\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Trump administration reversed decades of longstanding environmental law protecting endangered species Friday, opening up sensitive habitats of those protected species to drilling, mining, farming and real estate development.Related video above: Acadia became a model for conservation in America | America 250The change, finalized by the Interior and Commerce departments, redefines what constitutes \u201charm\u201d to endangered species and habitats under the 1973 Endangered Species Act. The longstanding law had long prohibited \u201chabitat modification or degradation\u201d 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 \u201coutdated\u201d in a statement released Friday, arguing its move \u201creturns the interpretation of the ESA back to its actual text and original intent, which will end years of federal overreach.\u201dInterior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement that the law\u2019s approach had \u201cturned routine activity into a regulatory trap, drove up costs that impacted people\u2019s lives, and expanded federal authority beyond what Congress intended.\u201d\u201cFor years, federal agencies abused the ESA to obstruct lawful land use and burden American families and businesses,\u201d Burgum added, calling the administration\u2019s action a \u201ccommon sense\u201d move that \u201cfollows the statute Congress actually passed.\u201dCommerce Secretary Howard Lutnick added in a statement that the new rule would benefit fishermen who suffered from \u201coverly broad and burdensome regulations.\u201dAn 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.\u201cFor the first time ever, a presidential administration now claims that species protected by the Endangered Species Act shouldn\u2019t be safe from habitat modification that destroys where they live, raise their young, or search for food,\u201d Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles said in a statement. \u201cThere is no support for the Trump Administration\u2019s rule \u2014 no scientific support, no legal support, no public support.\u201dThe Interior and Commerce departments insisted narrower \u201ccore protections\u201d for endangered species would still be enacted, adding their definition of the bedrock environmental law would prevent \u201cactions that directly injure or kill listed wildlife.\u201dHowever, 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\u2019s reversal make it up to the Supreme Court again, environmentalists will be facing a far more conservative court.\u201cHabitat loss is the number one cause of extinction,\u201d Gib Brogan, senior campaign director at Oceana, said in a statement. \u201cWhen you remove habitat protections, you remove one of the law\u2019s most important safeguards.\u201dThe Trump administration has attempted to claw back the Endangered Species Act throughout President Donald Trump\u2019s first and second administrations, 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\u2019s whale, exempting all oil and gas drilling from the federal law.And last year, the Interior and Commerce departments 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.\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The Trump administration reversed decades of longstanding environmental law protecting endangered species Friday, opening up sensitive habitats of those protected species to drilling, mining, farming and real estate development.<\/p>\n
Related video above: Acadia became a model for conservation in America | America 250<\/p>\n
The change, finalized by the Interior and Commerce departments, redefines what constitutes \u201charm\u201d to endangered species and habitats under the 1973 Endangered Species Act. The longstanding law had long prohibited \u201chabitat modification or degradation\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration called the previous definition of harm \u201coutdated\u201d in a statement released Friday, arguing its move \u201creturns the interpretation of the ESA back to its actual text and original intent, which will end years of federal overreach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement that the law\u2019s approach had \u201cturned routine activity into a regulatory trap, drove up costs that impacted people\u2019s lives, and expanded federal authority beyond what Congress intended.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor years, federal agencies abused the ESA to obstruct lawful land use and burden American families and businesses,\u201d Burgum added, calling the administration\u2019s action a \u201ccommon sense\u201d move that \u201cfollows the statute Congress actually passed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick added in a statement that the new rule would benefit fishermen who suffered from \u201coverly broad and burdensome regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n
An Interior Department official said the rule will be published in the Federal Register early next week.<\/p>\n
Environmental groups decried the move and said they planned to challenge the change in court imminently.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first time ever, a presidential administration now claims that species protected by the Endangered Species Act shouldn\u2019t be safe from habitat modification that destroys where they live, raise their young, or search for food,\u201d Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles said in a statement. \u201cThere is no support for the Trump Administration\u2019s rule \u2014 no scientific support, no legal support, no public support.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Interior and Commerce departments insisted narrower \u201ccore protections\u201d for endangered species would still be enacted, adding their definition of the bedrock environmental law would prevent \u201cactions that directly injure or kill listed wildlife.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s reversal make it up to the Supreme Court again, environmentalists will be facing a far more conservative court.<\/p>\n
\u201cHabitat loss is the number one cause of extinction,\u201d Gib Brogan, senior campaign director at Oceana, said in a statement. \u201cWhen you remove habitat protections, you remove one of the law\u2019s most important safeguards.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has attempted to claw back the Endangered Species Act throughout President Donald Trump\u2019s first and second administrations, with varying levels of success.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s whale, exempting all oil and gas drilling from the federal law.<\/p>\n
And last year, the Interior and Commerce departments 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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration reversed decades of longstanding environmental law protecting endangered species Friday, opening up sensitive habitats of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[324762,14144,12538,19232,4779,5473,106458,2351,295996,2027,192,5641,57311,77851,8148,33410,292107,5474,152771,25283,942,291372,315041,79,298707,15304,324763,291375,201,273932],"class_list":["post-758312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-1973-endangered-species-act","tag-animal","tag-commerce-department","tag-conservation","tag-development","tag-doug-burgum","tag-drilling","tag-ecology","tag-email-weather-search","tag-endangered-species","tag-environment","tag-farming","tag-habitat","tag-harm","tag-howard-lutnick","tag-interior-department","tag-menu-subscribe","tag-mining","tag-nowcast","tag-page","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-privacy-notice-term","tag-saturday-weekend-news","tag-science","tag-sknd","tag-supreme-court","tag-trump-admin","tag-use-nextfre","tag-wildlife","tag-wjcl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}