Trump Administration Seeks to Slash Habitat Protections for Endangered Wildlife

Washington, DC—Today the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service (the Services) issued a proposed rule that would undermine protections for habitat that threatened and endangered species need to survive by rescinding the agencies’ decades-old definition of “harm.” This would make protecting and recovering imperiled wildlife far more difficult, diminishing the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

One of the ESA’s primary protective measures is a prohibition on the “take” of species listed as threatened or endangered under the law. “Take” means to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect such animals.

Since 1975, the Services have defined “harm” in this context to include killing or injuring wildlife by significantly modifying or degrading habitat. Thirty years ago, in Babbitt v. Sweet Home, the US Supreme Court upheld this definition, finding it to be in accordance with the standard dictionary definition of the word, the broad purpose of the ESA, and the ESA permitting system enacted in the 1980s. 

“This definition of “harm” recognizes that wild animals cannot survive if the habitat they rely on for food, shelter, and raising young is obliterated,” said Johanna Hamburger, director and senior attorney of AWI’s Terrestrial Wildlife Program. “Under the proposed rule, destroying trees that birds need for nesting and rearing chicks, filling in wetlands that fish depend on for spawning, and paving over grasslands that reptiles require for foraging would no longer be prohibited.”

Habitat loss due to destruction, fragmentation, and degradation is the leading cause of wildlife population declines. With more than 1 million species globally at risk of extinction in the next few decades, including 27 percent of the world’s mammals, 41 percent of amphibians, 21 percent of reptiles, and 37 percent of sharks and rays, protecting habitat is vital to stemming the tide of extinction.