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wildlife
Trump Proposal Called a 'Death Sentence for Plants and Animals on the Brink of Extinction'
"Humanity's survival depends on biodiversity, and no one voted to fast-track extinction," one conservationist stressed. "This is a five-alarm fire."
Apr 09, 2025
A leading conservation group is sounding the alarm over a new Trump administration attack on threatened and endangered species: an attempt to redefine "harm" as it relates to a key federal law.
The law? The Endangered Species Act (ESA), a longtime target of U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, despite being signed in 1973 by then-President Richard Nixon.
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) on Tuesday noticed that the Department of the Interior—now led by Trump appointee Doug Burgum, a billionaire ally of the fossil fuel industry—sent a proposed rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review.
The Monday proposal is not yet available, but on a public online dashboard it is titled, "Redefinition of 'Harm.'" There is also a Tuesday submission from the Department of Commerce titled, "Defining 'Harm' Under the Endangered Species Act."
CBD called it "the first step toward stripping habitat protections from rare plants and animals headed toward extinction."
"The malignant greed driving these policies threatens to greatly increase destruction of the natural world and turbocharge the extinction crisis."
Under the ESA, people cannot "take" an endangered species of fish or wildlife—and take is defined as "harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect." Within that definition, harm means injuring or killing wildlife.
The law states that "such act may include significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding, or sheltering."
Noah Greenwald, CBD's co-director of endangered species, explained Tuesday that "weakening the definition of harm would cut the heart out of the Endangered Species Act and be a death sentence for plants and animals on the brink of extinction."
"The Trump administration has been systematically killing protections for our air, water, wildlife, and climate like a vicious cancer," he continued. "The malignant greed driving these policies threatens to greatly increase destruction of the natural world and turbocharge the extinction crisis. We'll keep fighting for each and every one of these plants and animals."
"Unless habitat destruction is prohibited, spotted owls, sea turtles, salmon and so many more animals and plants won't have a chance," Greenwald warned. "Humanity's survival depends on biodiversity, and no one voted to fast-track extinction. This is a five-alarm fire."
TRUMP TO ENDANGERED SPECIES: DROP DEAD! The Trump administration launched a process to redefine what it means to “harm” threatened & endangered species, the first step toward stripping habitat protections from rare plants & animals headed toward extinction. biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press...
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— Ted Zukoski (@tedzukoski.bsky.social) April 8, 2025 at 4:04 PM
The redefinition push is just part of the GOP's assault on the ESA. As Common Dreamsreported in late March, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have been working to advance a pair of laws, the ESA Amendments Act, which aims to streamline regulatory and permitting processes, and the Pet and Livestock Protection Act, which would strip federal protections from the gray wolf within 60 days and prohibit judicial review of the action.
There have also been direct attacks on the law from the White House. When Trump returned to office in January, he swiftly declared a "national energy emergency" intended to deliver on his promise to "drill, baby, drill" for climate-wrecking fossil fuels. A section of the executive order effectively says the ESA can't be an obstacle to energy development, which concerned conservationists.
"This executive order, in a lot of ways, is a gift to the oil and gas industry and is being sold as a way to respond to the emergency declaration by President Trump," Gib Brogan, a campaign director with conservation group Oceana, toldThe Associated Press in January. "There is no emergency. The species continue to suffer. And this executive order will only accelerate the decline of endangered species in the United States."
CBD's Greenwald also blasted the order at the time, declaring that "with U.S. oil production at an all-time high, the real national emergencies are the extinction crisis and climate change."
"We're losing plant and animal species at an unprecedented rate, and our planet is heating up with dangerous speed," he stressed, just weeks after the conclusion of the hottest year in human history. "Extinction and climate change are chewing up the web of life that ultimately supports virtually everything we know and love, and Trump's order will only accelerate the destruction."
"This executive order is a death warrant for polar bears, lesser prairie chickens, whooping cranes and so many more species on the brink of extinction," he added. "This unconscionable measure is completely out of step with most Americans, an overwhelming majority of whom support protecting species from extinction and preserving our natural heritage. We'll use every legal tool we can to ensure dangerous fossil fuel projects don’t drive species to extinction."
The president continues to pursue fossil fuel-friendly executive actions. On Tuesday, he signed multiple orders that aim to boost the coal industry—which Jason Rylander of CBD's Climate Law Institute said "take his worship of dirty fossil fuels to a gross and disturbingly reckless new level."
"Forcing old coal plants to keep spewing pollution into our air and water means more cancer, more asthma, and more premature deaths," Rylander noted. "This is yet another assault on efforts to preserve a livable climate, and it's now abundantly clear that Trump's promise to give America the cleanest air and water was a bold-faced lie."
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Conservationists Sound Alarm as Republicans Take Aim at Endangered Species Act
"We are in a biodiversity crisis, and Congress is playing with fire," warned one wildlife defender. "These bills would accelerate extinction at a time when we can least afford it."
Mar 25, 2025
Green groups warned this week that a pair of Republican-led bills in the U.S. House of Representatives, including proposals to amend the Endangered Species Act and strip gray wolves of ESA protection, would, as Sierra Club said, "radically undercut the ability of the federal government to protect imperiled wildlife."
On Tuesday, the Republican-led House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries held legislative hearings on four bills, two of which involve the ESA.
Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) said his ESA Amendments Act of 2025—which aims to streamline regulatory and permitting processes—is needed because "the Endangered Species Act has consistently failed to achieve its intended goals and has been warped by decades of radical environmental litigation into a weapon instead of a tool."
However, Sierra Club said Monday that the bill would "amend the ESA beyond recognition."
Congress is trying to kill the Endangered Species Act. New bill would amend iconic law's ability to protect wildlife. Today, a House committee held a hearing on a bill that would drastically limit the Endangered Species Act's ability to protect our country's imperiled wildlife.
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— Sierra Club (@sierraclub.org) March 25, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Earthjustice warned Tuesday that the legislation "would gut the critical protections that the ESA provides for thousands of imperiled species, upend the scientific consultation process (which has been the cornerstone of American species protection for 50 years), slow listings to a crawl while fast-tracking delistings, and allow much more exploitation of threatened species and shift their management out of federal hands to the states, even while they are still nationally listed."
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said that the second bill, the Pet and Livestock Protection Act of 2025—which she introduced in January with Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.)—would "remove the ability of progressive judges to get in the way of science and allow states to set their own rules and regulations for managing their gray wolf population" by delisting the species from the ESA within 60 days and prohibiting judicial review of the action.
During his first administration, U.S. President Donald Trumpdelisted gray wolves from the ESA across most of the country, a move that was reversed by a federal judge in 2022.
Defenders of Wildlife senior attorney Ellen Richmond said Monday that "this bill is deceptively named and if enacted will directly undermine our nation's landmark conservation laws."
"Wolves play important roles in maintaining healthy ecosystems, and cutting short their recovery not only harms the species but also the incredible landscapes we all love," Richmond added.
Josh Osher, public policy director for Western Watersheds Project, said Tuesday: "We are in a biodiversity crisis, and Congress is playing with fire. These bills would accelerate extinction at a time when we can least afford it."
"The Endangered Species Act isn't just about saving wolves, grizzlies, or sea turtles—it's about protecting the ecosystems that sustain us all," Osher added. "Weakening these protections pushes our planet further into collapse. Congress must open its eyes and reject these reckless attacks before it's too late."
On Monday, dozens of green groups sent a letter to senior lawmakers on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries Subcommittee urging them to reject the two bills, arguing they would "dramatically weaken the ESA and make it harder, if not impossible, to achieve the progress we must make to address the alarming rate of extinction our planet now faces."
The two bills come amid wider Republican attacks on the ESA by members of Congress and the Trump administration, including Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. In a bid to boost logging on public lands, Trump is planning to establish a so-called "God Squad" committee that could veto ESA protections. DOGE, meanwhile, has fired hundreds of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees while ordering a hiring freeze on seasonal workers tasked with species protection.
"The Endangered Species Act is one of the country's most popular and successful conservation laws, and Donald Trump wants to throw it in the garbage to pad the bottom lines of his corporate supporters," Sierra Club deputy legislative director for wildlife and lands protection Bradley Williams said on Monday. "Since day one of his administration, Trump has shown again and again that he wants to hand over control of our public lands and waters to billionaires and corporations. Imperiled wildlife will suffer the consequences."
"For more than 50 years, the United States has made amazing progress bringing species back from the brink of extinction," Williams added. "It's because of the ESA that species like the grizzly bear and bald eagle are living symbols of America and not just photos in a history book. If Trump and his allies in Congress get their way, that progress won't just come to a screeching halt—it could be completely reversed."
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The Alaska Gov.’s Trophy Bear in Anchorage Airport Is a Display of Depravity
Instead of admiration and awe, many visitors will react to this display with disgust, seeing the governor’s trophy as an example of the shameful way wildlife are treated in Alaska.
Mar 02, 2025
That Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy killed a large, majestic Alaska brown bear simply for his amusement, ego, and bragging rights, then had the hide mounted prominently in the Anchorage International Airport for all to see—complete with a photo of the governor posing with his kill, and an advertisement for the Safari Club International, whose “generous contribution” paid for the sordid display—is a perfect embodiment of the State of Alaska’s disgraceful treatment of its world-renowned wildlife.
The governor’s kill was one of the 1,200-1,900 permitted trophy brown bear kills in Alaska every year, mostly by non-residents. These kills are not for food or subsistence (the state says fewer than 10 brown bears a year are killed for subsistence purposes), but just for hides, trophies, and the "joy” of killing. This includes bears that gather to feed on salmon runs in protected areas such as Katmai National Park and McNeil River State Game Sanctuary—to the delight of thousands of paying visitors—that are then targeted by trophy hunters as they disperse after the salmon runs end. The skinned carcasses of these bears are mostly discarded and left to rot—the very definition of wanton waste. The hides are apt to end up on the living room wall of a vain, rich Texan to brag about at cocktail parties.
Further, Gov. Dunleavy’s administration has recently shot and killed hundreds of brown bears (many of them newborn cubs), black bears, and wolves in its unscientific and futile aerial predator control effort; permits “hunters” to bait bears; permits killing of bear mothers and cubs using artificial lights at dens; permits killing wolves and coyotes and their pups at dens; and its Board of Game is a special-interest travesty.
It takes a very small man indeed to kill an innocent animal simply for a sadistic sense of pleasure, a trophy, and bragging rights.
Now, this depravity is on full display—along with the many other dead, snarling animals displayed around the airport—for thousands of visitors to see as they first step foot in the state, most coming here specifically to view Alaska’s spectacular wildlife (which contributes twice the revenue to the state’s economy as does recreational hunting), and many specifically wanting a chance to see our iconic brown bears in the wild—alive, not stuffed in a glass case. Instead of admiration and awe, many visitors will react to this display with disgust, seeing the governor’s trophy as an example of the shameful way wildlife are treated in Alaska. People increasingly feel that bears deserve better than to be killed merely for human ego, and want trophy hunting banned.
Psychologists say that this sort of trophy hunting derives from narcissism, an inflated sense of self, an infantile ego craving attention; a deep-seated psychopathy, incapable of empathy; and virtue-signaling to those from whom one is desperate for admiration and validation. And there may be a peculiar religious component to such killing, as it accords with the perverse biblical instruction for man to “subdue… and have dominion over… every living thing that moveth upon the Earth.” And perhaps such trophy killing simply provides a brief dopamine hit—a momentary, physiological high—desired by our Paleolithic ancestry.
To trophy hunters like Alaska’s governor, killing large animals, particularly predators, is a feeble attempt to project superiority, power, machismo, wealth, and prestige. Even though the governor may be a full-time office bureaucrat, he’s desperate to be seen as a courageous, tough Alaska man right out of a Jack London novel. In fact, it shows just the opposite.
Killing an innocent brown bear for fun, with a high powered rifle, from a distance, with a professional guide leading him to the bear, and then displaying the mounted hide in a public commons for all to see, projects a pathetic, disturbing emotional insecurity. While trophy hunting is increasingly being banned around the world (recall the global outrage to the 2015 killing of Cecil the lion by an American trophy hunter in Zimbabwe), not here in the “lost frontier,” where it still serves the insecure egos of many clinging to the 19th-century image of the great white hunter, the buffalo hunters, conquering an untamed wilderness.
It takes a very small man indeed to kill an innocent animal simply for a sadistic sense of pleasure, a trophy, and bragging rights. Now thousands of Alaska visitors will see this psychopathy on full display at the Anchorage airport, where the governor’s trophy stands as a monument to arrogance, special interests, phony masculinity, contempt for nature, and the State of Alaska’s tragic mismanagement of wildlife.
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