The Endangered Species Act has been hugely successful and popular—helping to rescue iconic species such as the Bald Eagle from extinction and protecting ecosystems and natural spaces that might otherwise be destroyed in service of short-term commercial interests. It has been controversial mainly among industrial and commercial land use interests that want to take control of natural spaces, and degrade water quality and ecological health and resilience, including on public lands.

Now, the 2nd administration of Donald Trump is moving to redefine the word “harm” to allow most forms of harm, including those that would drive endangered species to extinction and destroy sensitive natural habitat. 

According to reporting from the Western Watersheds Project: 

In April, the Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA proposed erasing the regulatory definition of “harm” that has guided enforcement of the ESA since 1975. Under this rewrite, destroying the habitat a species needs to survive would no longer count—unless you physically strike, shoot, or poison the animal. Bulldoze the spawning grounds, drain the marsh, strip away the forest? Not harm. Not, in their twisted language, “take” at all.

This is not a clarification. It is a demolition of the ESA’s very core. The law was written to prevent extinction, and from the beginning, the courts have understood that habitat is inseparable from survival. The Supreme Court said as much in 1995 in Babbitt v. Sweet Home, upholding that habitat modification is harm. To pretend otherwise now is to gut the law in the place where it has the most teeth—its ability to hold industry accountable for destroying the land and water that life depends on.

The move to redefine “harm” is dangerous for several reasons: 

1. Protection of endangered species also protects the environment; it preserves natural open spaces, supports the proper, science-based management of parklands, and helps to ensure air and water are clean and healthy for human beings. 
2. The First Amendment provides an irreducible, guaranteed right to seek redress for harm. No action by any branch of government is lawful or Constitutional if it aims to reduce that right. 
3. The federal government changing its own definition of “harm” in order to allow pervasive material harm, of the specific kind prohibited by law, is clearly an act of bad faith, but it also asserts a non-existent authority. The Constitution does not grant the Executive branch any such power to redefine language to undermine the clear meaning of laws.
4. Many of the direct and indirect benefits sensitive ecosystems and endangered species might provide to human health, security, and wellbeing, have yet to be identified. 

Undermining the health and resilience of Nature, and letting at-risk species lose habitat or go extinct, is a direct threat to human health and wellbeing, due in part to our dependence on Nature for the discovery of new medicines and treatments. According to the Endangered Species Coalition: 

Over 50% of the 150 most prescribed medicines were originally derived from a plant or other natural product. Unfortunately, only about 5% of known plant species have been tested for medicinal uses and there are thousands of plant species that have yet to be identified. Tens of thousands of Americans die every year from illnesses for which there is no known cure. The cures for these diseases may eventually come from plants, therefore, we must protect all species before they are lost forever from nature’s medicine cabinet.

There is also a fundamental misalignment between large industrial production systems and the need for healthy, resilient, robust, and biodiverse ecosystems to support food production. Evidence shows that climate stresses and enviromental degradation are making it dangerously difficult to produce enough food for everyone. 

Agriculture is not a closed-loop system. We cannot engineer Nature to support only corn or cattle. It is well understood that adjacent ecosystems and their health and biodiversity are essential for maintaining the productive capacity of agricultural lands. Adjacent protected areas, next to farmland, are ever more essential, as climate impacts and Nature loss advance and put more pressure on productive capacity.

The text of the Endangered Species Act includes clear language that requires conservation of habitat and ecosystems necessary for the health, wellbeing, and survival of threatened or endangered species.

Section 2 (b) of the Endangered Species Act reads: 

The purposes of this Act are to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved, to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species, and to take such steps as may be appropriate to achieve the purposes of the treaties and conventions set forth in subsection (a) of this section.

Section 3 (3) of the Endangered Species Act reads:

The terms “conserve”, “conserving”, and “conservation” mean to use and the use of all methods and procedures which are necessary to bring any endangered species or threatened species to the point at which the measures provided pursuant to this Act are no longer necessary. Such methods and procedures include, but are not limited to, all activities associated with scientific resources management such as research, census, law enforcement, habitat acquisition and maintenance, propagation, live trapping, and transplantation, and, in the extraordinary case where population pressures within a given ecosystem cannot be otherwise relieved, may include regulated taking.

Ecosystems are comprised of many diverse life forms, across all kingdoms of life, simultaneously engaged in competition and symbiosis. Both competition and symbiosis happen at the micro and macro level within ecosystems—meaning: individuals and groups (micro level) will compete within and between species and the overall system (macro level) provides opportunities for competitive advantage and structural symbiosis. 

In other words, redefining “harm” in the Endangered Species Act to allow harm to unfold across ecosystems and watersheds, destroying sensitive habitat and pushing vulnerable species to extinction, will directly harm human health, wellbeing, and opportunity in material ways. The total cost of unsustainable agricultural practices alone could measure in the trillions of dollars.

The Executive branch of the U.S. government is not empowered by the Constitution to reinterpret federal law to allow for prohibited activities to play out without the protection of rights or access to redress. There is no sound legal, scientific, or economic basis for this action, and the harm and cost to Americans will be many, far-reaching, and long-lasting.

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Written for Geoversiv Earth Intelligence and The Navigator.