The Trump Administration on Wednesday proposed restoring Endangered Species Act rules from President Donald Trump's first term addressing ESA listings, delistings, critical habitat designations and interagency consultation.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed eliminating the 4(d) blanket rule, which automatically extends to threatened species a prohibition on the “take” of endangered ones. Now, the agency will need to develop specific regulations tailored to individual threatened species.
The rule was first established in 1975, rescinded during the first Trump administration and revived by the Biden administration. The blanket rule is currently the subject of a lawsuit from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Property and Environment Research Center.
In a release, Jonathan Wood, PERC's vice president of law and policy, called the blanket rule's proposed removal "a meaningful step toward restoring the original intent of the Endangered Species Act by ensuring that regulations are informed by science and motivate recovery efforts."
Both FWS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — which oversees ESA for aquatic species — also are seeking to restore ESA rules from Trump's first term for critical habitat determinations, listing and delisting.
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Both also want to reinstate definitions of “effects of the action” and “environmental baseline" in consultation frameworks, according to a press release.
FWS is individually also looking to reinstate 2020 guidelines for weighing economic, national security and other relevant impacts when analyzing whether to exclude areas from critical habitat.
There are four proposed rules in total — two from FWS and NOAA and two just from FWS.
In a press release, Defenders of Wildlife senior attorney Jane Davenport criticized the proposed changes, arguing they promote "drilling, mining, bulldozing, logging and development at the expense of habitat." On the removal of the blanket rule, she said threatened species "could easily lose the recovery gains they have made and decline further towards endangered status."
"Rolling back these regulations risks reversing the ESA’s historic success and threatens the wellbeing of plant and animal species that pollinate our crops, generate medicine, keep our waterways clean and support local economies," she said.
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