Dems, conservation groups slam key environmental law overhaul
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday rolled out some of the broadest changes in decades to enforcement of the landmark Endangered Species Act, allowing the government to put an economic cost on saving a species and other changes critics contend could speed extinction for some struggling plants and animals.
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and other administration officials contend the changes improve efficiency of oversight while protecting rare species. But Democratic lawmakers, several state attorneys generals and conservation groups said the overhaul would hamper protections for endangered and threatened species.
The Endangered Species Act is credited with helping save the bald eagle, California condor, and scores of other animals and plants from extinction since President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1973. The act protects more than 1,600 species in the U. S. and its territories.
The changes include allowing economic cost to be taken into account as the federal government weighs protecting a struggling species, although Congress has stipulated that economic costs not be a factor in deciding whether to protect an animal.
Brett Hartl, a government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity conservation group, called that “an invitation for political interference” in the federal government’s decision whether to save a species.
“It’s a science question: Is a species going extinct, yes or no?” Mr. Hartl said.
Other changes include ending blanket protections for species newly listed as threatened and a revision that conservation groups say could block officials from considering the impact on wildlife from climate change, a major and growing threat to many species.
Democrats blasted the changes, and conservationists promised a court fight.
The regulations “take a wrecking ball to one of our oldest and most effective environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act,” Sen. Tom Udall, D- N. M., said in a statement.
At least 10 attorneys general joined conservation groups in protesting an early draft of the changes, saying they put more wildlife at greater risk of extinction.
“This effort to gut protections for endangered and threatened species has the same two features of most Trump administration actions: It’s a gift to industry, and it’s illegal,” said Drew Caputo, a vice president of litigation for conservation advocacy group Earthjustice.
A U. N. report warned in May that more than 1 million plants and animals globally face extinction, some within decades, owning to human development, climate change and other threats.