Changes coming to species act
Administration to apply landmark conservation law differently
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday moved to alter how it applies the 45-year-old Endangered Species Act, ordering changes that critics said will speed the loss of animals and plants at a time of record global extinctions.
Two states, California and Massachusetts, promised lawsuits to try to block the changes in the law. So did some conservation groups.
Pushing back against the criticism, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and other administration officials contend that the changes improve efficiency of oversight while continuing to protect rare species.
“The best way to uphold the Endangered Species Act is to do everything we can to ensure it remains effective in achieving its ultimate goal — recovery of our rarest species,” he said in a statement. “An effectively administered act ensures more resources can go where they will do the most good: on-the-ground conservation.”
Blanket protections for creatures newly listed as threatened will be removed. Among several other changes, the action could allow the government to disregard the possible impact of climate change.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the revisions “fit squarely within the president’s mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public without sacrificing our species protection and recovery goals.”
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 currently protects more than 1,600 species in the United States and its territories.
John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican who leads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said that Monday’s changes in enforcement are “a good start” but that he will continue working to change the act.
Under the enforcement changes, officials will for the first time be able to publicly attach a cost to saving an animal or plant. That’s even though Congress has stipulated that economic costs not be a factor in deciding whether to protect an animal.
Gary Frazer, an assistant director at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, told reporters that the government will adhere to that stipulation by disclosing the costs to the public without it being a factor for the officials as they consider the protections.
Price tag or no, Frazer said, federal officials will keep selecting and rejecting creatures from the endangered species list as Congress required, “solely on the basis of the best available scientific information and without consideration for the economic impacts.”
“Nothing in here in my view is a radical change for how we have been consulting and listing species for the last decade or so,” Frazer added.