On Friday, the Trump Administration gleefully announced that it would no longer consider burning, rototilling, cutting, plowing, draining, poisoning, bulldozing, or otherwise destroying critical habitats or ecosystems as a “harm” to endangered and threatened plants and animals that depend on these ecosystems. That’s right, effective immediately, only the direct killing will constitute “harm”; anything less will no longer be considered a violation of the Endangered Species Act, one of our bedrock environmental.1
You might read the title or the paragraph above and think, “Oh, c’mon, that can’t be true??” If you are muttering those doubts, I’ve got a challenge for you. Isn’t it time to be sufficiently pissed off about what these people are doing? Isn’t it time to at least keep step with the destruction instead of always being a step behind? Isn’t it time to stop assuming this administration is doing something different than what we know they are doing? I think so, and that means we must call these actions what they are or what they will be.
If you still need some intellectual backup before you believe, well, fine, here are the actual Trump administration words in their actual Trump administration statement: “Actions that directly injure or kill listed wildlife will continue to be prohibited. What ends today is a system that repeatedly punished people for indirect or speculative impacts.”2
In other words, choking an endangered manatee to death with your bare hands? Yes, probably an Endangered Species Act (ESA) violation. Draining the estuary where the other manatees live, or pumping diesel fuel into their water? Umm, No - Mr. Smarty Pants, that’s “indirect or speculative” because who knows? Maybe the manatees love diesel fuel or could happily live without water, just like a desert cactus. No way to know until we try! Call our corporate attorney, ya whiny Libs!
And yes, these people really do think you are dumb enough to believe all of this idiocy without raising an eyebrow. I know, it’s maddening, they think we are as dumb as Eric Trump. They think you won’t call it what it is. Well, I’m done with that shit.
And even worse, they are “doth protest too much” cocky on one hand, but try to slip this stuff by us like we won’t notice on the other. Witness the joint announcement from Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of Commerce Howard Nutlick (yes, I double checked the spelling). It was buried in the Friday afternoon releases, an old D.C. trick meant to avoid unwanted attention from citizens like you and me that don’t take kindly to nuking wild animals and entire ecosystems.
Here’s the quick backstory on how this disaster happened: The entire oil-soaked policy announcement is the culmination of a more than 30-year Republican Party attack on the Endangered Species Act which was signed into law in 1973 by Richard Nixon.
The hatred of the bill simmered for years, and then began taking shape in 1995 with an Antonin Scalia Dissent in a Supreme Court case centering on whether old-growth trees in Oregon could be preserved for federally endangered woodpeckers and owls that depended on those ancient stands for survival.3
Back then, when we had an administration that stood up for the laws that all of us citizens demanded, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt defended federal actions under the ESA protecting those trees. Seemed like a no-brainer because any fool could see that cutting them would “harm” the species that depended on that habitat. And back when we had a Supreme Court that could spell “constitution,” the Supreme Court agreed in a 6-3 slam-dunk decision. This became part of what the legal system refers to as the “Chevron deference.”
The majority vote mattered for a long time, but very importantly, scion of the Supreme Court right-wing legal nuts, Justice Antonin Scalia, was in the 3-vote minority. He issued a snarky dissent in the case, arguing that we should put aside our most basic powers of reason and accept that cutting those trees would harm not a single woodpecker or owl, at least not immediately.
I mean, yeah, eventually those birds might all die without the habitats they need, but who could tell for sure? Definitely not those pointy-headed biologists, or “experts” in the federal government, that’s for sure! Scalia laid the groundwork for the theory that government scientists could not be trusted to predict such outcomes and that cutting down the trees didn’t have a direct “harm” on anything. And if you did not believe him, just try it! Cut down a tree and watch the woodpecker fly away! See, the bird is still alive! So let the big corps cut, mine, dam, and burn; then let’s see if anything actually dies or is “harmed” a few years later. (see also - Cigarettes don’t hurt anyone - I’m smoking one right now and I’m still alive.)
Look, I know Scalia’s reasoning is insane. But, like other Scalia dissents, his theory came to be accepted over the years as a litmus test for selecting new justices, and over time, it also served as the fever dream for big industry across the country. Ohhhh baby… what wild country could they industrialize if they could just get rid of that pesky “harm” idea?
For more than three decades, oil industry execs, mega-developers, and Republicans like Ryan Zinke, Steve Daines, Mike Lee, and Donald Trump yearned for the time when a Supreme Court, fully captured by the nut-bag right, would latch on to Scalia’s opinion and make it law.
And then in 2024, it happened. In a 6-3 case, with a passel of these federalist shills on the bench, the court adopted Antonin’s reasoning, overturning the basis for almost all of our environmental regulatory structure.4 The “chevron deference” was gone. Scalia’s old minority dissent was now the law of the land.
This, combined with project 2025, left the door open for Friday’s policy announcement from Burgum and Nutlick, and they made it official with these words: “The Department of the Interior and the Department of Commerce today announced they have finalized a rule rescinding the outdated regulatory definition of ‘harm’ under the Endangered Species Act.”
Don’t let these shills fool you. This idea is no less evil or insane than it was before Friday. Every threatened or endangered species in America is in peril BECAUSE its needed habitat is disappearing, poisoned, or both. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. There are more than 1,300 of these officially threatened or endangered species in the U.S., including those Florida Manatees, Greater and Lesser Prairie Chickens, Cutthroat Trout, Golden-cheeked Warblers, Wolverines, and, of course, Grizzly Bears.
Some of those 1,300 may seem esoteric, but their existence depends on intact ecosystems that benefit thousands of other species and all Americans. Yesterday I was one of them, fishing for westslope cutthroat trout, which depend on clean, cold water and roadless areas protected and enhanced by the ESA.
You might be an American like me and my boys who hunt elk, deer, or antelope. Despite anti-science rednecks who claim otherwise, all of these game species have been greatly enhanced or saved by the laws that protect grizzly bears, because the ESA requires that any development in the places they live be carefully regulated, and many of them live in the same places grizzlies do.
It’s not just hunters who benefit. Most of us (especially anyone of a certain age) are quickly progressing towards some version of bird-nerdiness, and there is not a native bird in this country that has not benefited from the ESA. Let’s just look at a couple of good examples: observing the mating dances of native grouse, like the Prairie Chickens, can still happen because of the ESA, and protecting these grouse has also helped thousands of other birds and animals that depend on what’s left of our once-great prairie ecosystems.
What to do about it? As for me, I’m back in the game, taking back the helm at Public Land Warriors, which I founded last year. I stepped away to run for office, but as of today, I’m back.
PLW is a no-holds-barred org, lean and mean. Three people who care only about making a difference where it matters - at the ballot box. We are going after the people who are destroying our wild places, especially our public lands. It’s time to put some pelts on the wall, and I’m tired of orgs that don’t understand we have to win elections to make a change. I hope you’ll join us.
P.S…. Congressman Pete Stauber - yeah, you - the jackwagon from Minnesota that drove the effort to get your Trump mining toadies to industrialize the boundary waters…Pete, we are gearing up to come for you.
https://www.worldwildlife.org/our-work/policy/legislation/the-us-endangered-species-act/
https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/department-interior-restores-clear-esa-enforcement-rescinding-misguided-harm
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/515/687/
https://www.michaelbest.com/insights/the-supreme-court-overturns-longstanding-chevron-deference/
I cannot tolerate what this administration is doing to people and the creatures that bless this planet. This is an absolute outrage. This is like the ignorant settlers who nearly wiped out our bison, the lifeblood of our Indigenous people. Just slaughter and recklessly destroy anything in their path. I am sickened.
I worked as a secretary at the Department of Interior in the Fish and Wildlife Division. Typed the first Act, endangered species list, keep track of all the countries who ratified this Act. I am so disheartened by this it’s insane that DJT and his cronies doing this it just to drill and mine so they can make and gain more monies