Washington, Oregon Among 17 States Suing Feds Over Changes To Endangered Species Protections

a monarch butterfly rests on a plant at Abbott's Mill Nature Center in Milford, Del. Seventeen states sued the Trump administration Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, to block rules weakening the Endangered Species Act, saying the changes would make it tougher to protect wildlife even in the midst of a global extinction crisis. CREDIT: CAROLYN KASTER/AP
A monarch butterfly rests on a plant at Abbott's Mill Nature Center in Milford, Del. Seventeen states sued the Trump administration Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, to block rules weakening the Endangered Species Act, saying the changes would make it tougher to protect wildlife even in the midst of a global extinction crisis. CREDIT: CAROLYN KASTER/AP

Read On

BY GENE JOHNSON / AP

Seventeen states sued the Trump administration Wednesday to block rules weakening the Endangered Species Act, saying the changes would make it tougher to protect wildlife even in the midst of a global extinction crisis.

The lawsuit, in federal court in San Francisco, follows a similar challenge filed last month by several environmental groups, including the Humane Society and the Sierra Club.

The new rules begin taking effect Thursday. They for the first time allow officials to consider how much it would cost to save a species. They also remove blanket protections for animals newly listed as threatened and make it easier for creatures to be removed from the protected list.

“It’s a death by a thousand cuts for the Endangered Species Act,” said Democratic Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, announcing the lawsuit in a Seattle news conference.

The law, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1973, has been credited with helping prevent the extinction of more than 220 species, including bald eagles, grizzly bears and humpback whales. It requires the government to list species that are endangered or threatened. The law also protects about 1,600 plant and animal species, designates habitat protections for them, and assesses whether federal activities will hurt them.

Critics have long complained that the environmentalists have weaponized the law to block economic activity such as logging and mining, infringing on property rights. The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have said the new rules will improve the law’s enforcement.

The revisions “fit squarely within the President’s mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public, without sacrificing our species’ protection and recovery goals,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said when the changes were announced last month.

Scientists say that globally about 1 million species are at risk of extinction, mainly because of habitat destruction by humans, overfishing and climate change.

The states challenging Trump’s rules are California, Massachusetts, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. The District of Columbia and New York City were also named as plaintiffs.

They argue that the rules changes contradict the goals of the Endangered Species Act and that the administration failed to provide a reasoned basis for the changes or analyze their environmental impacts as required by federal law.

The lawsuit cites challenges faced by creatures that include piping plovers in Rhode Island, orca whales in Washington state and desert tortoises in the Mojave Desert in Nevada.

“We are running out of time,” said Michael Ross, vice chairman of the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe in Washington. “These changes aren’t in the right direction.”

Copyright 2019 Associated Press

Related Stories:

View of Mount Rainier looking southeast up Puyallup River, Tacoma, July 10, 1899. The dam was built on the river in 1904. (Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)

Decision upheld to remove a portion of Electron Dam on the Puyallup River

A portion of the Electron Dam on the Puyallup River has to be removed, according to a decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The federal appeals court upheld the decision by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington that a vertical metal wall portion of the dam, a temporary spillway, makes the dam a complete barrier to fish passage and must be removed.

Two canids at the Predators of the Heart facility in Anacortes. The organization also goes by Because We Matter Exotic Animal Rescue. (Courtesy: Debbie Sodl / Because We Matter Exotic Animal Rescue)

Complaint to federal agency over Washington animal organization

In Skagit County, a nonprofit that houses a number of animals, including exotic ones, is in continued legal battles. A law firm that advocates for animal rights is claiming the organization may have violated the Endangered Species Act, by, as the law firm claims in its complaint, the illegal euthanization of wolves.