For fifty years, one simple idea kept America's rarest animals from going extinct: if you want to save a species, you have to save the place it lives. The Trump administration just threw that idea out.

On July 10, the departments of the Interior and Commerce finalized a rule that rewrites what "harm" means under the Endangered Species Act. Under the old rule, wrecking the forests, wetlands, and streams that endangered animals depend on counted as harming them. Under the new rule, it doesn't. Only directly injuring or killing an animal counts now.

In plain terms: you can destroy the woods where an owl nests or drain the river where salmon spawn — and as long as you don't club the animal on the spot, the law no longer stops you.

Why this guts the law

A wildlife official can't protect a species if a developer is allowed to pave over its home.

The numbers make the point. A 2019 study of species added to the endangered list between 1975 and 2017 found that only 17% were threatened by direct killing — while 81% were threatened by habitat loss. So the new rule zeroes in on the smallest part of the problem and ignores the biggest one.

Karrigan Börk, a law professor at UC Davis, put it bluntly: "If you drain a salmon river during the summer when the salmon aren't in it, ultimately it has the same impact of killing off that whole species."

The new rule opens up forests, wetlands, and deserts to logging, mining, and oil and gas drilling. Jane Davenport, an attorney with Defenders of Wildlife, called it "an attempted death blow to the Endangered Species Act."

"Let the states do it" — but they can't

The administration's excuse is that it's giving states the "freedom" to protect habitat themselves. That sounds reasonable until you learn it isn't true.

Almost no states have laws that let them protect habitat the way the federal government did. Most state wildlife laws only stop poaching and the direct killing of animals — the exact thing the new federal rule still covers, and nothing more. According to a 2024 analysis, only eight states plus Puerto Rico even require protecting critical habitat under their own laws. California appears to be the only one with a real system to make developers offset the damage they do.

And state wildlife agencies are already broke. Chris Servheen, who spent 35 years running grizzly bear recovery for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, didn't mince words:

"It's really disingenuous to say if states want to protect habitat, they can do so. That's not their role, that's not what they do… The federal agencies manage the land base."

There's another catch: states can't enforce anything on federal land. Across the West, huge stretches of public land are the last refuge for many species. If the U.S. Forest Service greenlights logging old-growth forest under the new rule, state officials can't do a thing about it.

Even red-state wildlife officials objected

This wasn't a partisan fight among the people who actually manage wildlife. When the rule was proposed, wildlife agency leaders from both conservative and liberal states warned against it — Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, New Jersey, Vermont, and Wyoming among them.

North Dakota's Bruce Kreft warned the change would have "dire consequences" and "lead to further population declines." Of all the state wildlife agencies whose comments were reviewed, only Alaska's fully backed the change.

So who did want this? Oil and gas groups. The American Petroleum Institute and other drilling interests told the administration they supported limiting habitat protections. That tells you who this rule is really for.

What happens now

The administration says it's just restoring the "original intent" of the law and ending what it called "years of federal overreach." But the change was published in the Federal Register and takes effect in September, and a coalition of environmental groups and Native tribes have already filed lawsuits to stop it. One tribal suit argues the rollback threatens fisheries the federal government is required to protect under treaty.

There's a real danger in those court fights: if the case reaches the conservative Supreme Court and it sides with the administration, a future president might not be able to undo the damage without Congress rewriting the law.

Endangered species can't vote, hire lobbyists, or file public comments. The people who spent their careers protecting them said this rule will push more of them toward extinction. The administration did it anyway — because the industries that want to drill, log, and build asked for it.

Source

This post is based on reporting by Alex Brown for Stateline, published in the Florida Phoenix, the Interior Department's announcement, and the final rule in the Federal Register. Photo by Tom Kogut/U.S. Forest Service.