Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, just filed two law suits against the former Trump administration after their final attacks on the Endangered Species Act that stripped vital protections from federal lands that research indicates are necessary for endangered and threatened species conservation.
The first case challenges what the Trump administration defines as “habitat,” which would reverse protections of habitat that needs restoration for listed species to repopulate, as well as areas that would serve as refuges for listed species as the climate continues to dramatically change. The second case challenges a rule that protects land indicated by research as necessary for species conservation and prioritizes profits for big industries that would pollute the land that is necessary to protect.
These two new rulings, passed by the Trump administration in their final month in office, essentially guarantees that biodiversity loss and natural heritage would accelerate, propelling us further into the current mass extinction.
The lawsuits were filed in Hawaii, where the new rules are especially dangerous due to the limited habitat for so many native and endemic species with nowhere else to go. Similarly, the threatened and endangered species in the Allegheny Highlands and Mon National Forest, like the Cheat Mountain salamander (pictured above) and WV Northern flying squirrel, have limited dispersal abilities- there is no where for them to go once their habitats here are gone!
Read the full article about these lawsuits here.
