Despite being on the brink of extinction, species who are protected under the Endangered Species Act now face a different threat. Recent proposals from the Trump Administration regarding the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) aim to limit the extent of the protection given to endangered and threatened species. These proposals call for changes which would limit the protections granted to threatened species and allow for economics to be considered in a species’ listing. The proposals were made in hopes of alleviating some of the conflicts that corporations in the energy industry face when their projects conflict with the interests of listed species. The federal agencies and leaders in charge of these projects must ensure they are not causing adverse effects to the species in question, or their habitat, to have their actions be approved. The ramifications of approving these proposals introduce an increased difficulty in providing listed species with the protections they need to survive.
One of the proposals focuses on changing the language used by the ESA when classifying a species as threatened and basing how much protection each threatened species gets on the severity of their danger. Threatened species are classified as a species that has the possibility of becoming endangered in “the foreseeable future.” The proposed changes would leave this part of the classification to the discretion of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on a case-by-case basis, allowing the Service to pick-and-choose which species they list as threatened. This ability to delay the listing of species enables agencies to proceed with their projects regulation-free, as any potential threatened species in their way can be deferred until their project is through. However, if a truly threatened species is looked over in the interest of moving a project forward, their decline into endangerment and possibly extinction will be expedited, with their habitat being placed in peril.
The other major change that the Trump administration’s proposal would bring about is a modification of a section in the ESA that prohibits the consideration of economic influences in determining if endangered or threatened species should be listed. The proposal aims to eliminate this piece of the ESA and allow for potential costs to be analyzed when determining a species’ status. Economic consideration moves the focus from whether a species should be protected based on biological fact to if the species’ benefits outweigh the expense of saving them. What this does not take into account is the value that biodiversity holds in human and environmental health. The variety of species on our planet provides us with important ecosystem services, the loss of which would cause the spread of disease, decreased quality of water and air, and climate change, among other things. These invaluable ecological benefits provided by biodiversity should not be threatened by the monetary value of their protection.
By proposing this change in what influences the safeguard of species, the path is paved for pipelines, fracking wells, highways, and other construction projects to proceed if it is believed they will provide more economic value than saving the species in their way. Not only are the majority of these projects harmful to the environment without acknowledging endangered species, but if given priority over those species, the projects will proceed without any insurance for species that could already be facing threats.
It is well-noted that the Trump Administration is striving to grow the oil and gas industry, and has pushed for the continuation of projects such as pipelines, fracking, and drilling. However, acts that protect the environment, such as the Endangered Species Act, have stood in the way of many of these projects continuing, and each for a good reason. These proposed changes are some of many proposals made as part of an agenda the Trump Administration has adopted to ease environmental regulations and costs to the energy industry. The success of the Administration in weakening these statutes could allow federal agencies to turn a blind eye to the environmental damage they are causing, under the preface of economic gain being of greater importance than our environment and its species’ sufferance.
The changes to be made to the ESA, as proposed by the Trump Administration, prioritize industry and economic value and will lead to endangered and threatened species losing the protections they rely on for survival. They are losing their protection all because their value as living creatures is not the right type of value for the money-focused minds of those deciding their fate.