![]() ![]() Standard Digital includes access to a wealth of global news, analysis and expert opinion. That could remove obligations to fix damage from logging trees that are needed by spotted owls unless all of their 9-million-acre habitat zone were affected, said Stephanie Kurose at the Center for Biological Diversity.During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages. One requires agencies to protect living spaces for imperiled species only when development would harm an entire habitat and not just part of it. ![]() Other environmentalists complained that some Trump-era changes would remain intact. ![]() The group sued on behalf of environmental groups to block the Trump rules and prevailed in U.S. “These are promising steps to get us back to the Endangered Species Act’s purpose, its power to protect,” attorney Kristen Boyles with Earthjustice said of the new rules. Stoking their urgency is the prospect of a new Republican administration following the 2024 election that could yet again ease protections. It also reversed Trump’s decision to weaken enforcement of the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which made it harder to prosecute bird deaths caused by the energy industry.īut environmentalists have been frustrated that it’s taken more than two years for Biden to act on some of the Trump-era rollbacks. The Biden administration had earlier withdrawn a 2020 rule that limited which lands and waters could be designated as places where imperiled animals and plants could receive federal protection. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Assistant Administrator Janet Coit said the rules would ensure the species law remains effective as climate change alters habitats around the globe, and plants and animals become extinct. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams said in a statement that the changes “reaffirm our commitment to conserving America’s wildlife and ensuring the Endangered Species Act works for both species and people.” Wood said the Biden proposal could hurt state and private landowner efforts to recover species, by imposing more punitive regulations that undermine voluntary conservation incentives. Since then, officials imposed less restrictive protections for more than a dozen animals and plants compared to what they would have received, said Jonathan Wood with the Property and Environment Research Center, a free-market policy group based in Bozeman, Montana. Many of the changes under Trump were finalized during his last weeks in office. were restored by a federal court last year and the Biden administration has said it will decide by next February if they should remain in place. Protections for wolves across most of the U.S. The spotted owl decision was reversed in 2021 after officials said Trump’s political appointees used faulty science to justify opening millions of acres of West Coast forest to potential logging. Trump officials rolled back endangered species rules and protections for the northern spotted owl, gray wolves and other species. Under Trump they successfully lobbied to weaken the law’s regulations as part of a broad dismantling of environmental safeguards. Industry groups have long viewed the 1973 Endangered Species Act as an impediment. That could help with the recovery of imperiled fish and freshwater mussels in the Southeast, where the aquatic animals in many cases are absent from portions of their historical range, said Fish and Wildlife Service Assistant Director Gary Frazer.įrazer said Wednesday’s proposal would restore “baseline” protections so species don’t get pushed further toward extinction. And the rules make it easier to designate areas as critical for a species’ survival, even if it is no longer found in those locations. Officials also would no longer consider economic impacts when deciding if animals and plants need protection. The blanket protections regulation was dropped in 2019 as part of a suite of changes to the application of the species law that were encouraged by industry, even as extinctions accelerate globally due to habitat loss and other pressures. Fish and Wildlife Service said it would reinstate a decades-old regulation that mandates blanket protections for species newly classified as threatened. (AP) - The Biden administration proposed bringing back rules to protect imperiled plants and animals on Wednesday as officials moved to reverse changes under former President Donald Trump that weakened the Endangered Species Act. ![]()
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