Bald eagles. Humpback whales. Peregrine falcons. Brown pelicans. Kirtland warblers. What do all these species have in common? They were saved from the threat of extinction because of the legal protections that the United States Endangered Species Act, or ESA, provides. The ESA is the strongest legal protection for plants and animals globally and is a cornerstone of conservation here in the U.S.; over 90% of endangered species are recovering at rates specified in their recovery plans and 79 species have recovered since the ESA was enacted.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration is proposing a rule that will completely gut the ESA and prevent future species recovery. You see, once a species is listed, the next step is designating a species’ critical habitat, which is then legally protected from development or destruction. So when bald eagles were listed under the ESA, many of the forests along rivers that they nest in became protected critical habitat. It is illegal to harm a listed species, and harm is legally defined as the direct or indirect killing of the species.
One of the foundations of the ESA holds that destroying a species’ critical habitat is harm. Enter the Trump administration’s new proposed rule, which will mean that destroying an endangered species’ habitat will no longer count as harm, thus gutting the component of the ESA that protects endangered species from the number one cause of extinctions globally - habitat loss.
It’s impossible to overstate the dire repercussions for threatened and endangered species should this rule go through; it will open up endangered species’ critical habitat to the logging and mining interests the Trump Administration has been propping up over the interests of the people since he was inaugurated. The proposed rule is up for comment on the federal register through May 19th; I encourage WNIJ listeners to make their voices heard to avoid this ecological disaster.
I’m Holly Jones, and that’s my perspective.
