The Endangered Species Act Under Attack

For many species, the future may well rest on the definition of a single four-letter word: harm.

The Trump administration has proposed changing the protections under the Endangered Species Act that would rescind the current, and science-based, definition of harm.

Since its passing in 1973, the act has stated that it is illegal “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect” an endangered species. Regulations implementing the ESA further define harm to include “habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding or sheltering.”

So, you can’t mess with endangered species themselves. And you also can’t mess with the things that endangered species require for their survival—essentials like food, nesting sites, and other important habitats. It’s this part of the definition of harm that the Trump administration is looking to obliterate. Eliminating protections for habitat would make it easier for developers to clearcut forests, bulldoze over important habitats, and mine, drill, and pollute the places that endangered wildlife call home.

For most endangered species across the globe, existential peril doesn’t come in the form of a person with a gun or set of traps. It lies in the destruction of their home. 

“The primary threat to species is habitat loss, fragmentation, and modification,” says Noss, who is also the chief science advisor with the Southeastern Grasslands Institute. “All biologists agree with that. There is no debate.”

Take habitat protections away and there’s little left to safeguard the more than 1,300 species that the ESA currently protects. But the ecological consequences wouldn’t end there. Those listed species have innumerable neighbors who also benefit from healthier and more intact ecosystems. Humans, of course, belong in that category, as do the plants and animals we depend upon for medicines and food and the natural spaces we retreat to for peace of mind.

Rebecca Riley, managing director for NRDC’s Food & Agriculture program, points to bees, butterflies, and other insects as examples of small animals that have big ecological and agricultural impacts. “One out of every three bites of food we eat depends on pollination,” she says. 

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approves a new pesticide, the ESA requires the agency to first look at the impact that the pesticide would have on protected species. “If they bypass that Endangered Species Act review, they will fail to stop the torrent of pesticides flooding our environment, which will lead to more species declines and, potentially, to extinctions,” says Riley. 

Other changes to the ESA proposed by Congress include making it easier to approve destructive development projects without assessing their full impact to endangered species; making it harder to challenge delayed listings of species in court; and eliminating the protections for critical habitat altogether. (Similarly, the new rules proposed by the Trump administration complicate efforts to both designate critical habitats and to protect species impacted by changing environmental conditions.)

As if these assaults on wildlife are not enough, they come on yet another front: sabotaging the ability of agencies to carry out their work. In other words, firing the people who evaluate species populations and enforce the conservation law.

On the Gulf Coast of Florida, the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge protects the last remaining undeveloped natural spring in Kings Bay. During the winter, more than 600 manatees migrate here to congregate in the spring’s warm turquoise waters. Currently listed as threatened under the ESA, the Florida manatee faces numerous threats to its survival, including boat strikes and, in recent years, starvation, due to habitat degradation in the form of water pollution. 

Last winter, however, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), under the direction of Elon Musk, fired many of the staff who work to protect these marine mammals. 

On a Friday in February 2025, Brier Ryver stared at a laptop on a dock in the refuge, which is accessible only by boat. A half hour earlier, they’d received an email invite to a Microsoft Teams meeting from the FWS. “Update for probationary employees,” the invite read. Ryver remembers thinking, That doesn’t sound good.

It wasn’t. With their manager and supervisor sitting nearby for support, Ryver learned that they wouldn’t have a job by the end of the day. 

“I was running education and outreach. I was running the permit program. I was running social media,” says Ryver, who’d been hired in April 2024. 

All that energy hadn’t gone unnoticed. Ryver received a Special Thanks for Achieving Results (STAR) Award, which the FWS uses to “recognize noteworthy accomplishments.” In just the first six months of employment, they assisted a team that hustled, bustled, and worked many overtime hours to secure federal assets, such as boats and equipment, and prepare the refuge for Hurricanes Debby, Helene, and Milton, which struck Florida last year in rapid succession.

Yet the cuts to that team were deep. Ryver’s coworker, Emily Jung, who oversaw visitor services, also lost her job on the same day. Overall, the layoffs effectively cut the refuge’s workforce by a quarter. A workforce that, by Ryver’s estimation, was already understaffed as it managed a complex of refuges that spans 32,000 acres of wetlands along Florida’s Gulf Coast.

In total, DOGE had laid off around 2,300 other Interior Department employees, including around 400 FWS workers. 

But for Ryver, a strange turn of events ensued. After five weeks of unemployment and applying for more than 100 jobs, Ryver got their job back when a U.S. district judge deemed the mass layoffs illegal.

“No ‘oopsie, our bad!’ Nothing,” says Ryver. “Just a message saying we needed to go pick up a new [personal identity verification card] and go back to work, like nothing happened.”

Unsurprisingly, however, Ryver no longer felt secure in the position—a feeling shared by many other probationary employees (several of whom responded to calls for an interview but ultimately decided against it out of fear of professional retribution).

Ryver has since taken another outreach position with Purdue University and thinks many early-career wildlife professionals will start to look elsewhere for work too.

“I planned on being with the Fish & Wildlife Service for another 40 years,” they say. “I’m still kind of struggling with that. It’s like I lost my whole career in that moment.”

That sort of fierce loyalty is common within the ranks of the FWS. “A lot of my environmentalist colleagues love to bash the Fish & Wildlife Service,” says Noss. “But the vast majority of people in the service are doing those jobs because they love wildlife, and they want to protect endangered species. It’s the politicians who ride to the top of the agency and direct the agency that are causing the problem.”

Neither the FWS nor the ESA have ever been perfect. For example, FWS scientists often agree that a plant or animal should be given protections, but the agency lacks enough human capital or political will to make it happen. The latter can lead to unfortunate FWS decisions known as “warranted, but precluded.” In other words, the science says a species needs our help, but preventing its further decline is not high enough on the priorities list. 

Still, some species squeak through. Petrels, ptarmigans, and pimpleback mussels, for example, earned ESA protections in 2024. Still, according to the FWS, there are currently more than 500 species waiting to be reviewed for ESA protections. And the logjam is likely to only get worse if President Trump’s executive order to establish a “sunset rule” succeeds, says Riley. Under the order, both the FWS and the National Marine Fisheries Service would have to establish end dates for all new and pre-existing regulations under the Endangered Species and Marine Mammal Protection Acts.

“The Trump administration is attacking the Endangered Species Act in every way that it can,” says Riley.

Without the ESA and its enforcement over the past half century, many of the United States’ iconic wildlife would have likely died out. As in no bald eagles, grizzly bears, gray wolves, nor Florida panthers, just to name a few species that have been saved from oblivion by the act. If the Trump administration succeeds in its attempts to gut protections for habitat, the Florida manatee may not be so lucky.

“If you bulldoze over their habitat or ruin their springs, they have nowhere to go during the winter,” says Ryver. “They will actually die. They will freeze to death over the winter.”