Editorial: Gutting Endangered Species Act won't save jobs
Not for the first time, when all evidence — in particular scientific evidence — points in one direction, the Trump administration has gone the other.
Such is the case with its recent move to roll back rules under the Endangered Species Act, the landmark legislation adopted by Congress in 1973 that provides the framework used to protect and rebuild populations of endangered and threatened animal and plant species.
And also not for the first time, coalitions of states have mounted a legal challenge against the administration’s actions.
Earlier this summer, the Trump administration announced it was changing how the act is applied, making it easier to remove individual species from the endangered list, weakening protections for species listed as threatened and also requiring regulators to review protections — such as identifying and limiting use of critical habitat — over their economic impacts when deciding whether a species warrants protection.
This follows just months after a United Nations panel on biodiversity and the global ecosystem of scientists from 132 nations — which included the United States — approved a report that warned that over the past century the abundance of plant and animal life has declined by more than 20 percent. Of about 8 billion species of plants and animals worldwide, an estimated 1 billion distinct species could go extinct within decades if current trends of development, pollution and climate change are allowed to continue. Among those 1 billion species threatened with extinction are 40 percent of amphibian species, a third of corals and a third of marine life.
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