The Trump Administration Defangs the Endangered Species Act
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What is the Endangered Species Act and why is it important?
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From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily. In its second term, the Trump administration has escalated its efforts to roll back environmental regulations.
The Trump administration is moving to open up a large chunk of Alaskan wilderness to oil and gas drilling that With a stroke of a pen, President Donald Trump has cut Bear's ears and Grand Staircase Escalani National Monuments down to a tenth of their size. The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to repeal a rule protecting millions of acres of roadless forest.
Many of these actions were expected by conservationists, but last week stood apart as it became clear that one of America's bedrock environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act, appeared to be losing some of its most important protections. So today I speak with my colleague Catherine Einhorn about what is changing and what impact it could have on the country's most vulnerable animals and ecosystems. It's Monday, September твоті ферст. Katrin Einhorn, welcome to the daily. Thank you so much. Catherine, I think that at this point everybody has this sort of general sense that the Trump administration has been rolling back a lot of different environmental protections as part of this sort of broader push to deregulate.
You have been covering, though, this huge escalation against what I think is probably one of the most iconic protections in the country, which is the Endangered Species Act. Just remind us briefly what that is.
Yeah, I mean it's a really landmark law. It's half a century old now, and it protects in the US more than sixteen hundred animals and plants that are threatened with extinction. You know, it lists them as either threatened or endangered. And you know, the law does a lot of things. One long-standing rule is that you have to take steps to avoid accidentally destroying a species living in a place, no matter who you are. If you're a person building a house or a company logging a forest. And the Trump administration has been taking measures to weaken the law in all kinds of ways. It's part of his deregulatory agenda, which he's really proud of. Of and talks about a lot.
How did the Endangered Species Act originate and what were its original goals?
They did some of that work in his first term, and now during the second term, The адміністрація агресівли тріати стрип протекці і не акт. And this past week we got access to a memo outlining intentions to go even further. It shows that they are trying to strip a really core aspect of this law where they're arguably telling people you won't get in trouble for killing endangered species so long as you didn't mean to target them, which is an enormous change in the protections that endangered species have had in this country.
Before we get into the specifics of how that is happening, I want to hear a little bit of the history of the Endangered Species Act. Like what does it actually say and what were its goals initially?
I think it helps to go even a little bit further back to like the late eighteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds, a lot of very prominent species had been hunted to near extinction. Bison is really the iconic example. Passenger pigeons had actually been hunted to extinction. They are extinct. They used to be so abundant that they would like darken the skies.
Wow.
Wolves, beavers, even white-tailed deer. Their populations had collapsed because of overhunting. And so at first, conservation in the US was really just about recovering species, managing hunting and fishing for more sustainable populations.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the Endangered Species Act and why is it important?
0:00–2:45
2
How did the Endangered Species Act originate and what were its original goals?
2:45–5:47
3
What was the landmark 1979 Hawaii bird lawsuit and why does it matter?
5:47–9:45
4
How did Justice Scalia’s dissent reshape the definition of “harm” under the ESA?
9:45–12:57
5
What does the Trump administration’s new memo say about intent and “take” of endangered species?
12:57–16:13
6
How could the new “intent‑only” rule affect vulnerable animals and ecosystems?
16:13–19:38
7
What legal challenges are expected against the Trump administration’s ESA changes?
19:38–22:56
8
What are the broader implications for biodiversity, the economy, and future policy?
22:56–26:38