Trump administration narrows Endangered Species Act habitat protections

The Trump administration on Friday finalized a rule narrowing a core protection under the Endangered Species Act, a move that will allow logging, mining, oil and gas drilling and other development in critical wildlife habitat as long as listed animals are not directly killed or injured.

The rule changes how federal agencies interpret the word “harm” under the 1973 law. For decades, the government treated harm as including damage to places that threatened and endangered species need to live, feed and reproduce. The new interpretation removes habitat modification from that definition, limiting the prohibition to actions that directly injure or kill protected wildlife.

Administration officials said the change restores the law to its original intent and responds to a 2024 Supreme Court decision that limited the authority of federal agencies to interpret environmental statutes passed by Congress. The Department of the Interior and Department of Commerce described the previous definition as “regulatory intrusion that interfered with private property rights.”

“For years, federal agencies abused the ESA to obstruct lawful land use and burden American families and businesses,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. He said the earlier protections “turned routine activity into a regulatory trap.” Officials said in their announcement that “actions that directly injure or kill listed wildlife will continue to be prohibited.”

Environmental groups said the rollback could accelerate extinction by exposing essential habitat to destruction. Habitat loss is considered the strongest driver of species decline, according to wildlife advocates, and the Endangered Species Act has been credited with helping bring back species including the bald eagle, American alligator and California condor from the brink.

“This is one of the most horrific attempts to harm wildlife in American history and a gift to the oil barons and foreign mining companies,” said Aaron Weiss, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities.

Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles said the administration’s interpretation marks a major break from decades of enforcement. “For the first time ever, a presidential administration now claims that species protected by the Endangered Species Act shouldn’t be safe from habitat modification that destroys where they live, raise their young, or search for food,” she said in a statement.

The Guardian reported that the broader interpretation of “harm” had been part of the law’s implementation for roughly 50 years and was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1995 in a case involving old-growth forest protections used by endangered spotted owls. The outlet also reported that hundreds of thousands of public comments were submitted opposing the change.

The Endangered Species Act has helped safeguard more than 1,700 species and their habitats and has prevented 99% of listed species from going extinct, according to The Guardian. A 2023 poll cited by the outlet found that 80% of registered voters favored full funding of the law and 73% viewed biodiversity as important to their everyday lives.

The rule was first proposed in April 2025, and environmental groups tried unsuccessfully to block it before it was finalized. Advocates said they are preparing legal challenges.

“Let’s be clear: there is no support for the Trump Administration’s rule – no scientific support, no legal support, no public support,” Boyles said. “We will see the Trump Administration in court.”

The change is part of a broader push by President Donald Trump’s administration to roll back wildlife protections. Republicans weakened several Endangered Species Act provisions during Trump’s first term, but those changes were later reversed under President Joe Biden. The Guardian reported that Trump has also moved to ease endangered species rules affecting energy extraction, including by convening the so-called “God squad” in March to expand oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico.