While the Trump administration has made several recent decisions that weaken protections for endangered species<\/a> \u2014 amid what many scientists call an extinction crisis<\/a> \u2014 this one may have the most far-ranging consequences. Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n A rule that could blow up the ESA<\/p>\n The Endangered Species Act is a complicated law, but on a simple level it makes it illegal for anyone to \u201ctake\u201d endangered species without authorization from the government. \u201cTake\u201d is defined in the law by 10 different terms: harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the meaning of one of those words \u2014 harm \u2014 that matters most here. Up until the recent rule, the government\u2019s definition for harm included destroying an animal\u2019s habitat if it impairs essential behaviors, such as breeding. That might include, say, building a hotel on top of a beach that endangered sea turtles use for nesting. Such a definition was important because destroying the habitat of an already imperiled species could push it over the edge, wildlife advocates say. What\u2019s more is that, according to the language of the law itself, the purpose of the ESA includes conserving \u201cecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration, however, just threw out that definition of harm and the unambiguous protection it has long afforded habitat. And while it didn\u2019t offer a new definition, the administration said that it agrees with a much narrower interpretation of the term \u2014 articulated three decades ago in a dissent<\/a> by the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia \u2014 that only includes actions that directly and intentionally harm individual animals, such as capturing a sea turtle to eat or keep as a pet.<\/p>\n \u201cFor years, federal agencies abused the ESA to obstruct lawful land use and burden American families and businesses,\u201d Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior Department, which oversees endangered species protections, said<\/a> in a statement. \u201cThat approach turned routine activity into a regulatory trap, drove up costs that impacted people\u2019s lives, and expanded federal authority beyond what Congress intended. This action restores common sense, respects private property, provides much-needed certainty for landowners and follows the statute Congress actually passed.\u201d (The Interior Department declined to provide a comment on our reporting, pointing us instead to its press release<\/a> and the notice<\/a> in the Federal Register.)<\/p>\n Under the new rule, set to take effect in September, \u201charm\u201d no longer explicitly includes actions that may accidentally or indirectly doom a wildlife population to extinction. A company building luxury villas on a private beach that endangered sea turtles need for survival would not unambiguously be considered take \u2014 and thus be illegal \u2014 unless the company knew it\u2019d crush turtle eggs or the turtles themselves in the process. Neither would logging old-growth forests that endangered birds inhabit, building wind turbines that are known to kill endangered bats<\/a>, or constructing a road that would likely get endangered snakes run over.<\/p>\n The administration\u2019s interpretation of take \u201creally completely blows up the Endangered Species Act,\u201d said J.B. Ruhl, a lawyer at Vanderbilt University and a leading expert on the ESA.<\/p>\n A sea turtle nesting beach in Singer Island, Florida. Lindsey Nicholson\/UCG\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n To be clear, these sorts of actions were never forbidden outright \u2014 and this is key. An important feature of the ESA is that, with some exceptions, it allows companies, counties and states, and federal agencies to kill or harm endangered species, as long as they take steps to limit their impact. Indeed, nonfederal organizations of all kinds have, for decades, received federal permits that allow them to \u201ctake\u201d endangered species, in exchange for coming up with a plan to minimize the harm they may cause. In Hawaii, for example, an electric utility that operates power lines that can injure endangered birds<\/a> takes steps to prevent collisions and funds an avian rehab facility that helps offset some of its impacts.<\/p>\n The problem now is that these conservation plans \u2014 which wildlife advocates say are critical for species recovery \u2014 are rooted in the defunct definition of harm, according to Daniel Rohlf, a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School.<\/p>\n The whole purpose of these so-called Habitat Conservation Plans is to lessen the incidental, or accidental, impacts on endangered species, while at the same time allowing companies to still build and operate legally. But in rescinding the former definition of harm, the Trump administration has essentially just said that all that incidental killing is no longer illegal anyway. That may undermine future Habitat Conservation Plans and those that have yet to be finalized. This \u201cpulls the rug out from under literally decades of work,\u201d Rohlf said of the recent rule.<\/p>\n Next up: The Supreme Court?<\/p>\n Even under the new rule, the ESA still has some important protections for habitat. When the government lists a species as threatened or endangered, for example, it usually designates what\u2019s called \u201ccritical habitat\u201d \u2014 areas that it deems essential to the survival of the species. Under the ESA, all federal agencies have to ensure that their actions, such as permitting new mines<\/a> or wind farms, do not destroy critical habitat or jeopardize the existence of a species. Those responsibilities are still intact.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also not certain that the new rule will stick. Several environmental groups have already sued the administration to try to reinstate the former definition, alleging, among other claims, that rescinding the definition of harm violates the language and the intent of the ESA. This challenge is likely to reach the Supreme Court, Ruhl says.<\/p>\n To understand what could happen next requires some important context.<\/p>\n Until two years ago, courts typically deferred to federal agencies to determine how to interpret ambiguous language in laws like the ESA. This legal principle was known as the Chevron doctrine<\/a>. It was the Fish and Wildlife Service, for example, that published a rule decades ago clarifying that the ambiguous word harm includes destroying an endangered animal\u2019s habitat. That interpretation survived a famous 1995 Supreme Court case, Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon<\/a>, in which Oregon landowners and the timber industry argued that the government defined \u201charm\u201d too broadly. The court decided that an \u201cordinary understanding\u201d of that term \u201cnaturally encompasses habitat modification\u201d that injures or kills endangered species.<\/p>\n In the summer of 2024, however, the Chevron doctrine was overturned<\/a>. That means the power to interpret unclear language in laws now rests with the courts.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has seized on this fact, Rohlf said. Instead of redefining what harm means, the administration simply axed the existing definition that included impacts to habitat that injure wildlife. It will now be up to the courts to decide what is considered harm in future cases brought under the ESA \u2014 such as if, say, an environmental group sues a developer, claiming that it destroyed essential habitat for an endangered species in violation of the Act. The administration did not stop short of making clear what it thinks: In the preamble to the rule, it said harm should only include actions made directly and intentionally against endangered organisms.<\/p>\n Wildlife advocates point out that the Supreme Court already determined that a definition of harm including habitat destruction is reasonable. That\u2019s what Babbitt v. Sweet Home was about. But because that case rested, in part, on the now-overturned Chevron doctrine, the courts \u2014 and perhaps eventually the Supreme Court \u2014 may relitigate the meaning of harm. (The Supreme Court did make it clear<\/a> that it won\u2019t call into question decisions that relied on the Chevron doctrine before it was overturned.)<\/p>\n Ultimately, it\u2019s hard to argue that harming an endangered species, in a plain reading of the word, does not include destroying vital habitat that it needs to survive or other actions that kill or injure them indirectly, legal scholars told me. It\u2019s also clear that Congress saw it this way when it wrote the law. There\u2019s a whole section of the ESA about granting permits for \u201cincidental take,\u201d which could include damaging an animal\u2019s habitat, according to Holly Doremus, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. That section only makes sense, she says, if you\u2019re interpreting harm to include actions that accidentally and indirectly kill or injure species \u2014 which is far broader than the definition that the Trump administration would like to use.<\/p>\n For the Trump administration to really get what it wants, Doremus said, it would need to remove the word \u201charm\u201d from the ESA altogether. Short of that, she said, Trump officials \u201cwant to make \u2018harm\u2019 as ineffective a statutory term as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Should the administration succeed \u2014 should the courts determine that \u201charm\u201d does not apply to destroying the habitat of endangered species \u2014 environmental advocates warn that the ESA will lose much of its extinction-preventing power.<\/p>\n \u201cIf this decision is allowed to stand, it eviscerates the statute on which imperiled species conservation has rested in this country since 1973,\u201d said Jane Davenport, a senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife, an advocacy group. \u201cThis is truly a stake through the heart of the ESA.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The greatest threat to animals in the US and globally is the destruction of their habitat \u2014 replacing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1687,9168,192,79],"class_list":["post-774320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-climate","tag-down-to-earth","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774320","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=774320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-1423969158.jpg\"\/)
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