proposed will limit protections for animals that had been made under the Endangered Species Act, and according to the NY Times, “could clear the way for more oil drilling, logging and mining in critical habitats for endangered species across the country.” While representative groups from the oil and gas industry have been said to praise the proposals, the environmental impact of the change to the Endangered Species Act could be detrimental to certain endangered species.
The rollback of some of the protections provided by the Endangered Species Act has raised concerns among environmental groups, who have been trying to warn lawmakers that weakening habitat safeguards could put more species at risk of extinction. NBC News states that “in practice, that could lead to species being listed as endangered while allowing practices that further threaten their survival to continue.”
Environmentalists warn that if these proposals move forward into law the nation could see a rapid decline in those endangered species, whose survival is already unsteady, yet protected. With the legal implications of these changes still uncertain, the fight over the Endangered Species Act may in the future become an extremely important environmental conflict.
