While Trump & Co. have had few legislative wins?
His agencies have been busy cutting back rules and regulations within those agencies…..
States lawmakers CAN move into this ……
The Trump administration is proposing significant changes to the way it enforces the Endangered Species Act (ESA), saying they are a needed modernization of decades-old regulations, but wildlife groups say the changes will put endangered animals and plants at risk.
The proposal would make it easier to delist an endangered species and would withdraw a policy that offered the same protections for threatened species as for endangered species unless otherwise specified.
It would streamline interagency consultations and make it more difficult to protect habitat near land where endangered species live.
The proposed rules also include an interpretation that a species considered endangered would be protected for a “foreseeable future” that extends “only as far” as it can be reasonably determined that “both the future threats and the species’ responses to those threats are probable.”
In a call with stakeholders on Thursday, Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Deputy Director Greg Sheehan called the proposal a way of “providing clarity.”
He said the changes would help the agency meet the Endangered Species Act’s main goal of “species recovery” so that animals and plants could more easily be removed from endangered and threatened species lists.
The move to change the act reflects demands from industry groups and landowners who frequently challenge endangered species protections as overbearing and unsuccessful. Critics of the law have argued that only 3 percent of all species placed on the endangered list have ever been delisted.
Republicans have also pushed for more management at the state level…..
In addition, the Trump Administration has quietly scrapped the ban on importing body parts of African eliphants and other animals hunted for sport. You may recall the photo from 2011 of Donald Jr. holding up the tail of a dead elephant.
Republicans are pathetic.