Biden administration restores threatened species protections dropped by Trump

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday restored rules to protect imperiled plants and animals that had been rolled back back under former President Donald Trump.

Among the changes announced, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will reinstate a decades-old regulation that mandates blanket protections for species newly classified as threatened.

The blanket protections regulation was dropped in 2019 as part of a suite of changes to the application of the species law under Trump that were encouraged by industry. Those changes came as extinctions accelerate globally due to habitat loss and other pressures.

Officials also will not consider economic impacts when deciding if animals and plants need protection. And the rules from the wildlife service and National Marine Fisheries Service make it easier to designate areas as critical for a species’ survival, even if it is no longer found in those locations.

Species that could benefit from the rules include imperiled fish and freshwater mussels in the Southeast, where the aquatic animals in many cases are absent from portions of their historical range, officials have said.

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