Attacks on the Endangered Species Act Are Coming in Fast

The Endangered Species Act is our most effective and important tool for combating the alarming decline of wildlife across the United States. But despite a million species at risk of extinction in coming decades and strong public support for the Endangered Species Act, the Trump administration and anti-environment legislators are intent again on gutting the law to line the pockets of dirty industry. Many efforts are straight out of Chapter 16 of the Project 2025 playbook.  

In Congress, these attacks are coming fast. Already, we’ve seen several pieces of anti-wildlife legislation introduced that target individual species and block essential Endangered Species Act protections. And several of these bills have already been heard in their respective committees, clearing the first benchmark to becoming law and demonstrating that legislators in the majority are serious about advancing them. 

The broadest assault on the Endangered Species Act coming out of Congress is the ESA Amendments Act of 2025, H.R. 1897. Under the guise of increasing collaboration and transparency, the bill would gut core protections for our nation’s most imperiled species. The bill makes dozens of harmful changes, but these are some of the most egregious: 

Another congressional attack is the Fix Our Forests Act, H.R. 471/S. 1462, a bill with versions in both chambers of Congress that purports to address wildfire risk and forest health but instead would fast-track large-scale logging projects at the expense of species and ecosystems. The sections of this bill that pose significant threats to the Endangered Species Act:  

Members of Congress also frequently seek to overturn protections for specific species, prioritizing politics over the science-based determinations of expert agencies charged with administering the Endangered Species Act. One of the latest examples is Representative Lauren Boebert’s Pet and Livestock Protection Act, H.R. 845, which would reinstate a rule delisting the gray wolf. A court struck down the rule as unlawful in 2022, but H.R. 845 would prohibit judicial review of its reinstatement. 

As one of its first actions this Congress, the House Committee on Natural Resources majority chose to hold an oversight hearing targeting the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Last congress, more legislation was introduced to weaken protections for two already endangered whales—the North Atlantic right whale and the Gulf of Mexico Rice’s whale—than for any other individual species, an indicator that none of our most threatened and endangered wildlife is safe from congressional attack. 

Beyond Congress, President Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have issued a series of executive and secretarial orders that, at minimum, foreshadow broad attempts to undermine Endangered Species Act protections. 

Trump’s executive orders direct agencies to use their emergency powers to avoid Endangered Species Act responsibilities and invoke the “God Squad,” a committee empowered to consign species to extinction by finding ways to gut species protections in favor of extractive industries. Another executive order directs agencies to establish a “sunset rule” for all new and existing regulations under the Endangered Species and Marine Mammal Protection Acts, among many others, in a backward and unlawful attempt to unleash the dirtiest forms of American energy. 

Secretary Burgum has directed his agency to consider rolling back regulatory efforts to protect imperiled species. And President Trump has nominated Brian Nesvik—who has an abysmal record of protecting imperiled wildlife as director of Wyoming’s Game & Fish Department—to run the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. 

The full scale of Endangered Species Act attacks under the Trump administration remains to be seen, as the Fish & Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service are expected to take regulatory action to roll back protections. A rule is already in the works to constrain the definition of harm that underpins many Endangered Species Act safeguards. After just a few months, it has become clear that Trump and his allies are waging an all-out war on the Endangered Species Act and our nation’s cherished wildlife that depend on it.