WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finalized changes to Endangered Species Act regulations that will narrow automatic protections for threatened wildlife and expand consideration of economic and national-security costs when designating critical habitat.
The revisions restore policies used during President Donald Trump’s first administration and reverse regulatory changes adopted under the Biden administration. The Interior Department framed the action as an effort to reduce barriers affecting energy development, infrastructure and other projects.
Under the revised Section 4(d) regulation, threatened species will no longer automatically receive the same protections applied to endangered species. The agency may instead establish protections tailored to the circumstances of each threatened species.
The change eliminates the so-called blanket rule, which generally prohibited activities involving threatened species unless the Fish and Wildlife Service created a species-specific exception.
The agency also revised its process for determining whether land should be excluded from a critical habitat designation. Officials may consider economic, national-security and other effects when evaluating particular areas.
Land may be excluded when the agency determines that the benefits of exclusion outweigh the benefits of designation, provided the exclusion would not result in the species’ extinction.
The revisions could reduce federal restrictions on some land development, energy production and other activities in areas occupied by threatened species or considered important to their conservation.
“For too long, the Endangered Species Act has been weaponized to stop almost any new project in America, driving up costs for families, weakening our competitiveness, and undermining our national security,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum stated.
Burgum also argued that the agency should measure the law’s effectiveness through species recovery and removal from federal protection rather than growth in the number of listed species.
The department reported that nearly 97% of species placed on the endangered and threatened species list remain listed. That figure alone does not distinguish between species that have failed to recover and those that remain protected because extinction was prevented or recovery is incomplete.
The Fish and Wildlife Service said it will use species-specific and site-specific information when determining protections, rather than applying the same regulatory approach broadly across threatened species.
Service Director Brian Nesvik stated that the changes would allow agency biologists to use a more “data-driven approach” while accounting for the economic effects of federal conservation decisions.
The final regulations affect the administration of Sections 4(d) and 4(b)(2) of the Endangered Species Act. They do not remove any species from the federal list or eliminate the government’s authority to establish protections for threatened wildlife.
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