Trump administration regulations that both reduced the amount of habitat that could be protected for threatened and endangered species and which allowed for economics to come into play when decisions are made for Endangered Species Act determinations will be rescinded by the Biden administration.
Last year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service redefined "critical habitat" for a species as only areas physically occupied by a threatened or endangered species. Outside of those areas, what constitutes critical habitat would be left to the Interior secretary to determine. The Trump administration also directed federal agencies such as the Fish and Wildlife Service to take into account economic impacts resulting from the designation of critical habitat before making such a designation.
On Tuesday the Biden administration signaled that it would revoke those regulations.
“We’re relieved that the Biden administration has taken this important step toward restoring critical protections for imperiled species,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s just no way to save animals and plants from extinction without safeguarding the places they need to live.”
According to the organization, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service have said they would rescind a third rule, which removed automatic protections for wildlife newly designated as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
“These rules were blatantly reckless and anti-wildlife,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife. “Amid a biodiversity and climate crisis, it’s frustrating that so much time has to be spent undoing the former administration’s damage. But this was time well spent, and we thank the Biden administration for these important actions.”
Across the National Park System, the plan to revise how critical habitat for threatened and endangered species is determined and to lessen protections for 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.
Species that rely on habitat in and around national parks that could be impacted range from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bears, which in 2019 regained threatened status after a federal judge said the 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.
Comments
FYI, the Docket listed in the announcement is incorrect, making it very hard to find to be able to comment. The correct Docket to search for on regulations.gov to make public comments is FWS-HQ-ES-2020-0047-48647.
Very misleading headline. As far as the Grizzly Bears being threatened, not too sure about that, but their habitat has decreased in the past 25 years. Plus it is getting worse around Yellowstone NP. Bozeman has become a prospering town and is growing. West Yellowstone has spread and Jackson is a billionaire paradise. The other problem is the NPS on letting the masses into the Park. 4.5 million visiting Yellowstone. After they depart the Bears come out foraging for food and more encounters with humans. I am not even talking backcountry. I wish there was more Wilderness for the wildlife. I wish all the lands around Our National Parks were protected by Wilderness and from hunters or poachers. The President has rescinded a lot of the formers acts whether good or bad policy, so forgive me if I don't get too excited about it.
The Biden administration will formally introduce regulatory proposals to rescind changes the Trump administration made to how agencies . The rules opened the door to consideration of economic factors in decisions for species protections, weakened protections for critical habitat .