Trump Administration Plans to Remove Habitat Protections for Endangered Species

The Trump administration proposed a rule today that would eliminate habitat protections for endangered species in the United States in the midst of a biodiversity crisis. The rule would change for the first time in half a century the basic definition of what has been considered “harm” to threatened and endangered wildlife under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

“The Trump administration is trying to rewrite basic biology — like all of us, endangered species need a safe place to live,” said Earthjustice Vice President of Litigation for Lands, Wildlife, and Oceans Drew Caputo. “This misguided new proposal threatens a half-century of progress in protecting and restoring endangered species. We are prepared to go to court to ensure that America doesn’t abandon its endangered wildlife.”

For 50 years, the ESA has saved numerous species — including iconic American species like bald eagles, gray wolves, Florida manatees, and humpback whales — from extinction. One key to this success has been its definition of harm, which recognizes the common-sense concept that destroying a forest, beach, river, or wetland that a species relies on for survival constitutes harm to that species.

The proposed rule would pave the way for timber, oil, mining and other extractive industries, as well as the government and individuals, to destroy habitat where endangered species live, even if the damage to habitat harms those species.

In so doing, the proposal rejects a 1995 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the harm definition’s application to habitat destruction. As then-Justice O’Connor said in that ruling, “the landowner who drains a pond on his property, killing endangered fish in the process,” would violate the harm prohibition. Yet the new Trump proposal would call such harmful actions legal.

Animal and plant species in the U.S. are already running out of places to live, in large part due to habitat destruction, with over one-third of species at risk of extinction. When species disappear, ecosystems become at risk of wide-range collapse. Humans need intact ecosystems for everything from agriculture to clean water, from medicine to disease prevention.