Lawsuit Challenges Trump Administration Attack on Endangered Species Act
WASHINGTON— Environmental and animal protection groups today sued the Trump administration over its new regulations that dramatically weaken the Endangered Species Act.
Earthjustice filed the lawsuit on behalf of Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Parks Conservation Association, WildEarth Guardians, and the Humane Society of the United States.
The new regulations are an unprecedented weakening of protections for endangered species. Among other things, they allow consideration of economic factors in decisions about whether species are listed as threatened or endangered and strip newly listed threatened species of automatic protection. The new rules weaken protection of species’ critical habitat and relax consultation standards that are meant to ensure federal agencies avoid jeopardizing species’ survival.
“Nothing in these new rules helps wildlife, period. Instead, these regulatory changes seek to make protection and recovery of threatened and endangered species harder and less predictable. We’re going to court to set things right,” said Kristen Boyles, Earthjustice attorney.
Today’s lawsuit makes key claims against the Trump administration’s new rules. The administration failed to publicly disclose and analyze the harms and impacts of the rules in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. The rules violate the language and purpose of the Endangered Species Act on multiple counts, and cut the American people out of the decision-making process by inserting new changes into the final rules that were never made public and not subject to public comment.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2019/08/lawsuit-challenges-trump-administration.html