Lawsuit Challenges Trump’s Attempt to Stop Protecting Imperiled Species’ Habitat

San Francisco, CA — Yesterday, conservation groups and a fishing guide filed suit in federal court in San Francisco to challenge the Trump administration’s new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that “harm” to species does not include destroying their habitat. The decision reverses 50 years of bipartisan agreement that protecting species’ habitat is at the heart of the ESA and, without it, many species will go extinct.

The conservationists assert that no matter how the administration contorts the legal term “harm,” it’s plain meaning, as confirmed by the Supreme Court in Babbitt v. Sweet Home, includes destroying species’ habitat. Indeed, the ESA itself states its first purpose is “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved.”

“This is war on the forests and rivers of the West,” said Pete Frost, attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene. “No longer protecting where grizzlies, salmon, and owls live will make them extinct. We’re hopeful the court will clarify what the ESA has always meant.”

Chris Daughters, a licensed fishing guide on Oregon’s famed McKenzie River, joined the lawsuit as a plaintiff because “my business depends on cold clean water in which salmon thrive. Without good habitat, we won’t have salmon, and I won’t have customers.”

“Marbled murrelets depend on coastal old-growth forests,” said Tom Wheeler of EPIC. “The administration’s twisted interpretation of the ESA means ancient forests could be logged—and the murrelet doomed to extinction. Not only is that a wrongful interpretation of the law, it’s   reprehensible position for the administration to forward.”

“Removing habitat protections for spotted owls would not only mean a death sentence for spotted owls, but a death sentence to old-growth forest ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest as we know them. What’s at stake isn’t just one species, but the entire web of life that countless other wildlife depend on,” says Sydney Wilkins, conservation attorney for KS Wild.

Lost habitat is the very reason most species are listed under the ESA. And habitat loss causes more species to go extinct than any other single factor. To illustrate, the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, which is now 90% gone, is nearing extinction due to its alpine lake habitat being destroyed, not because people are stomping on frogs. Similarly, spotted owls and murrelets are not directly harmed by logging – these birds are not crushed by logging equipment. Rather, logging removes viable habitat for vital life activities such as nesting and foraging, leading to the slow unraveling of entire populations as breeding and nesting areas disappear, prey becomes scarce, and the ecosystem balance they depend on quietly collapses.

Likewise, the four recent dam removals in the Klamath River Basin are for the first time in decades allowing wild salmon to swim hundreds of miles upstream to reach historic habitat. But this may not have been possible without the prior longstanding, sensible interpretation of the ESA: habitat matters.

“The idea that burning down a person’s house does not ‘harm’ that person defies all logic,” said Bethany Cotton, conservation director with Cascadia Wildlands, “The Trump administration’s interpretation that destroying an imperiled species’ habitat is not harmful is absurd and will not stand.”

The conservationists are asking the court to set aside the administration’s new rule and require it to first evaluate what this radical change will mean for protected species analysis, which it illegally failed to do for this major change in interpreting and applying the ESA.

Conservation organizations Cascadia Wildlands, KS Wild, and EPIC and Mr. Daughters are represented by attorneys at the Western Environmental Law Center.