Current work in wildlife, rivers, public lands, and climate

Despite devastating reports of catastrophic species loss, today the Trump administration proposed a second round of rollbacks to regulations that would continue to undermine the Endangered Species Act—America’s most effective law for saving imperiled wildlife from extinction.

Specifically, the new regulation proposed today by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service would redefine the definition of “habitat,” which would greatly weaken protections for threatened and endangered species listed under the ESA. In light of today’s latest proposed rollback to the Endangered Species Act, WildEarth Guardians issued the following statements:

“This rule is yet another cut in the death by a thousand cuts that the Trump administration is inflicting on the Endangered Species Act,” said Lindsay Larris, wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians. “The continued weakening of the Act makes it clear where this administration’s priorities lie: with appeasing their cronies in extractive industries and plundering public lands.”

“Narrowing the definition of habitat will make it harder to restore degraded areas in order to recover species,” said Taylor Jones, endangered species advocate for WildEarth Guardians. “In the midst of an extinction crisis, we need more habitat protections, not less.”