Trump administration opens endangered species’ habitats to development, reversing 50 years of environmental law

A Northern Spotted Owl sits on a tree stump on August 4, 2009. The Trump administration reversed decades of longstanding environmental law protecting endangered species on July 10, opening up sensitive habitats of those protected species to drilling, mining, farming and real estate development. (Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images/File via CNN Newsource)

The Trump administration reversed decades of longstanding environmental law protecting endangered species on Friday, opening up sensitive habitats of those protected species to drilling, mining, farming and real estate development.

The change, finalized by the Interior and Commerce Departments, redefines what constitutes “harm” to endangered species and habitats under the 1973 Endangered Species Act. The longstanding law had long prohibited “habitat modification or degradation” because it could harm or kill endangered animals by impacting their ability to breed and find food or shelter. That definition of harm was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1995 ruling.

The Trump administration called the previous definition of harm “outdated” in a statement released Friday, arguing its move “returns the interpretation of the ESA back to its actual text and original intent, which will end years of federal overreach.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement that the law’s approach had “turned routine activity into a regulatory trap, drove up costs that impacted people’s lives, and expanded federal authority beyond what Congress intended.”

“For years, federal agencies abused the ESA to obstruct lawful land use and burden American families and businesses,” Burgum added, calling the administration’s action a “common sense” move that “follows the statute Congress actually passed.”

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick added in a statement that the new rule would benefit fishermen who suffered from “overly broad and burdensome regulations.”

An Interior Department official said the rule will be published in the Federal Register early next week.

Environmental groups decried the move and said they planned to challenge the change in court imminently.

“For the first time ever, a presidential administration now claims that species protected by the Endangered Species Act shouldn’t be safe from habitat modification that destroys where they live, raise their young, or search for food,” Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles said in a statement. “There is no support for the Trump Administration’s rule — no scientific support, no legal support, no public support.”

Interior and Commerce insisted narrower “core protections” for endangered species would still be enacted, adding their definition of the bedrock environmental law would prevent “actions that directly injure or kill listed wildlife.”

However, environmental groups will challenge that narrower definition, pointing to the 1995 Supreme Court case, which upheld the broader definition of harm, including habitat destruction. But if legal challenges to the Trump administration’s reversal make it up to the Supreme Court again, environmentalists will be facing a far more conservative court.

“Habitat loss is the number one cause of extinction,” Gib Brogan, senior campaign director at Oceana, said in a statement. “When you remove habitat protections, you remove one of the law’s most important safeguards.”

The Trump administration has attempted to claw back the Endangered Species Act throughout U.S. President Donald Trump’s first and second administration, with varying levels of success.

Earlier this year, several high-ranking Trump officials, including Burgum, voted to gut longstanding Endangered Species Act regulations in the Gulf of Mexico for the critically endangered Rice’s whale, exempting all oil and gas drilling from the federal law.

And last year, Interior and Commerce proposed restoring rules from the first Trump administration that stripped safeguards for plants and animals threatened by human development and a warming planet. However, some of those changes were recently struck down in federal court.