The Trump administration has announced the finalization of a decision to eliminate long-standing regulatory language regarding habitat protections for endangered species in the United States. This move follows a proposed rulemaking and public comment period during which more than 200,000 individuals spoke out against the changes.<\/p>\n
The decision rescinds the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s and National Marine Fisheries Service’s definitions of what constitutes ‘harm’ to threatened and endangered wildlife under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). For decades, the agencies interpreted ‘harm’ to include significant habitat modification that kills or injures members of ESA-listed species, such as by removing necessities like food and shelter.<\/p>\n
This definition had been in place for over 40 years and was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995. It was an important tool for habitat conservation and integral to the ESA’s role in preventing the extinction of more than 99 percent of species under its protection \u2014 including the bald eagle, Florida manatee, gray wolf, and many other iconic American wildlife.<\/p>\n
In response to the news, Ben Greuel, Wildlife Campaign Manager at the Sierra Club, issued the following statement:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Trump administration\u2019s attempt to strip away long-standing habitat protections is a direct attack on the foundation of the Endangered Species Act. For more than four decades, the definition of \u2018harm\u2019 recognized a simple truth: if you destroy the places wildlife need to survive, you are putting species on a path to extinction. This rule ignores that reality in an unlawful attempt to open the door for corporate polluters to degrade vitally important habitats, wildlife be damned. The Endangered Species Act is a bedrock law that must be followed. The Sierra Club will continue to fight for these protections and defend our wildlife for future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sierra Club is America\u2019s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person’s right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Trump administration finalized a rule removing long-standing habitat protections for endangered species, rescinding the definition of ‘harm’ that included habitat modification. Over 200,000 comments opposed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":692,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691\/revisions\/692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test2.cryptofinancewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}