Protect wildlife and their habitats from Trump’s Endangered Species Act attacks
Tell federal officials to reject these rule changes and keep the Endangered Species Act strong, science-based, and focused on protecting wildlife and their habitats.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration took its first steps toward undermining the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by proposing a change to the definition of ‘harm.’ This seemingly small revision would open the door for logging and mining interests to degrade or destroy habitat essential to the survival of already-imperiled fish and wildlife.
Before that rule change has even been resolved, the administration is back, this time resurrecting a slate of proposals from its first term.
Here are some of the most troubling components of these proposed rules:
- Injecting economic considerations into decisions about whether a species should be listed or whether habitat should be designated as critical, undermining science-based protections.
- Stripping automatic protections for “threatened” species, leaving them vulnerable to killing, trapping, hunting, and harassment.
- Preventing agencies from assessing the full consequences of development projects, limiting reviews to only the most direct impacts.
At the same time, the scientific staff and budgets of the Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management are being gutted. Together with proposed changes to the ESA, the Trump administration is ensuring that it will be even more difficult to recover species already teetering on the brink of extinction.
Our nation’s wildlife and the habitat they depend on are counting on us to speak up, again, against these changes.
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