The Trump Administration, and the former Secretary of the Department of Interior, Ryan Zinke, are corrupt, riddled with conflicts-of-interest and under multiple-investigations. This Administration has just published final Endangered Species Act regulations. The regulations will undermine protections for our most imperiled wildlife. They will weaken biodiversity for decades and may drive species to extinction.
Yes – Zinke was fired in late December. But his replacement, David Bernhardt is no better than Zinke. In fact, Bernhardt led the crafting of these damaging regulations. And as a lobbyist, worked for dozens of companies that will benefit from weakening the Endangered Species Act.
These regulations have become final despite the overwhelming opposition of American citizens–more than 866,000 submitted comments opposing these changes. In 2017, more than 420 conservation organizations signed a letter to Congress opposing any weakening of the Endangered Species Act.
The Act has a 99 percent success rate–saving plants and animals from extinction. And it protects the last remaining wild places. Species such as bald eagles, American alligator, humpback whale, Santa Cruz island fox, Tennessee purple coneflower and many more have recovered thanks to the Act. Hundreds more species have seen an incredible resurgence including the grey wolf, Grizzly bear, black-footed ferret, and Whooping crane. In passing the Act, Congress found that, “these species of fish, wildlife, and plants are of esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the nation and its people.” Apparently the Zinke-Bernhardt Interior Department, and their corporate smash and grab friends, feel differently.
Specifically, these regulations will bias listing decisions with unreliable economic analyses; make it much more difficult to protect species impacted by climate change; make it more difficult to list a new species and easier to remove those now on the list; make it harder to designate and protect critical habitat for threatened and endangered wildlife; reduce protections for threatened species; reduce voluntary conservation incentives and weaken the consultation process.
The regulations will have real-world negative impacts for the country’s most imperiled plants and wildlife, such as the monarch butterfly, sea turtles, manatees, wolverines, and hundreds more. Some of these species were profiled in a recent report by several conservation groups, led by the Endangered Species Coalition–Extinction Plan: Ten Species Imperiled by the Trump Administration.
Why? With so many crises in America to address, why did the Trump Administration decide to harm imperiled wildlife? The Act is successful and a decade of polling has consistently shown that the American public strongly supports the Endangered Species Act–90 percent in the most recent poll. Why make it a priority to gut a successful and popular law? Because corporate industry wants it weakened and they make enormous donations to political campaigns.
We at the Endangered Species Coalition, and our members and activists, are infuriated.
What can we do now? These regulations will be final in 30 days.
Congress can hold oversight hearings, posing hard questions to the Agency staff and scientists. They can enact new legislation or impose funding restrictions–if they have the votes. We must demand our congressional representatives hold hearings and perform oversight. We must inform the public about what has happened, and how it will hurt plants and wildlife.
Most importantly, we must elect candidates in 2020 that respect nature, understand the need for biodiversity and have the intelligence to comprehend that what we do to our environment we do to ourselves. Elections matter to wildlife, too.
In light of the recent Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), assessment that we are in a biodiversity crisis and risk losing a million species over the next few decades, this is not the time to weaken the Endangered Species Act.
Please consider contacting your local newspapers and elected officials and tell them about this travesty.
More than 800,000 public comments submitted in opposition
105 Members of Congress speak out against these revisions
34 U.S. Senators speak out against these revisions
Tribal resolution opposing regulatory revisions
Ten states and the District of Columbia oppose this rollback
Summary one page document from the Center for Biological Diversity.
View the revised regulations for listing species and designating critical habitat.
View the revised regulations for prohibitions to threatened wildlife and plants.
View the revised regulations for interagency cooperation.
11 comments on “Interior finalizes Trump Extinction Plan”
USA you should be very ashamed….. humans have absolutely NO right to take everything, exterminate other species and severely damage our environment. Will there be anything good left for our grandchildren to inherit ???? What sort of damaged world will be left ? Why is the USA population not standing up and shouting out to protect endangered species and environment ? Are you all too busy buying rubbish in Walmart.
Agree
November voting cannot come to soon to save America from the idiocy of the POTUS. The so called Intelligence Committee have fed faulty information to the administration, and the proposed slashing the ESA is one more example. I fear greatly for our world; all living beings seem to be on Trump’s chopping block.
It is up to all who champion for the voiceless innocents to save each and every one. Vote, donate to organizations that focuses on saving nature’s gifts, protest against companies that use animals for research, plant pollination friendly gardens and fields, help clean up shores and waters from waste , DO SOMETHING ALONE OR WITH A GROUP!! Sustaining a truly Living Planet is up to all.
The ESA is a sound, working and needed program. There is NO excuse to not continue this program.
People are too busy trying to fathom what this president and his administration are up to on any 24 hour period of time. The “let’s keep ’em confused” tactic of this president is so effective that many people can’t tell what to believe (if anything) and what atrocities should be addressed. I want to continue to believe that the American public is kind, caring, intelligent and farsighted enough to try to protect our wild animals, so many near extinction. I believe that this administration will prostitute itself for any amount of money and do it in sneaky ways that most citizens never know. We don’t need more land to exploit; no more pipelines into untouched regions in the north, no abuse of tribal lands. We need sanity and to honor all of God’s creatures. The lessons are there. Conservation, protection, humane legislation. Not lining the pockets of corrupt politicians and those who seek control and authority to supplement what they lack as human beings. I think every school child in American should be notified that there is an attempt afoot to kill off helpless animals by the people who should fight to protect them.
Congress and Conservation organizations should do everything possible to save our endangered species. These are precious animals, and I don’t want them to become extinct just because our dumbhead President doesn’t have the brains to want to save these creatures.
THIS IS SOOOOO SAD!! OUR WILDLIFE IS BECOMING EXTINCT BECAUSE OF MAN’S GREED!!!! WE NEED DEFINITE COOPERATION AMONG ALL PEOPLE & BUSINESSES. WE NEED TO PROTECT WILDERNESS & WILDLIFE. WE MUST KEEP WILDLIFE AREAS OPEN & PROTECTION FOR ALL WILDERNESS & WILDLIFE. NOW!!!!
Partisan nonsense here undermines regular people’s support for conservation. Trump extinction plan, when extinction takes hundreds of years? The ESA has some real problems, especially with property rights and due process. Instead of fixing these issues, you advocate for keeping the flaws and damning anyone who disagrees with you. This is destructive of the goals of environmental protection
Man is the most dangerous predator on the planet. We deny that we are as much animals as our closest kin, the Chimp. Now Chimps do have their moments of violence, but unlike us, they are not Apes Gone Mad. All this .. all the endangered species, it could all be, if not reversed, held in check aggressively. Frankly I dont see much hope…Trump and his greedy buddies incomprehensibly dont seem to realize they have children and grandchildren. What kind of world will be left for them. I can just imagine the oil drilling rigs at the bottom of The Grand Canyon.
i have been holding in my rage….highly unhealthy. Im a 68 year old man and I never thought I would live to see Americas downfall into a world similar to George Orwells “Animal Farm.” I highly suggest you pick it up.Not a pretty picture. Much like our world today. Im glad that for the worst of it I wont be on the Earthly plane. A big help would to be putting back Trump where he belongs.
A glitzy marble and gold tower where (to quote Mr T himself) “the highly stable genius” has no power.
The endangered species act Must be saved! The moronic hydonistic greedy administration must be stopped. We share this planet with its animals and have no right to kill them off!
This effort to weaken the protection of animals in this world that teeter on extinction is the absolute wrong path for our country, and our humanity. With every habitat we secure for one species, we lay the path to secure an entire ecosystem securing a home for many including man. The responsibility is squarely on our shoulders to move forward, ever expanding the rights of nature to exist on even terms of humans. All of nature has a value far greater than what few laws we have to protect it. This one law is necessary, no one politician or group of corporations for profit should be able to change these protections. It is wrong and not ok! I plead to lawmakers – generate a consequence for bad actors in an eye for an eye way. They should go extinct in the same way as these animals they have no regard for. Bad actors should not be granted permission to use earth’s natural resources for profit ever again. There should be a mechanism in the world much the same as when there is a recall of a drugs in the world. If they do badly in one country they are restricted from causing the same harm in all countries. Ever expanding protections for endangered species is the better path.