FIVE THINGS ABOUT TRUMP’S CHANGES

1 ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT

The 1970s-era Act is credited with bringing back from the brink of extinction species such as bald eagles, gray whales and grizzly bears, but the law has long been a source of frustration for drillers, miners and other industries because new listings can put vast areas of land off-limits to development.

2 WHAT WOULD CHANGE?

The changes would end a practice that automatically conveys the same protections for threatened species as for endangered species, and potential threats to business opportunities and other costs of listing species can now be considered. The original Act protected species regardless of the economics of the area protected.

3 THREATENED SPECIES

According to the revision, the Fish and Wildlife Service would need to write separate rules for each threatened species, slowing their protection until conditions worsen. Previously, threatened species would receive the same automatic protections as endangered species.

4 ‘EASING REGULATORY BURDEN’

“The revisions finalized with this rulemaking fit squarely within the President’s mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public, without sacrificing our species’ protection and recovery goals,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in a statement.

5 EXPECT COURT CHALLENGES

Conservationists and environmentalists said they would challenge the changes in court. “These changes crash a bulldozer through the Endangered Species Act’s life-saving protections for America’s most vulnerable wildlife,” said Noah Greenwald, the Center for Biological Diversity’s endangered species director. “For animals like wolverines and monarch butterflies, this could be the beginning of the end,” Greenwald said.