Trump Administration's Proposed Changes To Endangered Species Act Draw Criticism

The Trump administration has proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act that could greatly limit landscapes that could help species avoid extinction/NPS file

Against projections that tens of thousands of species globally are at risk of extinction, the Trump administration on Friday proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act that critics say would lessen protections for the very species that need them.

In the proposed rule released Friday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal agencies are "defining" what critical habitat is for an ESA listed species. Under that proposed definition, only areas physically occupied by a threatened or endangered species would be considered critical habitat.

Outside of those areas, what constitutes critical habitat would be left to the Interior secretary to determine.

The Trump administration a year ago signaled that it would try to tinker with the ESA.

Across the National Park System the plan to revise how critical habitat for threatened and endangered species is determined and to lessen protections for threatened species under the act stands to impact migratory species as well as those species that need ESA protections to prevent them from sliding to "endangered" from "threatened" status.

"The regulations impose a heightened standard for unoccupied areas to be designated as critical habitat," an Interior Department release said last August.

Species that rely on habitat in and around national parks that could be impacted range from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bears, which last year regained threatened status after a federal judge said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service erred in delisting the bears, to Kemp's ridley sea turtles, the smallest of sea turtles and which are considered critically endangered.

The surfacing of the proposed rule (attached below) to make those changes drew quick condemnation from conservation and environmental organizations.

"The draft regulation released today cuts at the very purpose of this bedrock law by potentially limiting the conservation of critical habitat for imperiled plants, fish and wildlife," said Bart Melton, wildlife program director for the National Parks Conservation Association. 

"More than 600 threatened and endangered species call America’s national parks home, and parks are many times at the core of designated critical habitat areas," added Melton. "Critical habitat designations support a broad range of species, including the piping plover at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog at Yosemite and the Canada lynx at Grand Teton. Amid the climate crisis and accelerated extinction rates of species worldwide, the administration is proposing to limit the protection of habitat that is vital to America’s wildlife. NPCA urges the administration to abandon today’s proposed action and instead, invest in collaborative conservation of critical habitat for America’s most imperiled species.”

Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, said the proposed definition for critical habitat "is inadequate to meet the intent of the Endangered Species Act, which recognizes that areas beyond those that are currently occupied may need to be protected to recover species. Restricting habitat to areas with existing attributes a species needs would exclude areas that would be suitable with minimal restoration or those areas that may be needed to recover species in the age of climate change.”

In Congress, U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, said the proposed rule, if in place 50 years ago, would have kept the bald eagle "at death’s door in perpetuity, limited to a few square miles here and there."

"If this administration can’t tell the difference between where an endangered species lives today and where it would live if it were no longer endangered, it has no business rewriting this or any other law," said Grijalva. "President Trump is trying to kill the Endangered Species Act with a thousand cuts, and all the benefits are going to those who profit from the death of endangered species.”

Staff at the Center For Biological Diversity pointed to flaws with the proposed definitions, noting that left in limbo and reliant on an Interior secretary's determination would be "areas that could be restored or safeguarded to provide additional habitat for future recovery."

As drafted, the definitions would "preclude protecting habitat that had been historically used by a species as well as habitat that could be important as species move in response to threats such as climate change."

“If endangered species are going to recover, we have to protect and restore places they used to live," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the center.

According to the center, the proposed definitions would "preclude protecting places plants and animals will need as their habitat moves in response to climate change. The eastern black rail, for example, is proposed for threatened status and lives in coastal wetlands that are likely to be flooded by climate change-driven sea-level rise. This rule will preclude designating and protecting inland areas the rail will need in the future."