The Trump administration is moving to effectively eliminate a crucial protection in the half-century-old Endangered Species Act by redefining a single word: harm.
A proposed rule, issued on Wednesday from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, would repeal a longstanding interpretation of what it means to harm imperiled plants and animals to exclude the destruction of habitat.
The move is part of a plan by President Trump to increase drilling, logging and development in the United States, and to eliminate regulations that slow the issuance of permits.
Administration officials called the current definition of harm to endangered species overly broad, siding with businesses that have long argued that the language imposes a burden. They called for a more narrow interpretation, saying that species should be protected only from intentional killing or injury, like through hunting or trapping.
Habitat loss is the single biggest reason that many species face extinction. Environmental advocates said the changes would make it all but impossible to protect the forests, grasslands, rivers and other habitats that threatened species rely upon to survive. “The vast majority of imperiled wildlife listed as endangered or threatened under the ESA are there because of loss of habitat,” said Andrew Bowman, president and chief executive of Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental group, using an abbreviation for the Endangered Species Act.
Mr. Bowman and others described the proposal as the most significant setback to date for the Endangered Species Act, which was signed into law in 1973 by President Richard Nixon.
Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife and oceans at Earthjustice, an environmental law organization, said the change fundamentally weakens the way the United States has protected species for decades.
The Endangered Species Act prohibits actions that “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect” endangered plants and animals. The word “harm” has long been interpreted to mean not just the direct killing of a species, but also severe harm to their environment. Building a dam, for example, might make it impossible for salmon in a river to survive.
In 1995 the Supreme Court upheld that interpretation, ruling against property owners who had claimed that while the law prohibited them from killing protected wildlife outright, it should not prevent activities like logging that would indirectly endanger plants and animals.
Since then, industry groups and many Republicans in Congress have sought to change the definition of harm. Industry representatives “want to get rid of this definition so they can make the argument that unless you actually put a gun to a species and kill it,” Mr. Caputo said, “your activity is perfectly legal under the Endangered Species Act.”
Oil-industry advocates welcomed the proposed change.
Kathleen Sgamma, the head of an energy-industry organization who recently withdrew her nomination to lead the Bureau of Land Management under the Trump administration, said the current definition had become a way to stop development. “With a plain-language definition of ‘harm,’ ESA could get back to protecting species rather than locking away lands that may or may not be habitat to stop projects that won’t actually harm species,” she said.
Members of the public will have 30 days to submit comments on the proposal before it is finalized.
Catrin Einhorn contributed reporting.
