Trump Restores Common Sense To Endangered Species Act By Ruling That Bulldozing An Animal's Only Habitat No Longer Counts As Harming It

WASHINGTON. Delivering long-awaited relief to the nation's endangered animals, the Departments of the Interior and Commerce announced Friday that they had finalized a rule rescuing threatened species from the burden of federal protection by declaring that destroying the last place they live no longer legally counts as harming them.

The rule rescinds the decades-old regulatory definition of "harm" under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, a definition that had included the significant modification or destruction of the habitat an animal needs to feed, breed, and shelter. Under the new interpretation, only the act of directly injuring or killing a listed creature will be prohibited, meaning a developer who flattens the sole remaining forest of a species may now do so with the full confidence that no individual owl was personally struck in the process.

"For years, federal agencies abused the ESA to obstruct lawful land use and burden American families and businesses," said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, describing the previous system of keeping animals alive by not eliminating the places they lived as a regulatory trap. Officials noted that the reform rests on the Supreme Court's 2024 Loper Bright decision, which instructs agencies to follow a statute's single best meaning, a standard the Services applied to conclude that the best meaning of protecting a species is to permit the removal of everything it requires to exist.

The change reverses an interpretation the Supreme Court itself upheld in 1995, when a 6-to-3 majority agreed that a bird has been harmed when the woods it depends on are cut down around it. Administration lawyers clarified that this understanding, while technically correct for thirty years, had grown inconvenient. "The core protections remain firmly in place," a spokesman confirmed, adding that any endangered animal is still fully entitled to not be shot, provided it can locate somewhere to stand.

Conservation biologists noted that roughly 99 percent of species listed under the Act have avoided extinction, a figure the administration characterized as evidence that the law had been trying too hard. A source within the Interior Department said the agency remained deeply committed to protecting wildlife using what it called Gold Standard Science, defined internally as whichever science permits the most drilling, logging, ranching, and subdivision construction on the acreage in question.

At press time, the last several members of an unnamed woodland species were reportedly relieved to learn that their government would never again punish anyone for the disappearance of their home, only for the disappearance of them.