The HARM of Not Protecting a Species Home

June 5, 2025

Allison Cook

What is harm? Is it only when someone hurts you directly? Or perhaps, where you live too? Say someone took a wrecking ball to your house, set your yard on fire and paved a parking lot over the only home you know. That might harm your ability to perform essential life functions like breeding, feeding and sheltering, right? Well, the same thing holds true in the animal world too.

Consider you are a bald eagle and instead of destroying your house they’re cutting down the tree you’ve built your nest in over the past six years. And they’re not just cutting your tree down, but all the trees in the area. They can’t shoot you, but they’re essentially giving you a death sentence by taking away your shelter and ability to nest.

That’s essentially what the administration is proposing with rescinding the definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act regulations. It’s an attempt to remove protection for listed animals depending on particular habitats — or homes.

Endangered species cannot survive without their habitats.

Habitat destruction is one of the leading threats to ESA-listed species. In fact, over 1,200 of them are on this list because their habitats are so deeply degraded. Take the Florida Manatee who is listed as threatened under the ESA.

manatee — Manatees warming up near a power plant, Florida

These peaceful, rotund mammals lack blubber and the ability to thermoregulate. Their survival — especially during the coldest months of the year — depends on a habitat with about 72 degrees Fahrenheit water. Manatees also eat 10% of their body weight in plant matter every day, so access to healthy beds of shallow water grasses and plants is a must in their home. Yet major alterations to their habitat — from massive development along Florida’s coastlines to waters polluted with run-off, fertilizers, and leaking septic tanks and sewage so their food source dies off — has left the manatee few choices on where to go for food and shelter. In fact, their habitat has been so degraded that more than half of Florida’s manatees now rely on waters warmed by power plants to survive.

North American wolverines (threatened in the Lower 48), whooping cranes (endangered), and hundreds of others have similar stories. The waterways, forests, prairies and marshes each animal calls home is already in peril and stands to be destroyed if the Trump administration stops protecting habitat under the ESA. We cannot sacrifice our imperiled animals.

Deleting the definition of harm and signaling this fundamental and illegal policy shift demonstrates what this administration thinks of the ESA. It has little regard for wildlife or wild places. This attempt is the administration indicating their willingness to sacrifice endangered wildlife to advance its agenda. It is looking to pave the way for oil and gas, mining and logging companies to illegally disregard habitat modifications that kill species.

Public lands would be a prime target for these industrial advances. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for example, is vital for threatened polar bear populations. Oil industry activities — such as seismic testing, aircraft and vehicle noise — and even the presence of humans, can lead mother bears to abandon their dens and cubs.

The imperiled lesser prairie chicken — whose southern population is listed as endangered and northern population as threatened — is found on a few public lands including Cimarron National Grassland in Kansas and Bureau of Land Management-managed areas in New Mexico. Habitat loss, such as from energy development and agriculture, is the main reason these imperiled birds were listed.

Similar to polar bears, activities that modify or degrade the lesser prairie chicken’s home can impact their reproduction, and ability to find food and proper shelter. But because of their protection under the ESA, including harm’s definition to protect habitat, FWS has worked with private industry on a habitat conservation plan to ensure energy developers minimize and mitigate the impacts of activities that "harm" the bird.

There is hope because we can act.

Despite this attempt, the administration can’t change the law without Congress. Congress passed the ESA in 1973 “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved . . .” Clearly the protection of habitat was envisioned when the ESA was enacted.

Defenders is pushing back on this proposal and urging the administration to maintain its longstanding definition of “harm.” Join us in keeping a close eye on this. We stand ready to respond as soon as it becomes clear the administration is ignoring Congress's command to protect species and the ecosystems on which they rely. Speak out to your elected officials and express the need to maintain the longstanding definition of harm in the ESA regulations and protect our listed species homes.

From the tiny salamander that only exists in one National Park to the American Bison roaming our western grasslands, every animal plays an important role in the world as we know it. Without these animals, we risk unraveling the American fabric we’ve worked so hard to protect and restore for decades.