On Dec. 1, the WSJ published an opinion editorial entitled "Trump's Tweaks Will Help Endangered Species," which egregiously understates the severity of the proposed rollbacks to the Endangered Species Act. In an effort to educate audiences on the mischaracterizations presented, we are sharing a Letter to the Editor submitted by Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. The Journal did not select the LTE for publication.
The December 1 commentary on proposed Endangered Species Act regulation revisions misdiagnoses both the problem and the cure. Beginning with the reference that only 3% of listed species have recovered enough to be delisted, we can easily point to Congress’s chronic underfunding of the very agencies charged with implementing recovery efforts. Many species are added to the list only after populations have collapsed — in fact, reports suggest that hundreds of U.S. species should be listed but are not.
The piece claims the administration’s proposed regulatory changes are “not a rollback.” That is simply incorrect. In addition to these proposals that will undermine species protection and recovery, the administration proposed repealing the longstanding definition of “harm” that includes habitat destruction under the ESA earlier this year, a rollback in plain English.
Focusing on the ESA’s “blanket rule” is also misleading. Since 1975, the USFWS has always had the discretion to apply the blanket rule or write a species-specific rule, as it has done for more than half of all threatened animal species. Moreover, the piece undermines its own argument: by acknowledging that the Biden administration issued species-specific, flexible proposals for monarchs and wolverines, it made clear that the rule already offers the flexibility sought by the law’s opponents.
The ESA moved beyond a rigid enforcement-focused model more than 40 years ago, embracing cooperative conservation with states and landowners — a model witnesses in congressional hearings just this year attested to the importance of. Without robust legal protections for threatened species, states and private parties lack incentives to undertake voluntary conservation efforts to halt and reverse population declines.
Real reform starts with resources and timely listings, then continues with science and collaboration. The antithesis of recovery would be weakening the very tools that have kept nearly 99% of listed species from disappearing and put hundreds of them on the road to recovery.
Author
