Proposals that would curtail protections for endangered species and change safeguards for grizzly bears in the West last week entered White House review.
Under one proposal submitted by the Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries, the agencies that oversee management of endangered species have proposed potentially significant reductions in the scope of protections for imperiled animals and plants that hinge on the definition of one word: “harm.”
The Endangered Species Act prohibits the “take” of endangered species, which includes killing, harassing, pursuing, capturing and other direct impacts to wildlife. But for decades, the agencies’ regulations have also included a prohibition against “harm” to those same species that also includes second-order injuries, such as habitat destruction that can lead to the injury or death of wildlife or affect a species’s survival by impairing reproduction, shelter or the ability to feed.
While a mid-1990s U.S. Supreme Court case upheld the FWS definition of harm, the Trump administration last year cited a dissent from conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and proposed removing those added protections.
