Trump Administration Proposes Fundamentally Weakening Endangered Species Act with Harmful New Rules

Tell your representative to vote No on H.R. 4754

Date November 19, 2025

Contact Joanna Zhang, Endangered Species Advocate, jzhang@wildearthguardians.org

Summary:
The Trump administration has proposed major rollbacks to the Endangered Species Act (ESA), changes that environmental groups warn would dramatically weaken wildlife protections and push many vulnerable species—such as monarch butterflies, sea turtles, manatees, salmon, and wolverines—closer to extinction. The proposed rules would allow economic considerations to influence listing decisions, make it harder to protect critical habitat, eliminate automatic safeguards for newly listed threatened species, hinder voluntary conservation efforts, and streamline the removal of species from protection.

Conservation organizations argue that the plan puts political and corporate interests over scientific evidence and decades of successful recovery efforts. They note that similar attempts during Trump’s first term caused real harm and triggered widespread opposition from the public, states, tribes, and environmental groups, resulting in prolonged legal battles.

Polling consistently shows strong bipartisan public support for the ESA, with more than 80% of Americans favoring the law. Nevertheless, environmental and legal advocates warn that the new proposals would dismantle one of the nation’s most effective conservation tools, undermining progress for species ranging from wolves and bears to piping plovers and Gulf Coast wildlife. Many groups vow to fight the changes, calling the effort an “extinction plan” that prioritizes industry interests over ecological and moral responsibility.

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WASHINGTON – The
Trump administration is proposing to fundamentally weaken the Endangered
Species Act (ESA) in ways that could bring imminent harm to imperiled
species. If finalized, the rules would bias listing decisions with
unreliable economic analyses, obstruct the ability to list new protected
species, and make it easier to remove those now on the federal
endangered or threatened list. The rules would also make it harder to
designate and protect critical habitats for threatened and endangered
wildlife, to protect species impacted by changing environmental
conditions, eliminate automatic protections for threatened species,
reduce voluntary conservation incentives and weaken the consultation
process.

The Trump administration’s rules
could send some of America’s most vulnerable plants and wildlife, such
as monarch butterflies, sea turtles, manatees, wolverines, and hundreds
more, on a pathway toward extinction.

“Rolling back these protections would put politics over science and corporate profits over the survival of wildlife,” said Joanna Zhang, Endangered Species Advocate with WildEarth Guardians.
“Unlawfully weakening the Endangered Species Act would spell disaster
for species we’re fighting to protect, from the Mexican gray wolf in the
Southwest to salmon in the Pacific Northwest. At a time of accelerating
climate and biodiversity crises, we need stronger protections for
wildlife and habitat, not a return to Trump’s extinction plan.”

The proposed rules follow other
attacks against wildlife by the Trump administration this year,
including one that would allow for the destruction of species’ habitat,
proposals to rescind the Roadless Rule and Public Lands Rule, and an
effort to convene a committee of the President’s own appointees to
effectively decide the fate of endangered species.

According to polling data
published in June 2025, more than four out of five Americans support
the Endangered Species Act, a profound level of agreement that has held
firm for three decades. Additionally, support for the bedrock
environmental law is consistent among people living in urban, suburban,
and rural places.

Background

During the first Trump administration, similar attacks on the ESA led to tangible harm for species, which the Endangered Species Coalition documented. Those attacks were met with overwhelming
opposition from the public. More than 800,000 people and multiple
states submitted comments against the harmful rules. The National
Congress of American Indians passed a resolution in opposition.

When the rules were finalized,
environmental groups brought the Trump administration to court, into
what has continued into a six-year legal saga.

Coalition Partner Statements

“These Trump proposals to weaken the Endangered Species Act amount to an extinction plan for our most treasured wildlife,” said Susan Holmes, Executive Director, Endangered Species Coalition.
“For the last fifty years, the Endangered Species Act has been a global
model for recovering species from manatees to wolves to the bald eagle.
Reinstating rules that scientists have rejected would put these species
and more back on the path to extinction.”

“For decades, the vast majority of
Americans have supported strong protections for our wildlife — from bald
eagles to polar bears to Pacific Northwest salmon,” said Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles.
“Trump’s attacks on the Endangered Species Act seriously misread the
room. Most people are not going to allow the sacrifice of our natural
world to a bunch of billionaires and corporate interests.”

​​“These changes were unlawful the first time they tried, and they are unlawful now,” said Rebecca Riley, Managing Director at NRDC.
“This would undermine a successful and wildly popular law to help out
billionaires in the oil and gas, logging, and mining industries.”

“Draconian regulatory proposals
targeting the Endangered Species Act put America’s beloved wildlife at
risk of extinction,” said Andrew Bowman, president and CEO at Defenders of Wildlife. “Such
sweeping rollbacks endanger our natural world and undermine decades of
concerted bipartisan efforts to protect and restore America’s
wildlife.”

“We need more protections for species
in trouble, not fewer. For every pillar of the ESA that is removed,
species will quickly slip from threatened, to endangered, to extinct,”
said Hardy Kern, Director of Government Relations for American Bird Conservancy. “From Hawai’i’s ‘i’iwis to Florida’s Scrub Jays, birds are in need of the strong protections we were promised by the ESA.”

“The Endangered Species Act works. In
fact, it’s one of our nation’s most effective conservation tools, and
it is vital to protecting vulnerable Gulf species like manatees and sea
turtles. Weakening these protections would roll back decades of progress
and put treasured wildlife at risk of extinction,” said Martha Collins, Executive Director for Healthy Gulf.
“At a time when the Gulf and its coastal communities are facing
unprecedented threats from climate change and industrial exploitation,
we need the full strength of the ESA to safeguard the wildlife and
coastal ecosystems that sustain the health and resilience of our
region.”

“The Trump administration is stopping
at nothing in its quest to put corporate polluters over people,
wildlife and the environment,” said Loren Blackford, Executive Director of the Sierra Club.
“After failing in their latest attempt to sell off our public lands,
they now want to enable the wholesale destruction of wildlife habitat
for a short-term boost in polluters’ bottom lines. These regulations
undermine one of America’s bedrock environmental laws, and they could
seal the fate of animals that, without these protections, would
disappear from the earth. For decades, the Sierra Club has worked to
defend this critical law, and we will use every tool at our disposal to
stop this reckless administration from selling out our wildlife and wild
places to corporations and billionaires.”

“This proposal is a moral and ecological failure of the highest order,” said Josh Osher, Public Policy Director for Western Watersheds Project. “It’s
an extinction plan for profit, handing the keys of the Endangered
Species Act to industry lobbyists and turning wildlife protection into a
cost–benefit calculation where extinction becomes an acceptable
outcome.”

“Without the ESA, Wyoming’s
endangered species would be extirpated from the state and likely from
the Northern Rockies. If left to state management, species like the
Wyoming toad, black-footed ferret, grizzly bear, and gray wolf would
never have had a chance at staging a comeback,” said Kristin Combs, Executive Director of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates.
“If we weaken the ESA, we risk losing all we have gained for species
still struggling and those that might need protections in the future.”

“The Endangered Species Act is the
driving force for protections of the federally-endangered Great Lakes
Piping Plover population and the federally-theatened Great Plains and
Atlantic Coast Piping Plover populations. Without a strong and intact
ESA, there will be no protection for this bird and countless other
species,” said Chris Allieri, Executive Director of NYC Plover Project.
“Protections afforded by the ESA protect countless other species. In
the case of Atlantic Coast Piping Plovers, this includes
federally-threatened Seabeach Amaranth. While we are heartened to see
strong wildlife management plans across multiple states, we must rely on
the ESA to drive protection in a real and substantive way across our
country.”

“The Endangered Species Act has been a
vital tool for climate-focused groups like CCAN to stop fossil fuels
from polluting our majestic forests,” said Quentin Scott, Federal Policy Director at Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
“ESA remains one of our nation’s most powerful tools safeguarding our
planet. From addressing accelerating impacts of climate change to
protecting vulnerable species and fragile ecosystems. ESA has provided
the critical framework to ensure future generations inherit a planet
with a livable climate and rich in biodiversity. Now more than ever, we
must uphold and even strengthen the ESA to meet the urgent challenges of
a warming world.”

“Here in the South, the stakes are
much higher because our region’s incredible biodiversity is already
threatened by humanmade factors, including development and habitat
change,” said Ramona McGee, Southern Environmental Law Center’s Wildlife Program leader.
“It is unconscionable that this administration is recklessly attempting
to remove more vital wildlife protections contrary to the will of the
American people.”

“Americans overwhelmingly want safer,
stronger, more thoughtful protections for wildlife. A recent national
poll shows that 84% of Americans feel it is important to them personally
that the US focus on saving endangered species,” said Danielle Kessler, US Director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
“These proposed changes place our most imperiled species at risk, as
well as the ecosystems and resources that we all rely on.”