The U.S. Interior Department<\/a> on Friday canceled the rule in the latest step by The President\u2019s team to dismantle key provisions of the landmark Endangered Species Act.<\/p>\n Instead of receiving automatic protections, under-threat species will need individualized protection plans once they are added to the threatened species list. A potentially long process in which companies could seek exemptions for oil and gas drilling, mining and other development where those species live.<\/p>\n Opponents said it would make it harder to save wildlife such as monarch butterflies and alligator snapping turtles.<\/p>\n There have been no species added to the endangered or threatened lists in Trump\u2019s second term. By comparison, more than 20 species were added in Trump\u2019s first term, and about 60 during Biden\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n About 30 species are currently proposed to be listed as threatened. Besides monarchs and alligator snapping turtles, they include California<\/a> spotted owls and various snakes, fish, clams and insects.<\/p>\n Interior Secretary Doug Burgum<\/a> said in a statement that the Endangered Species Act had been used for too long \u201cto stop almost any new project in America, driving up costs for families, weakening our competitiveness, and undermining our national security.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSuccess should be measured by species recovery and delisting, not by adding more species to the list,\u201d Burgum added.<\/p>\n A second change finalized Friday requires officials to analyze economic impacts when deciding whether habitat is critical to a species\u2019 survival. Critics say it gives corporations an opportunity to put their thumb on the scale so that officials will allow development in those areas.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you’re exempting certain industries that cause habitat destruction, in many instances you’ll be exempting the main threat to those species,\u201d said Noah Greenwald with the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity<\/a>.<\/p>\n Officials made similar changes during Trump\u2019s first term but they were reversed under former Democratic<\/a> President Joe Biden<\/a>.<\/p>\n The rules that gave what some consider \u201cblanket protections\u201d to threatened species were first adopted for wildlife in 1975 and for plants in 1977.<\/p>\n Changes to government policies for endangered plants and wildlife have come faster and extended further in Trump’s second term than in his first.<\/p>\n The administration in March exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico<\/a> from the Endangered Species Act after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a> said environmentalists\u2019 lawsuits threatened to hobble domestic energy supplies as the U.S. wages war against Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last week, Interior officials sharply narrowed the definition of what constitutes \u201charm\u201d to a species. The change would allow development on critical wildlife habitat so long as the animals themselves are not immediately killed or injured.<\/p>\n This week officials sharply reduced the amount of critical habitat in the U.S. Rocky Mountains<\/a> designated for Canada<\/a> lynx, forest dwelling wildcats that are threatened by climate change and other pressures. <\/p>\n Also this week, Burgum said in a visit to Montana<\/a> that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would turn over more management authority for grizzly bears to states where the bruins live. That’s been a longstanding priority for the Republican<\/a> governors of Wyoming<\/a>, Idaho<\/a> and Montana.<\/p>\n The Endangered Species Act is credited with bringing back iconic animals including the bald eagle and American alligator from the brink of extinction.<\/p>\n Burgum noted Friday that 97% of the species that have been given protections still have them. That\u2019s a frustration for Republican lawmakers who say species should be taken off the endangered and threatened lists more quickly once they\u2019ve recovered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-559446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Trump_Endangered_Species_67614.jpg\")
A monarch butterfly lands on a flower, Sept. 6, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Alex Brandon, File) (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)<\/p>\n![\"Joe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AFP_33PX6UB.jpg\")
Joe Biden pets his dog Commander (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n