The Trump administration finalized two new changes on Friday, further reducing the scope of the endangered species law, the ESA, which protects, for example, the Alaskan grizzly bear or the bald eagle, the country’s symbol of prey.
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The first of these changes repeals the rule that by default applies the provisions of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to species listed as “threatened.”
The second allows the government to consider economic imperatives and national security when deciding whether an area can be designated as “critical habitat” for these endangered species.
“For too long, the Endangered Species Act has been used to block almost every project in America, which increases costs for families, weakens our competitiveness and deteriorates our national security,” said Minister Doug Burgum, responsible for federal land management.
This decision comes a week after another measure taken to restrict the legal definition of the term “harm”, enshrined in this law, and environmental defenders fear that this will facilitate the destruction of hitherto protected natural habitats.
They announced that they would file a new complaint in court, as they already did for the previous decision.
It’s “a catastrophe for our country’s endangered species,” Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity told AFP, adding that it was a new example of “the administration’s complacency for industry and the questioning of protections for our air, our water, our wildlife and our climate.”
Regarding “critical habitat” in particular, he believes that the new law is written in such a way that the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), responsible for preserving wildlife in the United States, will have to bow to companies based on the value of the land.
“A landowner could falsely claim that they plan to build the new Disneyland on their property, so the critical habitat designation would supposedly cost them tens of millions of dollars,” he says.
