On Wednesday, the Trump administration proposed a rule to redefine what it means to “harm” a protected species under the endangered species law, a movement of environmentalists say that vulnerable plants and habitat animals need to survive.
The proposal put forward by the American Fish and Fauna and the National Marine Fisheries Service service would limit the meaning to take direct measures to kill or injure fauna in danger or threaten – by eliminating the prohibition against the destruction of the habitat which leads to these purposes. It corresponds to the intention of White House officials to stimulate economic growth by reducing regulations.
If adopted, change could considerably reduce the scope of the endangered species law, adopted in 1973 under former President Nixon. He would also flout a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of 1995 which confirmed the definition of damage to include “a significant modification or degradation of the habitat”.
“What they offer, it is enough to fundamentally upset the way in which we have protected the endangered species in this country,” said Noah Greenwald, an endangered species co -director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group.
According to Greenwald, the previous definition prevented acts such as reducing old forest bands in northern California and the North West of the Pacific where the spotted owls of the North threatened the federal government. Or fill in a wetland inhabited by red leg frogs, the California state amphibian also threatened by the federal government.
Under the proposed meaning, it would take something like the real shot of an owl to qualify, he said.
“I think there would just be much more room for wood companies to record their homeless habitat,” he said. Given the precipitous decline of OWLS in recent decades, “it could potentially be the nail in the coffin,” he added.
The concept of prejudice in the endangered species law is wrapped in its prohibition to “take”, which means “harass, injure, pursue, chase, pull, hurt, kill, trap, capture or collect” a species protected by law.
“This has meaning in the light of the well -established and secular understanding of” taking “as a meaning to kill or capture a wild animal,” wrote FWS and NMFs by offering the revision, adding that the current regulations “do not correspond to the only one sense of the status”.
Publication of the proposed rule in the federal register – set for Thursday – triggers a 30 -day public commentary period. Once the public comments have been analyzed, a final rule could be issued in a few months.
If the change is made, Greenwald said that his group would dispute him in court.
The proposed change comes in the middle of a wave of actions from the Trump administration to put pressure for more development and extraction of resources on public land, which, according to environmentalists, harm fauna, among other deleterious effects.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration ordered the immediate expansion of wood production in the United States, it was followed by an emergency declaration by the US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins forcing US forest service to open around 112.5 million acres of national forest land for forest operations.
An interior secretary from the February secretary Doug Burgum ordered its staff to examine and perhaps modify the national monuments within the framework of a thrust to extend American energy production.
California Daily Newspapers
