An American bald eagle, along the cliffs over the Potomac River leading to the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia: Glynn Wilson

By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a continuing series of executive actions to reverse damaging anti-environment policies of the Trump administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service under President Joe Biden announced new plans this week to re-strengthen the Endangered Species Act, the law and a series of regulations credited with bringing back a number of endangered animals from the brink of extinction, including the American bald eagle, grizzly bears, wolves and humpback whales.

In a joint announcement, the agencies released a plan Friday to improve and strengthen implementation of the law passed in 1973 during the Nixon administration.

Biden’s Executive Order 13990 directed all federal agencies to review and address agency actions during the last four years that conflict with Biden-Harris administration objectives, such as addressing climate change.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is committed to working with diverse federal, Tribal, state and industry partners to not only protect and recover America’s imperiled wildlife but to ensure cornerstone laws like the Endangered Species Act are helping us meet 21st century challenges,” said Fish and Wildlife Service Principal Deputy Director Martha Williams. “We look forward to continuing these conservation collaborations and to ensuring our efforts are fully transparent and inclusive.”

As a result of this review, the agencies will initiate rulemaking in the coming months to revise, rescind, or reinstate five ESA regulations finalized by the prior administration.

“NOAA Fisheries is committed to the protection, conservation, and recovery of endangered and threatened marine species,” said Paul Doremus, Acting Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries. “We are proud to work with a range of federal, Tribal, state and community partners to achieve conservation successes, and look forward to continuing these shared efforts through clear and transparent Endangered Species Act regulations.”

Each of these recommended actions will undergo a rigorous and transparent rulemaking process, including publication of a proposed rule in the Federal Register, a public comment period and coordination with federally recognized Tribes before being finalized.

According to the Washington Post version of the story, apparently the first published, the agencies under Biden “are moving to undo much of the Trump administration’s work that altered the ways habitats of plants and animals on the verge of extinction are kept from total collapse.”

“The decision to bolster the federal government’s power to protect vanishing plants and animals comes as the world finds itself in the midst of what United Nations scientists say is a worldwide decline in biodiversity that threatens to erode food systems and other key parts of the global economy,” the paper reports.

Martha Williams, principal deputy director at the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement that her agency will work with both industry and Native American tribes “to not only protect and recover America’s imperiled wildlife but to ensure cornerstone laws like the Endangered Species Act are helping us meet 21st century challenges.”

Led by former interior secretary David Bernhardt, an expert on the Endangered Species Act, the Trump administration whittled down several long-standing protections for imperiled plants and animals following complaints from loggers, ranchers and other business interests.

Spotted owls could go extinct without more federal protection. But they’re not going to get it, Trump officials said at the time.

The Trump administration allowed wildlife officials to take the economic cost of conserving species into account when deciding whether to put a plant or animal on the endangered species list — a move many environmentalists claimed violated both the letter and spirit of the law. Trump officials also made it easier to remove protections for threatened species, such as the American burying beetle, which once scurried nearly everywhere east of the Rockies but now lives in only a few parts of the country and is further threatened by climate change. Under Trump, the Fish and Wildlife Service weakened protections for the beetle at the behest of oil and gas drillers who must work around the imperiled insect.

These rule changes will be revised or rescinded.

David Henkin, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, which sued the Trump administration over the changes, said the Biden administration’s announcement is “excellent news for critically endangered species.”

“As long as they do it quickly,” he added, “we can avoid bad on-the-ground consequences.”

Arizona Democrat Raúl M. Grijalva, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, called the announcement “a good start,” urging the Biden administration to update the regulation in a way that safeguards species threatened by rising temperatures.

“With climate change bearing down on us and no serious doubt remaining about the consequences of inaction, we should take this opportunity to update all federal standards as thoroughly as possible to prevent habitat destruction and biodiversity loss before it’s too late,” he said in a statement.

Republicans criticized the move for potentially undermining any push to rebuild roads, bridges and other infrastructure if opposed by environmentalists, according to The Post.

“Many of the reforms put in place under President Trump were born out of input from local communities and the men and women most affected by the policies created in Washington,” said Arkansas Republican Congressman Bruce Westerman, the top Republican on the House panel. “Yet by reinstating burdensome regulations, this administration has once again opened the door for environmental groups to weaponize the ESA and use it to delay critical projects across the country.”

Your damn right, environmental advocates say.

Historically hailed as a success by the World Wildlife Fund and other conservation groups, the Endangered Species Act has helped keep the vast majority — 99 percent — of protected wildlife from extinction.

Yet many supposedly protected species are still far from thriving. A new study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution this week, for instance, found that something isn’t right with the North Atlantic right whale.

One million species face extinction, a U.N. report says. Humans will suffer as a result.

Although the animal is listed as endangered and protected from harvest, it’s still impacted by deadly contact with humans through boat strikes and becoming entangled in fishing nets. Not all those incidents are lethal, but, according to research published in Current Biology, it has led to a startling finding. Right whales are getting smaller.

“We find that entanglements in fishing gear are associated with shorter whales, and that body lengths have been decreasing since 1981,” the study says. “Arrested growth may lead to reduced reproductive success and increased probability of lethal gear entanglements.”

The researchers used aerial photogrammetry data dating back to the early 2000s to measure whales observed for the study, taking 202 measurements of 129 individuals. Based on the findings, the authors determined that a whale born in 2019 is expected to reach a maximum length that’s one meter shorter than a whale born in 1981, a 7 percent decline.

To further protect some of the hundreds of thousands of plants and animals near extinction, Biden campaigned on a plan to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s land and waters by the end of the decade.

So far, though, his administration has offered few details on how it will achieve that ambitious goal, while weathering criticism from Republican lawmakers who call the plan an example of government overreach.

And plenty of other Trump moves, including a decision to deny protections for the monarch butterfly along the West Coast, still remain on the books.

“It’s disappearing,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It may be gone before 2024.”

An endangered monarch butterfly: Glynn Wilson