17 states sue Trump administration over move to weaken Endangered Species Act
Attorneys general in 17 states on Wednesday made good on a promise to sue the Trump administration over rule changes that substantially weakened how Endangered Species Act protections are considered and enforced.
Led by California, Maryland and Massachusetts, the coalition filed its complaint in a federal court in California. It released a statement saying the administration’s rollback of rules last month “removes current provisions that help prevent threatened species from becoming endangered or extinct.” Among them are rules that ban capturing and killing some species.
The administration’s new rules would allow it to reduce the amount of habitat set aside for wildlife and remove tools used by officials to predict future harm to species as a result of climate change. It would also allow the administration to reveal, for the first time in the law’s 45-year history, the financial costs of protecting them. The changes were jointly announced in mid-August by the Interior and Commerce departments as part of President Trump’s mandate to scale back government regulations on corporations, including the oil and gas industry, that want to drill on protected land.
It followed a United Nations report that said 1 million species worldwide face extinction as a result of human activity. Wednesday’s lawsuit came on the heels of a separate report that 3 billion birds have been lost since the 1970s. “We’re going to try to undo what the president is proposing to do with the Endangered Species Act,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/09/25/trump-administration-weakened-endangered-species-act-rules-today-state-attorneys-general-sued-over-it/