In a Gift to Industry, The Trump Administration Eliminates Protections for Threatened Species and Essential Habitat

In a devastating blow to wildlife, the Trump administration today finalized rollbacks of two regulations implementing the Endangered Species Act that will hamstring the protection and recovery of endangered and threatened species. Defenders of Wildlife strongly condemns the Trump administration's decision to prioritize handouts to extractive industries at the expense of our nation's shared wildlife heritage.

"These final regulations disregard the scientific consensus about what is needed to halt and reverse the decline of imperiled species," said Andrew Bowman, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife. "At a time when wildlife across the country faces mounting pressures, the administration is weakening one of our nation's most important conservation laws and moving us further away from the Endangered Species Act's longstanding promise: that future generations will inherit a country where America's wildlife continues to survive and recover."

Enacted in 1973 with overwhelming bipartisan support, the ESA has succeeded in preventing extinction for 99% of listed species. Public support for protecting our native wildlife remains overwhelmingly high, with 84% of voters supporting the ESA, according to nationwide polling conducted by Defenders of Wildlife. Two federal agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, share responsibility for administering the statute through the promulgation of regulations, including those now rescinded by the Trump administration.

FWS finalized a regulation to enable broad exclusions from critical habitat designations for listed species. By law, listed species must have critical habitat designated "to the maximum extent prudent and determinable" when they are listed as endangered or threatened based on Congress' explicit recognition that species cannot survive and recover unless their habitats are protected. Federal agencies have unique statutory obligations to protect and recover listed species, including considering the effects of their actions on critical habitat. Today's regulation makes it easier for FWS to leave federal lands out of critical habitat designations, even when those lands are important to the recovery of imperiled species. It also gives effective veto authority to private permittees and licensees that use federal lands when deciding whether habitat should be protected.

"Yet again, the Trump administration has sold out our endangered wildlife to the highest bidder," said Ryan Shannon, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. "In the midst of an extinction crisis, with hundreds of species like the Florida manatee and the wolverine desperately needing stronger protections for their habitats, the Trump administration is gutting protections at to benefit industry interests. Where we see our nation's irreplaceable wildlife, they see dollar signs. But our federal lands and waters, and the species they support, belong to all Americans, not to the logging, drilling and mining industries that oppose all limits on maximizing their private profits."

Under the ESA, designating critical habitat does not impose any obligations on private landowners. Instead, federal agencies must ensure that their proposed actions - such as granting permits or approving federal land management plans - are not likely to destroy or adversely modify designated critical habitat. Designation also provides key conservation benefits by helping state, Tribal and local governments, non-profits, and individuals to focus their conservation efforts on specific areas essential to recovery. Research has shown that species with critical habitat designations are more than twice as likely to be moving towards recovery than species without such designations. Although the statute allows FWS to exclude areas from critical habitat designation if the benefits of exclusion outweigh the benefits of designation, that exclusion is discretionary, not mandatory. But today's regulation flips that framework on its head, requiring FWS to exclude areas from a critical habitat designation based on alleged economic harms, no matter how speculative.

FWS also rescinded its "blanket 4(d) rule," which for decades allowed the agency to extend comprehensive statutory protections against unauthorized take to threatened wildlife species by default. This rule has helped ensure that such species do not decline further into endangered status, but instead make progress toward recovery and, ultimately, delisting.

"The blanket 4(d) rule has stood the test of time, protecting threatened species like the piping plover, Florida manatee and southern sea otter while fully respecting FWS' discretion to issue a narrower species-specific 4(d) rule if warranted," said Shannon. "FWS is throwing this rule out the window for no good reason and, for the first time, injecting economic considerations into the rulemaking process to benefit private industry. Eliminating these protections will push species already on the edge of extinction further towards that brink."

Section 9 of the ESA establishes a broad range of prohibitions against unauthorized take and trade that apply automatically when a wildlife species is listed as endangered. These prohibitions do not apply automatically to threatened wildlife species but may be extended to them under ESA section 4(d). Congress intended the 4(d) authority to be used to conserve threatened species, i.e., affirmatively protect them to the point that statutory protections are no longer needed, before they decline further. Recovering threatened species is more efficient and less expensive than allowing them to decline to endangered status before bringing the full force of the ESA's statutory protections to bear.

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For nearly 80 years, Defenders of Wildlife has worked to protect and restore America's wildlife at risk of extinction, advancing a vision of a future in which wildlife thrives, sustained by broad public support and a resilient network of healthy lands and waters. With a network of more than 2 million supporters, Defenders is an advocate for innovative solutions to safeguard wildlife for generations to come. To learn more, please visit https://defenders.org/newsroom or follow us on Instagram @defendersofwildlife.

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