An ‘Extinction Committee’ Is Just the Beginning of Trump’s Attacks on Endangered Species

What happened: The Trump administration is once again attacking the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a widely popular and effective law that has kept 99% of the species it protects from extinction. One of Trump’s executive orders seeks to empower a committee of Trump appointees that could effectively decide the fate of an endangered species, in the name of development at any cost.

Why it matters: The ESA is the best tool we have to fight the worsening biodiversity crisis, which puts a million species at risk of extinction. Already, over one-third of plant and animal species in the U.S. are at risk of disappearing. Across 14 presidential administrations, Earthjustice has used this law to protect imperiled species and the ecosystems upon which we all depend.

What is the Endangered Species Act?

• Since its passage in 1973, the ESA has helped save thousands of species of plants and animals from extinction. The law protects imperiled species from activities that would further threaten their survival, such as development in vital habitats.
• The ESA has also protected millions of acres of habitat upon which species depend, including forests, beaches, and wetlands, from destruction and degradation.
• Earthjustice has used the Endangered Species Act as a powerful tool to preserve hundreds of species, including grizzly bears, gray wolves, salmon, and orcas — as well as the ecosystems that sustain them.

How is the Trump administration threatening endangered species?

• Just days after taking office, President Trump is already trying to undermine the ESA by invoking a rarely used provision that empowers a committee comprised of the president’s own appointees to decide the fate of endangered species.
• This extinction committee, sometimes referred to as the “God Squad,” would have the power to greenlight controversial projects that prioritize special interests, even at the cost of wiping out an entire species.
• Some of President Trump’s cabinet picks also have deep ties to extractive industries like the fossil fuel industry, which want to weaken the ESA so that they can exploit public lands for mining, drilling, logging and other environmentally destructive operations. The Trump administration’s actions serve to advance this industry-first agenda.

How Earthjustice is prepared to fight back

• The first Trump administration also targeted the ESA. Earthjustice went straight to court, where we succeeded in overturning many Trump actions and identified many others that the Biden administration should and ultimately did reverse after it took office. We are prepared to defend this vital law again.
• We also won legal fights against the first Trump administration that safeguarded individual species when it tried to strip them of ESA protections. One of our cases spared Yellowstone grizzlies from planned trophy hunts; another restored protections for gray wolves in 44 states.
• On his latest attack, in which Trump tries to invoke the God Squad to eliminate endangered species protections, Earthjustice attorneys and other legal experts emphasize that that’s not how the law works — a series of legal, scientific, and economic findings must first be addressed before the committee can make any decision to wipe a species off the face of the earth.
• As Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife, and oceans at Earthjustice, recently told the New York Times: “It seems like they believe that the God Squad can wave its hand and declare a particular species no longer within the protection of the Endangered Species Act…. That’s not how the process works at all.”