Last week, The New York Times reported that an internal memo had been quietly distributed across US Fish and Wildlife Service field offices, directing staff to reinterpret the Endangered Species Act in a move that blindsided conservationists.
Stripping that protection could at once threaten not just individual animals but entire populations, as Supreme Court justices acknowledged in 1995 when it was first ruled that the ESA prohibited harm by preventing the modification of habitats.
According to the Times, Trump is so intent on flipping the ESA that the dissent in that 1995 ruling is now serving as the “blueprint” for how his FWS plans to enforce the law.
The majority rejected that logic, and they did so based not on an interpretation of the secretary’s authority under the law but on a textual reading of the law, Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, told the Times.
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The more recent rule change goes much further, allowing the animals to be killed as long as that’s not the landowners’ motivation for taking an action. In his dissent, Scalia argued the ESA was written to prohibit the intentional hunting and killing of vulnerable animals, not to broadly protect species at the population level.
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The article, shortened and in plain language
Last week, The New York Times reported that an internal memo had been quietly distributed across US Fish and Wildlife Service field offices, directing staff to reinterpret the Endangered Species Act in a move that blindsided conservationists.
Instead of prohibiting habitat changes that injure animals or cause accidental deaths, the ESA will now only prohibit actions “specifically intending to target an animal,” FWS Director Brian Nesvik instructed staff in the September 14 memo.
Stripping that protection could at once threaten not just individual animals but entire populations, as Supreme Court justices acknowledged in 1995 when it was first ruled that the ESA prohibited harm by preventing the modification of habitats.
At least one judge weighing the 1995 case characterized the secretary’s reading as “a proper application” of the Chevron doctrine, the majority noted in their opinion.
According to the Times, Trump is so intent on flipping the ESA that the dissent in that 1995 ruling is now serving as the “blueprint” for how his FWS plans to enforce the law.
Penned by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, the dissent takes jabs at threatened slugs for not having feelings while envisioning a world where the ESA has nothing to do with protecting endangered populations and the government can do little to prevent accidental deaths.
The majority rejected that logic, and they did so based not on an interpretation of the secretary’s authority under the law but on a textual reading of the law, Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, told the Times.
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