BILLINGS, Montana — President Joe Biden’s administration proposed Wednesday to resurrect rules to protect America’s threatened plants and animals, prompting officials to roll back changes ordered by then-President Donald Trump that weakened the law. of Endangered Species.
The Federal Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it will reinstate a decades-old regulation that requires blanket protections for species newly classified as threatened.
The general protections regulation was dropped in 2019 as part of a suite of changes to species law enforcement that were encouraged by US industry, even as extinctions have accelerated around the world due to loss habitat and other pressures.
Authorities will also not take economic impact into consideration when deciding whether certain animals or plants need protection.
In addition, the rules will make it easier to designate areas critical to the survival of a species, even if it is no longer found in those places.
That could help with the recovery of endangered fish and freshwater mussels in the Southeast, where in many cases the aquatic animals have disappeared from parts of their historic ranges, Fish and Wildlife Service Deputy Director Gary Frazer said. .
Wednesday’s proposal, Frazer said, will restore fundamental protections so that species are not pushed further toward extinction.
“We have the opportunity to try to improve the state of the species before they reach the limit,” he said.
The Associated Press obtained details on the proposed rules before they were published and that they could take a year to finalize.
