Plan would strip automatic protections for some species
DENVER — The Trump administration on Thursday proposed ending automatic protections for threatened animal and plant species and limiting habitat safeguards that are meant to shield recovering species from harm.
Administration officials said the new rules would advance conservation by simplifying and improving how the landmark Endangered Species Act is used.
“These rules will be very protective,” said U.S. Interior Department Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, adding that the changes also will reduce the “con- flict and uncertainty” associated with many protected species.
Such conflicts have cropped up in the decades since the act’s 1973 passage, ranging from disruptions to logging to protect spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest to attacks on livestock that have accompanied the restoration of gray wolves in the Rocky Mountains and upper Midwest.
The proposed changes include potential limits on the designation of “critical habitat” for imperiled plants and animals; an end to a regulatory provision that gives threatened plants and animals the same protections as species that are considered more endangered; and streamlining inter-agency consultations when federal government actions could jeopardize a species.
Wildlife advocates and Democratic lawmakers said such moves would speed extinctions in the name of furthering the administration’s anti- environment agenda.
More than 700 animals and almost 1,000 plants in the country are shielded by the law. Hundreds more are under consideration for protections.