By Dino Grandoni · The Washington Post (c) 2025
In what could be one of the most significant actions the Trump administration has taken on the environment, officials have proposed redefining what it means to “harm” a plant or animal under the Endangered Species Act, excluding habitat destruction from activities deemed a threat to protected species.
Officials said the move would reduce an unnecessary regulatory burden. Conservationists warn it would open the door to more logging, mining, home construction and other ecologically damaging ventures in places where endangered creatures live.
In a proposed rule released Wednesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that a narrower interpretation of harm – to mean intentionally killing or hurting a particular animal rather than degrading a habitat a species needs to find food, breed and thrive – reflects “the single, best meaning” of the Endangered Species Act and “makes sense in light of the well established, centuries-old understanding.”
But that would undo a long-standing interpretation of the landmark wildlife law and may make it harder for populations of imperiled owls, panthers, lynx and prairie chickens to survive.
“It upends how we’ve been protecting endangered species for the last 40 years,” said Noah Greenwald of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity.
Passed in 1973, the Endangered Species Act offers a wide umbrella of protections, prohibiting people from actions that “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect” plants and animals on the verge of extinction so they can have a chance of recovery. For decades, federal regulations have been based on an understanding that “harm” includes any action that individuals, government agencies and companies take that significantly degrades a habitat. Without trees in which to build nests, the thinking went, a flock of birds simply cannot survive.
The Supreme Court upheld that interpretation in 1995 after timber companies sought to log forests that were home to northern spotted owls and red-cockaded woodpeckers protected under the law.
But last year, the high court sharply curtailed the power of federal agencies to issue regulations that burden businesses. The Trump administration said its proposed rule is in line with that decision and would more closely hew to the language of the law. Only actions that directly injure a particular animal, like shooting it, would be illegal.
Kristen Boyles, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, said the notion that habitat destruction is somehow not harmful is “nonsensical both legally and biologically.”
“What they’re saying is, it would be okay for a developer to drain a pond where an endangered species of turtle or fish lived, and that wouldn’t be harm,” she said.
The Interior Department, under which the Fish and Wildlife Service falls, declined to comment beyond the notice in the Federal Register on Wednesday. Members of the public will have 30 days to submit comments on the proposal before it is finalized.