The Trump Administration Is Putting Threatened Species In Even More Danger

By Lauren Rearick


On Monday, August 12, the Trump administration reported several intended revisions to the Endangered Species Act, which the U.S. Has followed since 1973, including a change in protection for animals listed as threatened, the Wall Street Journal reported. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently lists 319 species as threatened, including sea otters, grizzly and polar bears, leopards, lions, and most types of salmon.


Under the previous law, which gave protection to endangered animals and wildlife in the U.S. By classifying certain species as being endangered or threatened, threatened species were protected with the same measure as endangered animals. Trump’s revisions would switch that, which, as The New York Times pointed out, could result in threatened species becoming endangered.


Moreover, the administration’s changes would permit the U.S. Fish and Wild Service and the Marine Fisheries Service to imagine cost any time deciding whether an animal should be believed endangered or threatened, a new rule that conservation businesses like Earthjustice and the National Audubon Society mention could detrimentally weaken the Endangered Species Act, a law that is supported by 80 percent of Americans.


“As a whole, the rule changes are political, unwise, and will only increase litigation,” Sarah Greenberger, senior vice president for conservation policy at the National Audubon Society, mentioned in a online statement offered to MTV News. “These damaging new rules will weaken protections for imperiled species and include language that is wholly contrary to the law.”


Defenders of Wildlife, a nonprofit conservation business, expressed a similar concern in a online statement shared with MTV News, adding that the U.S. Is facing “a sixth extinction crisis,” that could only be worsened by Trump’s new ruling. “Instead of undercutting the Endangered Species Act and other bedrock environmental laws, we should be strengthening these laws to improve their effectiveness for people and wildlife,” Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, mentioned. “The sweeping changes made in these new regulations, yet, will diminish the effectiveness of the Act and further imperil species already on brink extinction.”


Nevertheless in spite of the fact that the recommended changes don't go into effect for thirty day period and won’t be applied to animals already classified as endangered or threatened, the World Wide Fund for Nature shared their concern for what the ruling could mean for the future. “The changes don't think about decades of evidence proving the Endangered Species Act’s effectiveness in conserving threatened wildlife and downplay the profound threat of climate-driven extinction,” Seth Larson, the boss of media and external affairs at WWF, said. “The US Endangered Species Act has been a model for conservation efforts globally and weakening this efficient law hamstrings US ability to help save species from extinction.”


The Associated Press reported that conservation corporations and attorney generals from at least ten states, including Massachusetts, California, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia, have threatened to take legal action against the suggested revisions.