From animals as small as American bumble bees and monarch butterflies to those as large as manatees, bison, and whales, there are around 1,300 endangered species living in the U.S. Those creatures and their habitats have long been afforded critical protections under the Endangered Species Act to keep them from sliding toward extinction. But as the Trump Administration again moves to roll back some aspects of the landmark 1973 environmental law, experts warn their futures could be put in deeper jeopardy.
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The Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service have proposed four rules that would weaken the protections for threatened and endangered species and clear the path for more potential development—such as oil and gas drilling or logging—on land the law safeguards. The proposals largely echo efforts during Trump’s first term to restrict the protections, which were later reversed under President Joe Biden.
“This administration is restoring the Endangered Species Act to its original intent, protecting species through clear, consistent and lawful standards that also respect the livelihoods of Americans who depend on our land and resources,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a statement on Wednesday.
Experts, however, say the revisions would threaten the endangered animals, plants, and the critical habitats where they reside.
“This is an aggressive attempt to roll back 50 years of environmental protection,” Stuart Pimm, a professor of conservation ecology at Duke University, tells TIME. “It’s going to do an enormous harm to endangered species, and critically, it’s going to do enormous harm to the habitats in which they live.”
What is the Trump Administration proposing?
One of the proposed revisions would eliminate the “blanket rule,” which automatically provides protections to all species that are considered threatened. Government agencies would instead be required to develop “species-specific rules tailored to each threatened species.”
Another proposed revision would ensure critical habitat decisions are based on both “scientific and commercial data” and enable the “transparent consideration of economic impacts.”
Beginning on Friday, members of the public will have 30 days to weigh in on the proposals.
How would the changes impact endangered species and their habitats?
The most immediate consequence of the proposed revisions to the Endangered Species Act, if they are approved, will be the destruction of habitats, Pimm tells TIME. He notes that without protected lands, endangered species will have no viable ecosystems in which to thrive, which could push them to the brink of extinction.
Once these lands are destroyed, he says, the chances of a species rebounding from near-extinction are all the more rare, as there are no suitable areas for their population to settle down and grow.
“If you bring back the Woolly mammoth, where the bloody hell are you going to put it?” Pimm analogizes. “Rather less dramatically, this is the concern if you destroy all forests in the Western United States to the point where all you have are spotted owls in a few acres of land, those owls aren’t going to be viable. The population is eventually going to go extinct … So the habitat connection is key.”
To underline what’s at stake, Pimm points at the animal-saving work that the Endangered Species Act has done since it was signed into law in 1973. Peregrine falcons, a staple in New York City, and bald eagles, present in every state except Hawaii, were both brought back from the brink of extinction by the act, he notes.
Karrigan Bork, an expert in environmental law and professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, sees the proposals as an attempt to break down the act’s protections and make way for more resource development by corporations.
“I think this is part of a broad effort to weaken the Endangered Species Act as much as possible to allow more logging and mining and less conservation of the species that are in trouble in the United States,” he tells TIME.
Bork says that there will likely be legal challenges to the proposed revisions, arguing they are not in line with the parameters set out in the original language of the Endangered Species Act.
He argues that the Administration likely has standing to pass three of the four proposals, and that the act gives discretion to make such revisions. However, he says he doesn’t see the legal basis for the rule that would allow officials to take into account the economic impacts of species listings, since the act prohibits such considerations when deciding whether to add species to the protected list.
“I think the spot where they’re kind of the weakest is probably the change saying that the listing decisions should consider a cost benefit analysis, or should include a cost benefit analysis,” Bork says. “The statute is clear that you can’t consider cost when you’re deciding whether to list a species as threatened or endangered.”
The other three acts are “certainly more likely to fit within the language of the Act itself,” he says.
If the “blanket rule” were to be eliminated, stripping threatened species of the protections endangered species receive, there would be “no question” that it could take years to develop species-specific rules “if you start from zero for every species that’s proposed to be listed as threatened,” J.B. Ruhl, an expert in environmental law and a professor at Vanderbilt Law School, tells TIME.
Earlier this year, officials proposed a rule that would narrow the definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act, potentially excluding construction on protected lands from being considered a threat in the revised parameters.
“The real story is going to be if they––which they say they’re going to do this week––finalize the rescission of the regulatory definition of ‘harm,’” Ruhl says. “That alone has thousands of times more impact than the four rules that you’re covering right now.”