The US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service yesterday (July 19) jointly proposed a suite of changes to how the Endangered Species Act is implemented. If the changes are adopted, species designated as threatened would no longer automatically receive the same protections as endangered species, but would instead be considered case by case. Another change would remove a longstanding prohibition against agencies’ taking economic impact into account when devising regulations.
“One thing we heard over and over again was that ESA [Endangered Species Act] implementation was not consistent and often times very confusing to navigate,” says Fish and Wildlife Service Principal Deputy Director Greg Sheehan in a statement. “We are proposing these improvements to produce the best conservation results for the species while reducing the regulatory burden on the American people.”
Many environmentalists are concerned that the proposal, which will be ...
