Washington state joins fight against changes to the Endangered Species Act
Washington joined a multi-state coalition Wednesday in filing a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s changes to the rules governing the Endangered Species Act.
“For more than four decades, the Endangered Species Act has been a worldwide model of conservation law,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said at a press conference in Seattle. “This administration has shown over and over that it will stop at nothing to slash regulations at the whim of industry interests, even if it means putting our shared ecosystem at risk.”
California, Massachusetts and Maryland are leading the coalition of 17 states, the District of Columbia and New York City that are seeking to invalidate the rules and block their implementation. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Ferguson said the Trump administration’s three new rules arbitrarily limit when actions by federal agencies that destroy critical habitat can be deemed harmful, eliminate the recovery of a species as a key basis for removing it from the endangered list, and make it harder to designate areas as “critical habitat” for species.
The lawsuit’s defendants are Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the U.S. Fish and Wild Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Nick Goodwin, a spokesman for the Interior Department, said in an email: ““These are long overdue and necessary regulatory changes that will recover more imperiled species facing extinction than previously accomplished over the span of this law. We will see them in court, and we will be steadfast in our implementation of this important act to improve conservation efforts across the country.”
There are 49 species in Washington listed under the Endangered Species Act, including southern resident orcas, pygmy rabbits, green sea turtles and several salmon species, including some chinook, chum and sockeye. Ferguson said the new rules increase the likelihood that those species will lose their federal protections before they have fully recovered.
Becky Kelley, president of the Washington Environmental Council, a nonprofit statewide advocacy group, said supporters of the Endangered Species Act “reject the false choice that polluters push that somehow we have to choose between jobs and the environment.
“We know that a strong economy is only possible with a healthy environment, and we can give our kids both,” she said.
When the new regulations were published in August, Bernhardt, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, said in a written statement that the changes are “designed to increase transparency and effectiveness and bring the administration of the Act into the 21st century.
“The Act’s effectiveness rests on clear, consistent and efficient implementation. An effectively administered Act ensures more resources can go where they will do the most good: on-the-ground conservation,” Bernhardt said.
This story was originally published September 25, 2019 at 12:34 PM with the headline "Washington state joins fight against changes to the Endangered Species Act."
