Trump Administration Eliminates Habitat Protections for Vulnerable Wildlife

Washington, D.C. —

The Trump Administration today finalized a rulemaking that could open the door to widespread destruction of habitat for endangered wildlife. The rule reverses a 50-year understanding that the Endangered Species Act (ESA) protects endangered wildlife from habitat destruction. 

The rule repealed a regulatory definition of “harm” that included “habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding or sheltering.” The Trump administration’s repeal of this definition clearly aims to open the floodgates to industrial actions that will destroy vital habitat — even though the repeal violates the statute itself. 

Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles issued the following response: 

“For the first time ever, a presidential administration now claims that species protected by the Endangered Species Act shouldn’t be safe from habitat modification that destroys where they live, raise their young, or search for food. Let’s be clear: there is no support for the Trump Administration’s rule — no scientific support, no legal support, no public support. We will see the Trump Administration in court.” 

Background: 

Key to the decades-long success of the ESA has been its prohibition on destroying a forest, beach, river, or wetland that an endangered species relies on for survival. 

In 1995, the Supreme Court upheld the “harm” definition’s inclusion of habitat destruction. As the ruling explained, that definition was supported by the ordinary meaning of “harm,” the purpose of the ESA, and multiple indications of congressional intent. 

In response to the Trump Administration’s proposed rulemaking last April, hundreds of thousands of Americans submitted public comments opposing the elimination of habitat protections. U.S. Senators, tribes, scientists, legal experts, and environmental groups also opposed the rule. 

The Trump administration has sought to erode the ESA in other ways as well, including with an unprecedented Endangered Species Committee meeting and vote granting a full exemption from the law for the oil industry in the Gulf of Mexico, a decision that has the potential to wipe out two dozen marine species including whales and sea turtles. 

Last week, a federal court struck down earlier Trump attacks on the ESA during his first administration, when the administration first tried to gut the bedrock environmental law through regulatory changes.