Bide Admin.Restores Threatened Species Protections Dropped By Trump

A Male Alligator Snapping Turtle

By Matthew Brown

 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.

The blanket protection 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 accelerated globally due to habitat loss and other pressures.

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 ShultzThe 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.