The Trump Administration has finalized drastic regulatory changes to the Endangered Species Act. These regulations will bias listing decisions with unreliable economic analyses, make it more difficult to protect species impacted by climate change, obstruct our ability to list new species, make it easier to remove listed species, handicap the process to designate and protect critical habitat, reduce protections for threatened species, decrease voluntary conservation incentives, and weaken the consultation process.
The Department of Interior (DOI) allowed only ninety days to comment and held zero public hearings on theses drastic changes. However, close to one million American’s submitted comments opposing changes to the Endangered Species Act. One hundred and thirty nine U.S. House and Senate Members sent letters to the DOI to protest the harmful rollbacks. Twelve states and the District of Columbia are also on record opposing the weakening of the Endangered Species Act as are more than thirty Tribal Nations.
It’s important to remember that The Endangered Species Act is America’s most effective law for protecting wildlife in danger of extinction. Ninety-nine percent of species listed under the Act have survived and many have been set on a path to recovery, including the American Bald Eagle, the Grizzly Bear, the Florida Manatee, and many more. At a time of unprecedented global mass extinction, it is unconscionable that the administration is rolling back protections for our most imperiled species. We should be working to strengthen, not weaken, our nation’s best tool for helping to prevent extinction.
More than 800,000 public comments submitted in opposition
105 Members of Congress speak out against these revisions
34 U.S. Senators speak out against these revisions
Ten states and the District of Columbia oppose this rollback
Summary one page document from the Center for Biological Diversity.
View the revised regulations for listing species and designating critical habitat.
View the revised regulations for prohibitions to threatened wildlife and plants.
View the revised regulations for interagency cooperation.
