California sues over Trump’s changes to Endangered Species Act, arguing they threaten habitat

California’s beloved condors and sea otters have rebounded from the brink of extinction thanks to the Endangered Species Act. Now the state is going to court to keep the 50-year-old law intact, filing two lawsuits Wednesday to block what Democratic leaders describe as the Trump administration’s rollback of its protections.

Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the suits with a coalition of 21 attorneys general, adding to dozens California has already filed to combat the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda.

The complaints target the Trump administration’s revisions to the Endangered Species Act, first enacted under Republican President (and Californian) Richard Nixon.

“Caring for our wildlife and our environment is part of caring for our future, yet President Trump seems to care only for himself and his industry friends,” Bonta said in a statement Wednesday.

“The Trump Administration has continuously sought to put our ecosystems in danger, which is why we continue to take them to court.”

Trump’s changes, finalized in July, rescind a definition of harm that made it illegal to damage the places that endangered species call home — effectively opening up habitat where they shelter, breed and eat to mining, logging and other development.

The U.S. Department of the Interior said in a statement that the final rule “will end years of federal overreach” and “brings long overdue financial and regulatory relief to citizens who faced unpredictable delays and unnecessary costs due solely by interpretations that went far beyond the statute.”

The coalition’s complaint in federal court calls this “a reversal of staggering proportions.”

The Trump administration’s changes also make it easier for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to avoid designating places as critical habitat, which would otherwise limit federal and federally permitted development in these areas.

And they end what the administration called a “burdensome” rule that extended automatic protections to threatened species — forcing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to now hand craft rules specific to each species newly designated as threatened.

This added work comes amid major staff cuts to the agency, which the Center for Biological Diversity reported lost more than a third of its staff under the Trump administration and faces a backlog of 400 species awaiting protection decisions.

The administration, thus far, has protected only three, according to Noah Greenwald, endangered species co-director at the nonprofit conservation organization.

Greenwald’s organization and others have already filed lawsuits against the changes, but Greenwald said that state attorneys general joining the fight is significant.

“It really signals that the chief legal officer of almost half the states don’t agree with these changes,” he said. “To have the states weigh in is really powerful.”

Is California’s endangered species act enough?

The stakes are high for California, which is home to more threatened and endangered species than any state besides Hawaii, according to the attorney general’s office.

California has its own endangered species act, first enacted in 1970 and then updated and replaced in the 1980s. But California’s law has gaps: For one thing, at least 140 species protected under the federal endangered species law remain unprotected under the state’s.

These “could potentially obtain protections” under California’s endangered species act, a spokesperson for Bonta’s office told CalMatters in an email — but the process can be lengthy. The federal endangered species act also protects migratory species that live in different states at different times.

There’s another, even more challenging gap to address: the California Endangered Species Act, “on its face, does not count habitat of listed species as something that’s protected,” according to Eric Biber, a professor at UC Berkeley Law — though, he added, there’s uncertainty and debate about the law’s interpretation.

On its own, it’s unclear that California’s version can fill the gaps in habitat protection the Trump administration just opened.

For most endangered species, according to a Stanford analysis, “habitat loss is the primary threat.”

Combined with the Trump administration’s erosion of protections for wetlands, Biber said, “this is one further step in this administration’s efforts to roll back protections for habitat for endangered species.”

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This story was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.