Trump administration’s endangered species habitat rule repeal takes effect, facing bipartisan pushback in Congress

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A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill is pushing back on a seismic shift in US environmental regulation that experts say exposes previously protected endangered species’ habitats to destruction from land use such as logging and real estate development.

In July, the Trump administration repealed a 50-year-old regulatory rule that has protected certain wildlife habitats under the Endangered Species Act, a move that has drawn legal challenges from environmental groups and a coalition of 20 states and Washington, DC.

Some lawmakers in both GOP-controlled chambers of Congress are also looking to block the change, which officially took effect Monday . Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Sheldon Whitehouse last month introduced a type of joint resolution that allows for a simple majority vote to nullify the change.

“The senators will look to force a vote in the coming weeks,” a spokesperson from Schiff’s office told CNN.

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In the House, Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley introduced a bill to block the rule repeal shortly after the administration announced the finalized version.

“For more than fifty years, our nation’s protections have reflected a basic legal, scientific, and commonsense truth: when habitat destruction actually kills or injures protected wildlife, that destruction is harm,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement . “The Administration’s rule would erase that longstanding safeguard through regulatory action and leave vulnerable species exposed at the precise moment the law is intended to protect them.”

Since the 1970s, the now-repealed agency rule has defined illegal “harm” to Endangered Species Act-protected wildlife as including habitat degradation that kills by disrupting breeding, feeding or sheltering.

The repeal, which leaves the word “harm” with no regulatory definition, eliminates a primary mechanism by which the Endangered Species Act has protected such habitats from destruction, Deborah Sivas, co-director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford University, told CNN.

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The Interior Department said repealing the harm definition “returns the interpretation of the (Endangered Species Act) back to its actual text and original intent, which will end years of federal overreach.”

The department emphasized that “actions that directly injure or kill listed wildlife will continue to be prohibited.”

The majority of native endangered species protected by the Endangered Species Act are threatened by habitat loss, according to experts. Far fewer are threatened by direct killing, such as hunting.

The House bill, the Safeguarding Endangered Species Act, now has six additional cosponsors, Casey-Lee Waldron, a spokesperson for Fitzpatrick, told CNN. All of the new cosponsors are Democrats, and the bill remains in the House Committee on Natural Resources, according to the bill’s profile on Congress’ website.

康奈尔·沃森/《华盛顿邮报》/盖蒂图片社

国会山两党议员正在抵制美国环境法规的重大变革，专家表示，这一变革将使以前受到保护的濒危物种的栖息地因伐木和房地产开发等土地利用而遭到破坏。

7 月，特朗普政府废除了一项已有 50 年历史的监管规定，该规定根据《濒危物种法》保护了某些野生动物栖息地。此举引发了环保组织以及由 20 个州和华盛顿特区组成的联盟的法律挑战。

国会两院（均由共和党控制）的一些议员也试图阻止这项于周一正式生效的变更。民主党参议员亚当·希夫和谢尔顿·怀特豪斯上个月提出了一项联合决议，允许以简单多数票否决这项变更。

希夫办公室的一位发言人告诉 CNN：“参议员们将在未来几周内寻求强制进行投票。”

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在众议院，共和党众议员布莱恩·菲茨帕特里克和民主党众议员迈克·奎格利在政府宣布最终版本后不久，提出了一项法案来阻止该规则的废除。

菲茨帕特里克在一份声明中表示：“五十多年来，我国的保护措施体现了一个基本的法律、科学和常识真理：当栖息地破坏确实导致受保护野生动物死亡或受伤时，这种破坏就是一种伤害。政府的这项规定将通过监管行动抹杀这一长期存在的保障措施，使脆弱物种在法律旨在保护它们的关键时刻暴露在危险之中。”

自 20 世纪 70 年代以来，现已废除的机构规则将对受《濒危物种法》保护的野生动物的非法“伤害”定义为包括因扰乱繁殖、觅食或栖身而导致的栖息地退化，从而造成野生动物死亡。

斯坦福大学环境法律诊所联合主任黛博拉·西瓦斯告诉 CNN，这项废除令“伤害”一词没有监管定义，从而消除了《濒危物种法》保护此类栖息地免遭破坏的主要机制。

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内政部表示，废除“危害”定义“将《濒危物种法》的解释回归其实际文本和最初意图，这将结束多年来联邦政府的权力过度扩张”。

该部门强调，“直接伤害​​或杀死受保护野生动物的行为仍将被禁止”。

专家指出，受《濒危物种法》保护的大多数本土濒危物种都面临栖息地丧失的威胁，而直接因狩猎等方式而受到威胁的物种则少得多。

据CNN报道，众议院议员菲茨帕特里克的发言人凯西-李·沃尔德伦表示，《保护濒危物种法案》目前新增了六位共同提案人。根据国会网站上的法案简介，所有新增提案人均为民主党人，该法案目前仍在众议院自然资源委员会审议中。