The 119th Congress: Playing Politics with Extinction

The Armed Forces Endangered Species Exemption Act would, as its title indicates, broadly exempt the U.S. military from compliance with the ESA. The bill seeks to:  

1. Prohibit the Secretary of the Interior or Commerce from designating any military installations or testing areas as critical habitat,
2. Exempt the Secretary of Defense from consulting with the Secretary of the Interior under Section 7(a)(2) of the ESA to ensure that Defense Department (DoD) actions are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of a listed species or destroy its critical habitat, and
3. Exempt military personnel engaged in national defense-related operations, including research, weapons testing, training, or any action that the Secretary of Defense deems necessary, from prohibitions on taking listed species in Section 9 of the ESA.  

H.R. 65 would thus carve out a massive loophole in the ESA for virtually any military activity, including activities of industrial contractors and subcontractors, exposing the almost 500 threatened and endangered species occurring on DoD land to unrestricted harm and possible extinction. The lands managed by the DoD are an essential component of our nation’s biodiversity and represent a vast array of unique habitats like old-growth forest, tall-grass prairie, coastal beaches, wetlands, and more, making military installations a haven for fish, plants, and wildlife. Public access to many of these sites is limited due to security and safety concerns, sheltering them from disturbance and development.    

This bill is based on the faulty premise that the military is incapable of safeguarding both our national security and endangered species. There is no evidence to support this belief; in fact, the Department of Defense has worked in successful partnership with FWS, NMFS, and state wildlife agencies to conserve fish and wildlife resources on military lands under the ESA and the Sikes Act for decades. Exempting the DoD and its many industrial contractors from compliance with the ESA puts our nation’s natural legacy at needless risk 

The American Sovereignty and Species Protection Act would prohibit the Secretary of the Interior or Commerce from listing species that are not native to the United States, drastically undermining the ESA’s commitment to the conservation of imperiled species around the world. Listing foreign species under the ESA provides important protections that are vital to international conservation, including protections against their commercial exploitation through trade and prohibitions on harming them in the United States or on the high seas. Listing foreign species also triggers the authority provided in section 8 of the ESA for the United States to provide financial assistance to foreign countries for development and management of conservation programs. Prohibiting the listing of foreign species would tie the United States’ hands in international conservation.

Without the protections offered by an ESA listing, foreign species on the brink of extinction could be hunted and killed overseas and then imported as trophies, and live specimens could be imported into the U.S. for breeding. Roadside zoos and captive hunting ranches could mistreat, breed, and commercialize these species without oversight and without regard for their welfare and genetic health. This bill would incentivize wildlife trafficking around the world, including by organized criminal and terrorist groups, and could greatly expand the trade both domestically and globally in both living and dead imperiled species. The federal government would lose a valuable tool in promoting conservation of imperiled species abroad.

In addition to undercutting the United States’ ability to engage in international conservation, the bill would allow the operators of hunting preserves in the United States to offer paying customers the opportunity to hunt imperiled foreign species. Under section 9 of the ESA, it is illegal to take listed species, including foreign species, in the United States, but if foreign species were barred from being listed, they could be hunted legally on such game reserves even if critically imperiled.

H.R. 94 would also impair the ability of the United States to engage in conservation efforts to protect species that are native to the United States as well as other countries, like jaguars and many species of migratory birds. 

The Less Imprecision in Species Treatment Act, or the “LIST" Act, increases the risk of incorrectly delisting imperiled species while simultaneously deterring the public from petitioning to list other species that are imperiled. The ESA currently requires that the same process and criteria be used to both list and delist a species, i.e., by making a determination based on the best scientific and commercial data available regarding the five listing factors under section 4(a)(1). The courts have held that those factors, and not other considerations such as the goals of recovery plans, must form the basis for any decision to list or delist.    

The LIST Act, however, directs the Secretary to delist species if the Department of the Interior has produced or received substantial information demonstrating that the species “is recovered” or that the goals of a recovery plan for a species have been met regardless of the statutory factors set forth in section 4(a). This change would subvert the integrity of the ESA because the delisting process would no longer require a methodical review of the listing factors to ensure that a listed species is not threatened or endangered, elevating recovery goals above the statutory factors that determine whether a species is threatened or endangered. However, FWS and NMFS have long viewed recovery plans as non-binding guidance documents. Moreover, many recovery plans are more than 20 years old, and the recovery goals for at least 130 species inexplicably set recovery goals with fewer populations or individuals than existed at the time these species were determined to be at-risk enough to merit protection under the ESA, indicating that many recovery plans are at odds with conservation science. Yet the bill dispenses with rulemaking requirements intended to ensure public transparency and reliability of agency information, directing that the Secretary only publish a notice that a species is being removed rather than undertaking the notice-and-comment procedures required with a proposed delisting regulation, as now required by the ESA.  

The LIST Act also establishes a one-sided process for delisting based on the false premise that many species are erroneously listed. The bill would allow for cursory delistings if the Secretary determines, based on information submitted by third parties or developed by the Department of the Interior (oddly omitting the Department of Commerce, which shares responsibility for implementing the ESA), that the species was listed based on information that was “inaccurate beyond scientifically reasonable margins of error,” fraudulent, or misrepresentative. If the Secretary determines that the listing was less than likely to have occurred absent such information, the species would be cursorily delisted (without consideration of the statutory factors in section 4(a)(1) and without a public rulemaking process) and that determination would not be subject to judicial review. By contrast, a decision by the Secretary that finds that the original listing was not based on inaccurate, fraudulent or misrepresentative information would be subject to judicial review by parties interested in forcing the delisting of the species. These judicial review provisions blatantly stack the odds in favor of wrongly removing protections for threatened and endangered species.  

Finally, in an apparent attempt to limit citizen petitions, the bill would punish a person who submitted a listing petition containing any information later determined to be inaccurate beyond scientifically reasonable margins of error, fraudulent, or misrepresentative by prohibiting the person from submitting future petitions for ten years. The prospect of a politically driven inquiry into their motives may deter parties from submitting listing petitions that contain legitimate information. There is no evidence of widespread errors in the listing of species or the submission of fraudulent information by petitioners to warrant setting up such intrusive and one-sided processes for invalidation of listings. 

The so-called “Trust the Science Act” directs the Secretary of the Interior to reissue the final rule published November 3, 2020, delisting the gray wolf within 60 days of enactment. The bill bars judicial review of the Secretary’s action delisting the wolf.  

The gray wolf is an iconic keystone species that plays a vital role in keeping ecosystems healthy. Gray wolf populations in the United States were decimated by decades of predator control programs, as well as loss of habitat and prey. Since receiving protection under the ESA in 1974, the gray wolf has begun a comeback but remains far from recovered. The rule that H.R. 130 would reinstate was hastily issued by the FWS at the end of the Trump administration to delist gray wolves in 44 states. The rule was challenged by conservation organizations and vacated by a federal district court in February 2022.  The court found that the delisting decision improperly relied on two core populations to delist wolves nationally, failed to provide a reasonable interpretation of what constitutes a “significant” portion of the species’ range, ignored the fact that the ancestry of West Coast wolves was distinct from northern Rockies wolves, and did not consider the impact of lost historical range on gray wolves.  

By forcing the reinstatement of the Trump administration’s scientifically indefensible delisting rule, the ironically named “Trust the Science Act” undermines the scientific integrity of the ESA. The intent of the bill to shield the FWS’s flawed scientific reasoning from inquiry is made clear by the bill’s preclusion of judicial review, undermining the rule of law that holds government officials accountable in the courts.   

The “Endangered Species Transparency and Reasonableness Act,” H.R. 180, would subvert the ESA’s bedrock requirement that listing decisions be based on sound science by simply declaring that all information submitted by state, tribal or county governments must be considered as the best scientific and commercial data available, irrespective of its actual merit. The ESA already encourages governments to submit information that may aid the Services in making listing decisions. That information is assessed, like any other, for its accuracy and reliability. Under this provision, information of any quality provided by state, tribal, and county governments – even data that are flatly wrong – would be presumed equivalent, if not superior, to peer-reviewed research from leading species experts.  

H.R. 180 also would establish burdensome procedural requirements for listing species, requiring the Secretary to publish on the internet and provide to the states all data that are the basis for each proposed listing under the ESA. The FWS and NMFS already must fully describe the basis for any listing in proposed and final rules published in the Federal Register and give actual notice of proposed listing regulations to affected states and counties. The bill would also create a loophole in its requirements for transparency by exempting information that is subject to state privacy laws, potentially encouraging states to pass laws shielding commercial data from public inspection to appease special interests.  

Moreover, the bill would attempt to discourage or intimidate the public from challenging agency actions by requiring a broad range of federal agencies to report annual expenditures on ESA-related litigation, including whether any plaintiffs received federal funding, and limiting attorneys’ fees for persons suing under the Act by substituting the reduced fees available under the Equal Access to Justice Act for the Act’s longstanding authorization of full market-based fees for prevailing parties.

H.R. 181 would undermine the central purpose of the ESA by prohibiting the Secretary from distinguishing between naturally propagated animals and artificially propagated animals in making determinations under the Act. The bill adds a new Section 14 to the ESA that directs the Secretary to authorize the use of artificial propagation of animals of a species for purposes of any mitigation required under the Act with respect to such species.  

Controlled propagation is an essential tool in the conservation of imperiled species, expressly authorized by Section 3(3) of the ESA. Propagation is used by FWS, NMFS and other conservation agencies to maintain genetic diversity in small, isolated populations, to permit scientific research, to supplement wild populations and to recover depleted populations in secure settings before reintroducing them to the wild. But as the FWS and NMFS noted in adopting a formal policy governing the use of controlled propagation, 65 FR 56916 (September 20, 2010), the central purpose of the ESA is to conserve the ecosystems on which endangered and threatened species depend, and “controlled propagation is not a substitute for addressing factors responsible for an endangered or threatened species' decline.” The Services declared that their “first priority” is “to recover wild populations in their natural habitat wherever possible, without resorting to the use of controlled propagation.” Moreover, as the FWS/NMFS policy makes clear, the use of propagation must be carefully controlled to avoid transmission of disease or genetic release into wild populations that may harm their survival.  

H.R. 181 would force the Services to abandon their carefully controlled approach to propagation as a conservation tool, forbidding the Secretary from making any distinction between artificial propagation and natural propagation and requiring approval of artificial propagation whenever mitigation is required under the ESA. Even more alarming, the sweeping language of H.R. 181 would force the Secretary to treat artificially propagated animals as if they were wild in making listing determinations and in determining when species have recovered. Sufficient numbers of fish in a hatchery or of animals in a zoo could, under this bill, preclude listing such species or force their delisting even when they cannot survive in the wild. The bill would thus destroy the central purpose of the ESA – conserving the habitats on which endangered and threatened species depend so that species can thrive in the wild.  

H.R. 281 requires the Secretary of the Interior to reissue a 2017 rule delisting the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) population of grizzly bears and bars judicial review of the reissued rule. As described below, this 2017 delisting rule was held unlawful by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Subsequently, FWS issued a January 8, 2025, species status assessment and proposed rule regarding grizzly bears in the “Lower 48” states. There, FWS, – which must base its decisions on the best available science, found that GYE grizzlies should remain listed as threatened. H.R. 281 would override FWS’s science-based recognition that GYE grizzlies still need federal protection.  

The grizzly bear is an iconic species of the American west, and its survival is one of the success stories of the ESA. The grizzly bear’s decline from habitat loss and suppression through overhunting and heavy-handed predator control programs was one of the factors prompting enactment of the ESA, and grizzly bears in the contiguous United States were listed as threatened soon after enactment. FWS has identified six recovery zones in the continental United States; the bear is primarily found today in four of the six recovery zones, including a substantial population in the GYE. The grizzly bear population in the GYE is stable and has expanded into historic habitat outside the recovery zone, but conservationists remain concerned about the geographic and genetic isolation of the GYE population. In addition, there is a threat of increased human-induced mortality through future hunting or predator control if they were delisted and management is returned to the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, and the effects of delisting particular populations on grizzly bears in the rest of the lower-48 states.  

FWS attempted to delist the GYE population of grizzly bears in 2017. Its delisting rule, which H.R. 281 would reinstate legislatively, was vacated by a federal district court in 2018, and its decision was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The district court found that the FWS had not sufficiently assessed the effect of delisting the GYE population on the recovery of grizzly bears in the rest of the lower-48 States; that FWS and the states had not committed to recalibrate potential new population estimators in the future to ensure the ongoing applicability of the 2016 GYE Conservation Strategy’s mortality limits in the event hunting was authorized following delisting; and that FWS had inadequately analyzed the genetic health of the GYE grizzly bear population. FWS’s January 8, 2025, response to delisting petitions by Montana and Wyoming evaluated those issues, among other conservation concerns, and determined that delisting the GYE population is not warranted.  

H.R. 281 attempts to override the careful scientific and regulatory review of the GYE grizzly bear status, superimposing Congress’s political judgment for science and undercutting decades of work towards restoration. By barring judicial review, it precludes the vital check and balance that the courts provide to ensure that agency decisions properly consider the best available science and comport with the law.  

H.R. 587, the “Promoting Local Management of the Lesser Prairie Chicken Act”, amends Section 4 of the ESA to prohibit the Secretary from listing any population of the lesser prairie chicken in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, or New Mexico as threatened or endangered, and directs the Secretary to delist the populations of that species in those states.  

The lesser prairie chicken is a species in the grouse family that once ranged widely across the Southern Great Plains of the United States. It has lost between 83-90% of its habitat to various forms of development, including oil and gas production, and its population has declined by as much as 99% in some ecoregions as a result.  In 2014 the FWS listed the species as threatened under the ESA, but the listing was vacated in 2015 following legal challenges.  

On November 25, 2022, the FWS determined that the lesser prairie chicken’s range was divided into two distinct population segments (DPSs). It found that the primary threat impacting both DPSs is the ongoing loss of large, connected blocks of grassland and shrubland habitat. The agency determined that the southern population segment in New Mexico and Texas has low resiliency, redundancy, and representation and is particularly vulnerable to severe droughts due to being located in the dryer and hotter southwestern portion of the range. The FWS accordingly listed the southern DPS as endangered. The FWS found that the northern population segment in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas still retained redundancy and genetic and environmental representation across its range, but because it faced continued habitat loss and fragmentation that put it at risk of extinction listed the northern DPS as threatened. The agency described the scientific basis for its determinations in an extensive discussion in the published rule. FWS also promulgated a special rule under Section 4(d) of the ESA that allows for continued agriculture, prescribed fire, and grazing in the northern DPS, listed as threatened.  

H.R. 587 reverses the FWS’s listing decision for the lesser prairie chicken and creates uncertainty about whether the Secretary can list the imperiled bird species in the future. The bill overrides the scientific and factual findings that underlie the FWS’s determination that the species faces an imminent risk of extinction in the southern portion of its range and longer-term risks to its survival in the northern DPS that warrant listing the species. H.R. 587 substitutes Congress’s judgment for that of the expert wildlife agency without explanation or rational basis and establishes a terrible precedent for Congressional interference in the science-based conservation of imperiled species under the ESA.  

The Forest Information Reform Act, H.R. 598, would amend the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974 and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 to exempt the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from being required to reinitiate consultation on a land management plan when a new species is listed, critical habitat is designated, or new information concerning a listed species or critical habitat becomes available. The bill seeks to reverse a 2015 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Cottonwood Environmental v. U.S. Forest Service (“Cottonwood”), which held that the Forest Service must reinitiate consultation on its forest plans where new critical habitat is designated for a listed species.  

The National Forest system comprises almost 197 million acres of federally managed forests and grasslands; BLM manages an additional 245 million acres of public lands. Together, the two agencies manage almost 20% of the U.S. land base. The Forest Service and BLM manage their lands through land management plans developed through a public process and through project level actions that implement those plans. The agencies consult with the FWS and NMFS under Section 7 of the ESA when adopting land management plans to assess whether their plans may affect listed species; they also consult when they propose project-level actions that may affect listed species.  

Under FWS and NMFS regulations, federal agencies are required to reinitiate consultation regarding actions over which they retain discretionary involvement or control when:  

1. The amount or extent of taking specified in an incidental take statement is exceeded;  
2. New information on the species or action reveals effects of the action that may affect species or critical habitat in a manner or to an extent not previously considered;  
3. The identified action is sufficiently modified in a manner that causes an effect to the listed species or critical habitat that was not considered in the biological opinion or written concurrence; or  
4. A new species is listed or critical habitat designated that may be affected by the identified action.  

The requirement to reinitiate consultation in these circumstances reflects the continuing obligation of federal agencies under Section 7 of the ESA to “insure” that their actions, including actions being carried out, are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any listed species or result in the destruction of their critical habitat.  

Applying these regulations, the Ninth Circuit held in Cottonwood that the Forest Service must reinitiate consultation with the FWS regarding the effects of forest plans on Canada lynx after the FWS designated additional critical habitat for the species in Montana, North Dakota, northern Idaho, and northwest South Dakota. The court held that the Forest Service retained discretionary involvement or control over its forest plans, including the ability to amend them to address new circumstances.  

In 2018, Congress enacted legislation that modified how the Cottonwood decision applies to forest plans and certain BLM land use plans. The FY 2018 Consolidated Appropriations Cct included an amendment to exempt the Forest Service from reinitiating consultation for previously adopted forest plans when new species are listed or critical habitat is designated. This exemption does not apply if 15 years have passed since the forest plan was adopted and 5 years have passed since the FY 2018 appropriations bill was enacted (March 23, 2018) or the date of the new species listing or critical habitat designation, whichever is later. Since many forest plans are more than 15 years old, this provision effectively postponed the requirement of reinitiation of consultation for species or critical habitat designations for such plans. It also applies only to certain BLM land use plans (previously adopted plans for Oregon and California Railroad grant lands and Coos Bay Wagon Road grant lands).  

H.R. 598 would greatly expand the statutory exemption created by Congress in 2018. First, the bill extends the 2018 statutory exemption to cover not just the listing of species or designation of critical habitat but also the discovery of new information that reveals that the impacts of land management plans on listed species or critical habitat is greater than understood when the plans were adopted. Second, the bill extends the exemption to all Forest Service and BLM land management plans. Third, the bill discards any time limits on the exemption.    

H.R. 598 thus would allow the Forest Service and BLM to blind themselves to the existence of newly listed species or newly designated critical habitat and to ignore new information about the impacts of their land use management plans on existing species or critical habitat, even if such information reveals sharply increased risks to endangered and threatened species. The Forest Service and BLM would continue to be required to evaluate the impacts on species from project level actions that they undertake, but critical land use allocations typically made during the planning process, such as designation of areas within National Forests or BLM land units for logging or other resource extraction or for off-road vehicle use, would escape review under the ESA when new species are listed, critical habitat is designated or new information reveals additional risks to endangered or threatened species, potentially threatening the existence of imperiled species in those areas.  

More broadly, the most efficient and effective way for federal land management agencies and the wildlife services to assess the effects of their programs on listed species and critical habitat is at the plan level, where cumulative effects of a land unit’s proposed management over a decade or more can meaningfully be assessed and mitigation developed at the planning unit scale. Project level evaluation can then be efficiently tiered to the analysis in the larger plan, minimizing duplicative effort; this tiered approach to environmental reviews is widely accepted and effective under the National Environmental Policy Act. But without consideration at the plan level, the impacts of a multitude of implementing actions – timber sales, road building, oil and gas permitting, off-road vehicle recreation – may be lost in the details of specific decisions, threatening endangered species and their habitat with death by a thousand cuts.  

H.R. 471, the “Fix Our Forests Act”, is ostensibly about forest management and fire, but in reality, rolls back the ESA and NEPA on millions of acres of federal lands; removes science from land management decisions; and stifles citizen voices. Its sweeping provisions remove standards and environmental accountability in service of the short-term interests of extractive industries, which will likely exacerbate wildfires and harm imperiled wildlife. The bill contains essentially no provisions to maintain, or even consider, the long-term health and resilience for millions of acres of public lands. It would leave these areas open to unlimited logging and divert resources from protecting communities and implementing smart wildfire strategies now underway, while providing no funding to carry out its mandates or activities necessary to increase community resilience. This is yet another example of industry and its congressional allies using popular ideas like 'forest management' as a trojan horse for weakening environmental laws and forest protections that ultimately benefit their profits, not the public.

Section 122 of the bill guts the ESA by broadly exempting the Forest Service and BLM from the regulatory requirement under Section 7 of the ESA to reinitiate consultation when new information indicates that implementation of land management plans may be harming threatened or endangered species in a manner that was not previously anticipated. Reinitiation of consultation at the forest plan level is imperative because it provides the only mechanism to change management practices and apply them uniformly at the landscape scale, thereby avoiding extinction-by-a-thousand-cuts from consultation that occurs solely at the project level. Re-initiation of plan-level consultation is not burdensome, as its opponents claim. An analysis of the Forest Service’s own data shows that reinitiation of consultation for new information has occurred 10 times since 2011, or on average once per year.  

Even as national forests suffer more and more effects from the worsening climate crisis, this provision in Section 122 of H.R. 471 would exempt the Forest Service from modifying forest plans to protect listed species from changing climate conditions or other changed conditions. For more information on the importance of reinitiation of consultation, see the discussion provided above on H.R. 598, the Forest Information Reform Act.  

H.R. 845, the “Pets and Livestock Protection Act” is identical to the gray wolf delisting bill H.R. 130, the “Trust the Science Act”, but with a rebranded title that appears to be based on the false pretense that wolves are a danger to household pets and livestock. The bill’s title perpetuates the harmful and false “big bad wolf” myth to gain support for the bill by insinuating that delisting the gray wolf and thus opening their populations to hunting will protect companion and livestock animals.  

In reality, wolves do not pose a significant threat to pets, livestock, or people. Wolf depredation accounts for less than 0.01% of livestock fatalities annually, and attacks on household pets are just as, if not more, rare. In fact, cattle are more likely to die from a lightning strike than from a wolf attack. Further, ongoing coexistence programs at Defenders and other organizations, which deploy livestock guardian dogs, range riders, fladry, and other deterrent methods, work to reduce these already-low livestock-wolf conflicts and enable people and wildlife to continue sharing landscapes. When rare depredations do occur, however, ranchers are fairly compensated for their losses. The notion that wolves pose a serious, unaddressed danger to cattle, cats, or dogs, is false.  

See further discussion above regarding H.R. 130, an identical bill introduced by Rep. Boebert to delist the gray wolf.  

H.R 840 would remove the threatened or endangered status and critical habitat designations for seven freshwater mussel species – the Guadalupe fatmucket (Lampsilis bergmanni), Guadalupe orb (Cyclonaias necki), Texas pimpleback (Cyclonaias petrina), Texas fatmucket (Lampsilis bracteata), Texas fawnsfoot (Truncilla macrodon), Balcones spike (Fusconaia iheringi), and false spike (Fusconaia mitchelli) – leaving these imperiled species with no federal protection.    

Native to the Brazos, Colorado, Trinity, and Guadalupe River basins in central Texas, these small mollusks may be easily overlooked, but play an outsized role in fulfilling a variety of important ecological needs. Mussels are reliable indicators of water quality, filter water to keep it clean (a single mussel can purify up to 20 gallons of water per day) and support diverse aquatic communities that are beneficial for salmon, lamprey, and other native fish. Despite their importance to our aquatic ecosystems, freshwater mussels are one of the most imperiled taxa in the United States, with over 70% of species native to the U.S. at risk of extinction in the near future.

The seven species that H.R. 840 seeks to erase ESA protections for are particularly vulnerable. The Guadalupe fatmucket, for example, has only one known population with very few individuals left due to historic water diversions, drought, pollution, and the introduction of invasive species. The Balcones spike has only three known remaining populations left, comprising less than 3 percent of the species’ known historical range, which are steadily decreasing each year without ESA protections. These mussels will likely face extinction soon without federal intervention under the ESA.  

After an almost 20-year fight to protect the seven imperiled mussels and their dwindling habitat under the ESA, H.R. 840 would strip all ESA protections for them – both their statuses as threatened or endangered and critical habitat designations – despite the sound science and commercial data these decisions were based on.    

H.R. 1150, the "Sturgeon Protected and Exempt from Absurd Regulations (SPEAR) Act of 2025”, would exempt lake sturgeon populations in Wisconsin from receiving ESA protections, even if the species is listed as threatened or endangered everywhere else in the United States. The SPEAR Act disregards the FWS’s positive 90-day finding that an ESA listing for lake sturgeon may be warranted throughout its entire range – including Wisconsin. Indeed, the SPEAR Act rewrites the Endangered Species Act itself to preclude lake sturgeon in Wisconsin from ever being listed, no matter how dire their circumstances or close to extinction they become. Lake sturgeon populations in the United States have declined an astonishing 99 percent over the past century and have been completely extirpated in many of their historical spawning grounds.

If passed, this bill could set a dangerous precedent allowing politicians to pick and choose which species are afforded ESA protections in their state, even if their reasoning is not based on the best available science. Granting state-specific exemptions would blatantly undermine the authority of the Endangered Species Act, which is designed to provide consistent and robust protection for imperiled species across the entire country. More generally, amending the ESA to grant species-by-species or state-by-state exemptions would set the stage for further attacks and, as exemptions pile up, would prevent it from meeting its mandate to protect imperiled species from extinction, no matter the cost.  

Further, species do not adhere to state boundaries. Allowing exemptions in one state could disrupt conservation efforts that span multiple states, leading to delayed species recovery and inefficient use of the limited resources provided for ESA implementation. The ESA already contains sufficient flexibility through designations of distinct population segments or 4(d) rules to allow responsible harvesting of some populations when appropriate, but those decisions should always be based on scientific judgment rather than political interference.

The SPEAR Act would not only set a precedent allowing states to undermine the ESA, but also harm lake sturgeon in Wisconsin, which the USFWS found may require ESA protection to prevent its extinction.   

H.R. 1897, the “ESA Amendments Act of 2025”, is one of the worst-ever attempts to gut the Endangered Species Act by demolishing many of its core tenets, warping its foundational reliance on the best available science, increasing the potential for political interference, and drastically reducing protections for imperiled species.  

There are numerous provisions in the bill that would lead to significantly decreased protections for imperiled species, ultimately condemning them to continued slow declines and challenges. More specifically, among other things, this disastrous bill would:  

• Upend the consultation process—the cornerstone of American species protection for 50 years;  
• Slow listings to a crawl and fast-track delistings;  
• Gut review of permits that allow ESA-listed species to be harmed or killed;
• Treat those permits like applications to the “God Squad” and exempt them from critical ESA review even if the permits pave the path to extinction;  
• Allow much more take of threatened species and shift their management out of federal hands, even while they are still federally listed;  
• Allow more sport hunting in the guise of “conservation;”  
• Substitute politics for science-based decision making;  
• Increase the role of ineffective voluntary conservation measures;  
• Erode public accountability in wildlife management; and  
• Attack rules intended to protect threatened and endangered species.
   

If passed, the “ESA Amendments Act of 2025” would dramatically weaken our nation’s most powerful conservation tool, pushing imperiled species closer to the brink of extinction instead of following the Act’s original intent to recover these species. 

H.R. 1894, the “Federally Integrated Species Health (FISH) Act”, transfers authority over anadromous species (fish such as salmon that spawn in fresh or estuarine waters and migrate to ocean waters) and catadromous species (fish such as eels that spawn in ocean waters and migrate to fresh or estuarine waters) under the ESA from NMFS to FWS. The bill would thus reverse the allocation of responsibility for such species established by Congress when it enacted the ESA (adopting a 1970 reorganization plan implemented by the Nixon administration). Under that original allocation of responsibility, NMFS has administered the ESA with respect to Pacific salmon and most other anadromous and catadromous species for fifty years. It has developed substantial scientific and administrative expertise with respect to such species.  

Development interests have for years expressed concerns with NMFS’s approach to management of salmon species, contending that NMFS is generally more restrictive than FWS. But there is no basis for their apparent assumption that the FWS would make more lenient decisions than NMFS regarding listing of fish species or the mitigation appropriate for federal agency actions affecting listed fish species. Moreover, the sweeping transfer of all authority over anadromous and catadromous species to FWS would disrupt the functioning of the ESA and impose a sharply increased administrative and scientific burden on FWS. H.R. 1894 does not address the resource burdens that it would create for the FWS, which is already stretched thin in carrying out its responsibilities under the ESA.   

S. 171, like its companion bill H.R. 587, would amend Section 4 of the ESA to prohibit the Secretary from listing any population of the lesser prairie chicken in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, or New Mexico as threatened or endangered, and directs the Secretary to delist the populations of that species in those states. See the discussion provided regarding H.R. 587 above. 

S. 316 would require the Secretary of the Interior to reissue a 2017 rule delisting the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) population of grizzly bears and bars judicial review of the reissued rule. S. 316 is the Senate companion bill to H.R. 281. See the discussion provided regarding H.R. 281 above.