Vox Populi:

“Humanity’s survival depends on biodiversity, and no one voted to fast-track extinction,” one conservationist stressed. “This is a five-alarm fire.”

A leading conservation group is sounding the alarm over a new Trump administration attack on threatened and endangered species: an attempt to redefine “harm” as it relates to a key federal law.

The law? The Endangered Species Act (ESA), a longtime target of U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, despite being signed in 1973 by then-President Richard Nixon.

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) on Tuesday noticed that the Department of the Interior—now led by Trump appointee Doug Burgum, a billionaire ally of the fossil fuel industry—sent a proposed rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review.

The Monday proposal is not yet available, but on a public online dashboard it is titled, “Redefinition of ‘Harm.'” There is also a Tuesday submission from the Department of Commerce titled, “Defining ‘Harm’ Under the Endangered Species Act.”

CBD called it “the first step toward stripping habitat protections from rare plants and animals headed toward extinction.”

Under the ESA, people cannot “take” an endangered species of fish or wildlife—and take is defined as “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect.” Within that definition, harm means injuring or killing wildlife.

The law states that “such act may include significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding, or sheltering.”

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