Biden administration restores threatened species protections dropped by Trump
The Biden administration on Thursday restored rules to protect imperiled plants and animals that had been rolled backback under former President Donald Trump.
Among the changes announced, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will reinstate a decades-old regulation that mandates blanket protections for species newly classified as threatened. That means officials won’t have to craft time-intensive plans to shield each individual species while protections are pending, as has been done recently with North American wolverines and alligator snapping turtles in the southeastern U.S. and spotted owls in California.
The blanket protections regulation was dropped in 2019 as part of a suite of changes to the application of the species lawunder Trump that were encouraged by industry. Those changes came as extinctions accelerate globally due to habitat loss and other pressures.
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