Biden administration restores threatened species protections dropped by Trump

Mar 29, 2024, 12:17 PM | Updated: 12:25 pm

FILE - A female red wolf emerges from her den sheltering newborn pups at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, N.C., on May 13, 2019. On Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023, the U.S. government agreed to settle a lawsuit with conservation groups and commit to releasing more endangered red wolves into the wilds of North Carolina. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File)

(AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File)

BY MATTHEW BROWN, ASSOCIATED PRESS

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday restored rules to protect imperiled species and shield their habitat from destruction after the measures were rolled back under former President Donald Trump.

Among the changes, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will reinstate a decades-old regulation that mandates blanket protections for animals and plants newly classified as threatened. That means officials won’t have to craft specific plans to shield each individual species while protections are pending, as has been done recently with North American wolverines in the Rocky Mountains, alligator snapping turtles in the Southeast and spotted owls in California.

The restoration of more protective regulations rankled Republicans who said the Endangered Species Act was being wielded too broadly and to the detriment of economic growth. Meanwhile, wildlife advocates were only partially satisfied, saying some potentially harmful changes under Trump were untouched.

Today, @USFWS and @NOAA finalized three rules that strengthen the protection and recovery of threatened and endangered species and their habitats.

As the climate and biodiversity crises persist, these protections are more important than ever.https://t.co/LVrnC5VtgU

— US Interior Press Team (@USInteriorPress) March 28, 2024

The blanket protections rule had been dropped in 2019 as part of a suite of changes to the application of the species law under Trump that were encouraged by industry. Those changes came as extinctions accelerate globally due to habitat loss and other pressures.

Another rule issued Thursday clarifies that officials must decide if species merit threatened or endangered designations regardless of the potential economic costs of bestowing protections. That’s already government practice, but the 2019 Trump rules caused confusion because they removed an explicit directive to ignore economic impacts, said Fish and Wildlife Service Deputy Assistant Director Gina Shultz.

A red wolf crosses a road on the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, Thursday, March 23, 2023, near Manns Harbor, N.C. Over the course of 25 years, the red wolf went from being declared extinct in the wild to becoming hailed as an Endangered Species Act success story. But the only wolf species unique to the United States is once again at the brink. The last wild populations of Canis rufus are clinging to life on two federal refuges in eastern North Carolina. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

The tail of a sperm whale. The massive endangered creatures harvest food from the ocean depths and where hunted by humans. They are endangered. (Viktor Bernhard from Pixabay)

In this undated photo released by Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry, a newly born Sumatran rhino calf walks in its enclosure at Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary at Way Kambas National Park, Indonesia. The critically endangered Sumatran rhino was born on Sumatra Island Saturday, Nov. 25, 2023, the second Sumatran rhino born in the country this year and a welcome addition to a species that currently numbers fewer than 50 animals. (Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry)

This undated photo shows the Montana toad, which lives in the newly established Wyoming Toad Conservation Area. Federal officials have announced the creation of two new national wildlife refuges in Wyoming and Tennessee they say will help protect endangered species including toads, bats, shrimp and salamanders. (Sara Armstrong/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP)

A female, left, and male American Goldfinch perch on stalks of tall grass, Tuesday, June 20, 2023, in Denton, Neb. North America's grassland birds are deeply in trouble 50 years after adoption of the Endangered Species Act, with numbers plunging as habitat loss, land degradation and climate change threaten what remains of a once-vast ecosystem. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

FILE - A rig and supply vessel are pictured in the Gulf of Mexico, off the cost of Louisiana, April 10, 2011. The Biden administration's plan to protect an endangered species of whale by scaling back an auction of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico is being challenged by the oil industry. The conflicting federal lawsuits — one filed Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023, in southwest Louisiana by oil interests, the other announced Friday, Aug. 25, in Washington by the organization Earthjustice — focus on a planned sale of oil and gas leases set for Sept. 27 in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

FILE - A female red wolf emerges from her den sheltering newborn pups at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, N.C., on May 13, 2019. On Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023, the U.S. government agreed to settle a lawsuit with conservation groups and commit to releasing more endangered red wolves into the wilds of North Carolina. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File)

FILE - A lesser prairie chicken is seen amid the bird's annual mating ritual near Milnesand, N.M., on April 8, 2021. (Adrian Hedden/Carlsbad Current Argus via AP, File)

In this photo courtesy of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a vaquita marina swims in the Biosphere Reserve of the Upper Gulf of California and Colorado River Delta, in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, May 20, 2023. Experts on the expedition estimate they saw between 10 and 13 of the porpoises during nearly two weeks of sailing in May 2023 in the Gulf of California. (Sea Shepherd Conservation Society via AP)

FILE - This Sept. 2015, photo provided by NOAA Fisheries shows an aerial view of adult female Southern Resident killer whale (J16) swimming with her calf (J50). New research suggests that inbreeding may be a key reason that the Pacific Northwest's endangered population of killer whales has failed to recover despite decades of conservation efforts. The so-called "southern resident" population of orcas stands at 73 whales. That's just two more than in 1971, after scores of the whales were captured for display in marine theme parks around the world. (NOAA Fisheries/Vancouver Aquarium via AP, File)

This photo provided by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service shows a gopher tortoise at San Felasco Hammock Preserve State Park in Gainesville, Fla. Gopher tortoises that are threatened by loss of habitat and development should be placed on the endangered species list in four southern states, environmental groups said Wednesday, March 22, 2023, as they prepared to sue the federal government over the issue. (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service via AP)

FILE - A northern spotted owl sits on a branch in Point Reyes, Calif., in June 1995. Federal wildlife officials on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023, announced a proposal to classify one of two dwindling California spotted owl populations as endangered after a court ordered them to reassess a Trump administration decision not to protect the brown and white birds. (AP Photo/Tom Gallagher, File)

FILE - A flock of wood storks mingles with egrets as they stand in a retention pond along a road in Atlantic Beach, Fla., just before the Intracoastal Bridge on Aug. 12, 2015. The ungainly yet graceful wood stork, which was on the brink of extinction in 1984, has recovered sufficiently in Florida and other Southern states that U.S. wildlife officials on Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023, proposed removing the wading bird from the endangered species list. (Bob Mack/The Florida Times-Union via AP, File)

PAGE, AZ - MARCH 22: A rare and endangered California condor flies over the Colorado River in Marble Gorge, east of Grand Canyon National Park March 22, 2007 west of Page, Arizona. Condor managers taking blood samples from the 57 wild condors in Arizona both before and after hunting season find that all 57 condors test positive for contamination by lead matching the isotropic fingerprint of the lead commonly used in ammunition, and that those levels rise significantly by the end of the season. Many of the condors become so sick that biologists must re-capture them for lead-poisoning treatments. Several condors die each year. Experts believe the condors are ingesting the lead as they scavenge gut piles left behind hunters because lead bullets shatter and fragment inside the kill. Officials in Arizona are encouraging hunters to use copper bullets instead of lead-based ammunition and in California a coalition of conservation groups have sued the California Fish and Game Commission in an effort to force a ban on lead ammunition in Condor ranges. The condors in the Marble Canyon and Vermillion Cliffs area easily fly as far west as Lake Mead, by way of the Grand Canyon, and to Zion National Park and far into Utah. With a wingspan up to nine and a half feet, condors are the largest flying birds in North America. In 1982, when the world population of California condors dropped to only 22 and extinction was believed eminent, biologist captured them and began a captive breeding and release program which has increased the total population to 278, of which 132 now live in the wild in Arizona, California, and Baja California, Mexico. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

The rules from the wildlife service and National Marine Fisheries Service also make it easier to designate areas as critical for a species’ survival, even if it is no longer found in those locations.

That could benefit imperiled fish and freshwater mussels in the Southeast, where the aquatic animals in many cases are absent from portions of their historical range, officials have said.

Yesterday was a threshold moment as a petition on behalf of the threatened Wilson’s Phalarope was delivered to the @USFWS for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Great Salt Lake is no longer just a local or state issue but a national-global one https://t.co/X3WjfNXANa

— TerryTempestWilliams (@TempestWilliams) March 29, 2024

Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams said the rule changes underscored the agency’s commitment to using the best available science to halt population declines as “climate change, degraded and fragmented habitat, invasive species, and wildlife disease” threaten many species.

The Associated Press obtained details on the rules in advance of their public release. Officials said almost a half-million public comments were submitted on the three proposals.

Environmentalists expressed frustration that it took years for Democratic President Joe Biden to act on some of the Trump-era rollbacks. Stoking their urgency is the prospect of a new Republican administration following the 2024 election that could yet again ease protections.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, a former Fish and Wildlife Service director and now president at Defenders of Wildlife, characterized Thursday’s announcement as a “marginal win” that restores essential protections for wildlife, but leaves in place some of the changes made in 2019 under Trump. The environmental group said the retained provisions would open the door to the destruction of habitat critical for some species to survive.

The rules have gotten strong pushback from Republican lawmakers, who say Biden’s Democratic administration has hampered oil, gas and coal development, and favors conservation over development.

“We know the Endangered Species Act is an outdated piece of legislation that has repeatedly failed its primary goal of recovering listed species, yet Biden is now undoing crucial reforms and issuing new regulations that will not benefit listed species,” said House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, a Republican from Arkansas.

Property rights attorney Jonathan Wood said the Biden administration’s changes reduce the incentive for private landowners to take voluntary conservation measures.

With blanket protections, species designated as “threatened” automatically qualify for the same protections as those with the more severe designation of “endangered.” That means landowners could become indifferent to a species’ fate, Wood said, because even if they work to get an endangered species downgraded to threatened, there might not be a lessening of government restrictions.

Shultz, with the Fish and Wildlife Service, said blanket protections would be used primarily for threatened plants, which are generally protected under federal law on federal lands but not private property. She said agency officials expect to continue crafting species-specific rules for threatened animals.

Many energy companies, ranchers, developers and representatives of other industries have long viewed the 1973 Endangered Species Act as an impediment. Under Trump, they successfully lobbied to weaken the law’s regulations as part of a broad dismantling of environmental safeguards.

The Biden administration two years ago withdrew a Trump rule that limited which lands and waters could be designated as places where imperiled animals and plants could receive federal protection. It also reversed Trump’s decision to weaken enforcement of the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which made it harder to prosecute bird deaths due to toxic oil industry waste pits, collisions with wind turbines and other causes.

🎉GREAT NEWS🎉@USFWS has issued stronger protections for African elephants 🙌

Serious threats such as poaching, habitat encroachment and climate change continue to imperil this endangered species resulting in severe population decline over the last 100 years.

We thank U.S.… pic.twitter.com/7cCicsRRXf

— HSLF (@HSLegFund) March 29, 2024

Trump officials also rolled back protections for individual species including the northern spotted owl and gray wolf.

The spotted owl decision was reversed in 2021 after officials said Trump’s political appointees used faulty science to justify opening millions of acres of West Coast forest to potential logging. Protections for wolves across most of the U.S. were restored by a federal court in 2021.

The Endangered Species Act is credited with helping save the bald eagle, California condor and scores more animals and plants from extinction since President Richard Nixon signed it into law. It currently protects more than 1,600 species in the United States and its territories.