Endangered Species Act faces rollback

The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a cluster of amendments to the federal Endangered Species Act that conservationists say will seriously undermine its powers to protect vulnerable species.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican, will roll back the procedural safeguards that ensure listed species won’t be killed or harmed. And it will allow exemptions to the law if the federal government decides national security or economic interests are at stake.

Westerman has said his bill would cut the "morass of red tape" that hinders infrastructure projects and shift power from legal challenges by environmental groups, to private landowners and the states.

The U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), enacted in 1973 with near-unanimous bipartisan support, is considered by environmentalists to be highly successful. Of all species protected in the past half century, 99% have been kept from extinction. Among the iconic species that have recovered after their listings are humpback whales and bald eagles, which are now no longer rare in Long Island’s seas and skies.

"This law preserves entire ecosystems, entire places," said Chris Allieri, founder of NYC Plover Project, because it protects not just species but their habitats. "This is a law that works."

Westerman’s bill is supported by the oil and gas, mining, logging and ranching industries, which over the years have fought restrictions on their operations in sensitive habitats.

The amendments "will improve the act by helping to reduce ESA’s unnecessarily burdensome regulatory process," Buddy Hughes, chair of the National Association of Home Builders, said in a statement, "and ease barriers to constructing new housing for American families."

Long Island species that benefit from the ESA include the rufa red knot, a migratory bird that rests on local beaches during its long migrations; roseate terns; four sea turtle species; and piping plovers.

Atlantic Coast plovers were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in the 1980s, and since then their numbers have slowly increased in some areas, including on Long Island. But that recovery has depended on the protection of their shoreline habitats, Allieri said, and this bill will make it easier to damage those habitats by loosening permitting rules for development, for example.

Biden in 2024 strengthened several provisions of the law that had been weakened under the first Trump administration. The amendments now under consideration would again reverse many of Biden’s measures, this time writing them into law.

Analysts expect a largely partisan vote on the bill. Rep. Laura Gillen's spokesperson declined to say how the Rockville Centre Democrat will vote, but pointed to her previous votes against the Trump administration's rollbacks on endangered species. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) said he would vote no. "At a time of growing environmental threats, we should be strengthening [the ESA], not weakening it," he wrote to Newsday.

Long Island's two Republican representatives — Nick LaLota, of Amityville, and Andrew Garbarino, of Bayport — did not immediately respond to requests about how they planned to vote on Wednesday, which is Earth Day.

The ESA’s consultation rule now requires federal agencies weighing activities in protected habitats to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service or NOAA Fisheries to ensure any hazards to listed species are minimized. If the amendments pass, consultation would be required only if the action is “reasonably certain” to harm those species — a guideline that would provide wide latitude to avoid such consults, conservationists warn.

The bill would also expand the powers of a rarely convened panel of Cabinet officials — sometimes called the "God Squad" for its ability to decide which species live or die. The group, officially called the Endangered Species Committee, has met only three times since it was created in 1978. But last month, the panel exempted oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico from ESA rules, despite the presence of the critically endangered Rice's whale and other vulnerable species in the area.

Westerman’s bill would allow the God Squad to grant similar exemptions if adhering to the law “may impair national security” or could result in negative economic impacts.

"People get really excited that we see humpback whales now" off Long Island's shores, Allieri noted. "And we can see them now because of the Endangered Species Act. They were saved because of that."