Take action before it is too late. The Trump Administration is attacking the Endangered Species Act.
The week before Thanksgiving, the Trump Administration put a lump of coal in the stockings of conservationists and wildlife advocates everywhere. The proposed regulations would severely undermine the protection of habitat for threatened and endangered species.
The ESA has two categories of protection: Threatened and Endangered. Species listed as Threatened are the most impacted by the proposed changes — which would limit the designation of protected “critical” habitat for threatened species to areas in which they already exist, hamstring restoration efforts needed to remove species from the Endangered Species List, and generally remove protections for species experiencing concerning population declines.
Another key change to the law would be to require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to weigh the economic impacts of protecting species versus the profitability of letting them go extinct — a perverse exercise that is prohibited by the Endangered Species Act itself.
A History of Success
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of the most successful laws in American History. Thanks to the ESA, dozens of species have been brought back from the brink of extinction, and 99% of listed species are either stable or recovered.
The law was crucial in saving the United States’ national bird, the Bald Eagle, from pesticide pollution and habitat loss. In the 1960s, there were only 250 breeding pairs of Bald Eagles. Today, there are 15,000. In our region, species like the Carolina Northern Flying Squirrel, the Appalachian Elktoe, and the Bog Turtle — and the habitats they depend on — are protected by the law. Other species, like the Hellbender and the Hickory Nut Gorge Green Salamander, have pending petitions for listing that would be jeopardized by weakening the ESA. Trump’s changes would prevent newly listed species from receiving protections for years because of needless bureaucracy and red tape.
The Hellbender, if it is approved for listing under the ESA, would likely be categorized as “Threatened”. If these rules are adopted, the Hellbender would not gain much additional protection and would suffer a lengthy and expensive administrative process before any protections are put in place.
A final set of changes would weaken the consultation process by which the Fish and Wildlife Service is supposed to negotiate protections from developers and other government agencies. These provisions would also give developers and polluters the ability to block habitat protections and ignore the protections proposed by expert scientists. It’s another instance in a pattern of selling our natural world to industry.
Background Information:
Below is a summary of the four proposed rules and what’s at stake in each one:
- Remove “blanket rule” for newly listed threatened species, FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0029; Digital comment template link
- Deprive newly listed threatened animal and plant species from automatically receiving protections from killing, trapping, and other forms of prohibited “take.” Species now proposed for listing, like the Florida manatee, California spotted owl, Greater sage grouse, and Monarch butterfly could be left unprotected for years even after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finalizes the listings.
- Listing Endangered and Threatened Species and Designating Critical Habitat, FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0039; Digital comment template link
- Violate the letter of the law by allowing “economic considerations” in decisions about whether to protect species that are scientifically shown to be at risk of extinction. With this rule, the federal government could decide against protecting an endangered species after considering lost revenue from prohibiting a golf course or hotel development to be built where the species lives.
- Narrow the definition of “critical habitat” to exclude currently unoccupied but historic habitat. Historic habitat is vital for recovery of imperiled species, especially as the areas where they currently live shrink due to the rapidly changing climate and the chain effects of ongoing biodiversity loss.
- Interagency Cooperation Regulations, FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0044; Digital comment template link
- Loosen compliance measures for federal agencies to make it easier to greenlight destructive actions, like logging or drilling, that put a protected species in harm’s way.
- Regulations for Designating Critical Habitat, FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0048; Digital comment template link
- Changes the analysis method for determining critical habitat.
- It would give undue weight to economic or non-biological criteria at the expense of the species’ recovery.
How to Comment
The deadline to submit public comment is December 22, 2025.
- Submit your public comment on all four dockets through our online form located below.
- Submit Public Comment at Regulations.gov:
- Remove “blanket rule” for newly listed threatened species, FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0029
- Listing Endangered and Threatened Species and Designating Critical Habitat, FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0039
- Interagency Cooperation Regulations, FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0044
- Regulations for Designating Critical Habitat, FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0048
- Submit your public comment by U.S. Mail to:
Public Comments Processing
Attn: [Docket Number]
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, MS: PRB/3W,
5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041-3803
Check out the resources available through the Endangered Species Coalition. They have four digital comment template links and a postcards toolkit.
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