Completely agree! Very sad.
By Darryl Fears
August 12 at 12:22 PM
Three months after a U.N. report warned that 1 million species face extinction because of human activity, the Trump administration on Monday finalized rule changes to the Endangered Species Act that make it harder to protect plants and animals whose populations are in serious decline.
The rules, jointly announced by the Interior and Commerce departments, were changed as part of President Trump's mandate to scale back government regulations on behalf of businesses. In that vein, language in the act that required officials to rely heavily on science when considering whether to place a species on the threatened or endangered list, regardless of economic impact, was erased.
Potential threats to business opportunities and other costs of listing species can now be considered by the government and shared with the public. Officials said those considerations would not affect listing decisions, but lawmakers and conservationists noted that it could inflame public opposition to proposals to rescue fragile populations.
6 animals saved by the Endangered Species Act
Here are some of the animals that have been saved by the Endangered Species Act. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
"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," said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. "These changes were subject to a robust, transparent public process, during which we received significant public input that helped us finalize these rules."
Administration officials said in a telephone news conference that the new rules will only affect future listings and will not be retroactive. But conservationists pointed out that the new rules would have made it nearly impossible to list the polar bear as threatened due to the loss of sea ice in Arctic, one of the fastest warming areas in the world.
Climate change projections at least 80 years into the future factored into the polar bear listing. Under the Trump administration, which has shown consistent opposition to climate science, including studies by federal researchers, officials will only consider potential climate impact in the next few years, coining the phrase "foreseeable future" to describe the outlook.
"When you start reaching out to 70 or 80 years" to project climate impacts on the planet and wildlife, the amount of certainty about what could happen "starts to degrade significantly," said Gary Frazer, assistant director for endangered species at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a division of Interior.
That outlook could have an effect on how the administration preserves wildlife habitat. Currently, land that plants and animals occupy is set aside for their protection, in addition to areas that they once occupied or might need in the future.
Moving forward, critical habitat that is not occupied habitat might not be protected, opening it up for oil and gas exploration or other forms of development.
Conservationists and some lawmakers decried the changes as a major rollback of the 46-year-old law credited with saving the bald eagle, grizzly bear, humpback whale, American alligator and Florida manatee from extinction.
"They're trying to make it difficult, if not impossible, to protect unoccupied habitat," said Rebecca Riley, legal director for nature program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We know climate change is going to force animals to move to new habitats."
For example, she said, the western snowy plover that nests on the coast is being affected by sea level rise. "As the sea rises, it will need to move inland. If we can't protect those areas because it's not occupied today, that habitat might not be there when they need it," Riley said.
"Today, the Trump administration issued regulations that 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. "As we have seen time and time again, no environmental protection β no matter how effective or popular β is safe from this administration."
[One million species face extinction, U.N. report says. And humans will suffer as a result.]
In May, a U.N. report on world biodiversity found that 1 million plant and animal species are on the verge of extinction, with alarming implications for human survival.
The report, written by seven experts from universities around the world, directly linked the loss of species to human activity and showed how those losses are undermining food and water security, along with human health.
More plants and animals are threatened with extinction now than at any other period in human history, the report said.
