The state of Texas is challenging a Fish and Wildlife Service decision to protect seven freshwater mussels in a legal fight that environmentalists now hope to join.
Citing fears that the Trump administration might buckle in its defense of the mussels’ Endangered Species Act protections, the Center for Biological Diversity has filed its latest motion to intervene in the Texas lawsuit. It’s a tactic intended to defend a federal agency decision that’s potentially vulnerable to a change in presidents and agency leadership.
“The risk of diverging interests is even greater in this case because the current administration has taken numerous actions demonstrating that its priorities are not aligned with the Center’s on saving endangered species or protecting their habitat,” Center for Biological Diversity senior attorney Lindsay Reeves wrote in the motion to intervene filed on May 23.
Reeves noted what recently happened in another ESA case, involving the lesser prairie chicken. Facing a challenge by the state of Texas to the listing of the species under the ESA, the Trump administration on May 7 shifted its legal position. Instead of continuing to defend the agency’s action, the government attorneys asked a judge to vacate the Fish and Wildlife Service’s own 2022 listing rule.
