By Hannah Grover
Wildlife advocates say proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act regulations could harm New Mexico’s wildlife by allowing industries to destroy habitats.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published a notice this week in the Federal Register announcing rulemaking that would rescind the definition of “harm” in the ESA regulations.
“The existing regulatory definition of ‘harm,’ which includes habitat modification, runs contrary to the best meaning of the statutory term ‘take,’” the notice states.
These changes could allow oil and gas developers to drill in areas where lesser prairie chickens gather to lek. In that situation, the developers would only be prevented from intentionally killing or removing lesser prairie chickens.
In the past, groups such as WildEarth Guardians have brought lawsuits against entities based on the definition of harm in the regulations, Joanna Zhang, the endangered species advocate for WildEarth Guardians, said.
She gave the example of a settlement with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. In the lawsuit, WildEarth Guardians maintained that actions taken as part of the Middle Rio Grande Project were harming the Rio Grande silvery minnow and other species by removing too much water from the river system, or damaging the habitat the fish and several bird species rely upon.
“When you have that definition of harm as habitat damage, we’re essentially saying, okay, by taking water out of the river, you’re doing the same thing as killing them,” Zhang said.
She said the proposed changes wouldn’t necessarily mean that habitat is no longer protected, but it would make it easier for industries to destroy vital habitats.
“You need strong and clear protections in place for habitat in order for the species to do well, because if you take an animal or plant’s food and home away, then how are they supposed to live?” she said.
Noah Greenwald with the Center for Biological Diversity said the Endangered Species Act itself includes the term harm.
“For more than 40 years, harm has been defined to include significant, significant habitat modification or degradation leading to actual death or injury of endangered species,” he said. “And that’s really one of the primary places in the act where habitat is protected.”
Greenwald said from the Center’s perspective, the changes the Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed are “not what the Act says or intended.”
The proposal also comes as the world is facing a biodiversity and extinction crisis.
“Scientists around the world warn that we’re at risk of losing more than a million species in the coming decades. It’s something we should all be concerned about,” Greenwald said. “Species are really the building blocks of ecosystems, and ecosystems cycle our nutrients. They pollinate crops, they moderate climate, they moderate flooding, they clean our air and water, and so the fact that we’re degrading the natural world and losing all these species should be a great concern, because it indicates that we’re undercutting our own quality of life.”
These proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act regulations come as Republicans have pushed measures that would weaken the law in an effort to promote economic interests. For example, U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Arkansas, is pushing legislation that would require economic impact analyses whenever there’s a proposal to list a species as endangered or threatened.
Republicans in Congress have also sought to remove the lesser prairie chicken’s protections because of the impacts it could have on energy development. Lesser prairie chicken habitat is becoming increasingly fragmented in eastern New Mexico amid oil and gas development, a burgeoning wind energy industry and new transmission lines. Former President Joe Biden vetoed a bill in 2023 that would have overturned the lesser prairie chicken’s listing.
Republicans have also decried logging restrictions in areas where Mexican spotted owls are found and they argue that these restrictions on logging are creating dangerously dense forest conditions.
Meanwhile, ranchers in New Mexico oppose habitat protections for the meadow jumping mouse because of restrictions on grazing.
The public comment period on the proposed rule is open through May 19 and organizations like EarthJustice, WildEarth Guardians and Center for Biological Diversity are planning to submit comments.
If the Fish and Wildlife Service moves forward with the proposed changes, the groups are gearing up to challenge it in court.
Public comments can be submitted here under docket FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0034.
I always thought that we already impacted wildlife severely long before Trump comes in and add more on top of this.. Where were we back then? We failed already.. It is sad! I had long given up hopes that I dont see the need for concerned citizens to do more about it… It is laready too late.. maybe it has a lot to do wiht overpopulatioin.. Waht is the use of talking and talking about it if we cannot stop the overpopulatioin?? Dont get me wrong, I care about wildife but I dont think that most of you are focused enough to make any impact anymore.. This will require drastic political actioin but you are not trying at all. It will be very unpopular to do that so you decided not to act more aggressively. Trump is more aggressive than you are from wrong directions , of course.. you are at fault for not being more aggressive.
It is a shame of how many people there are still voting for people that have no care for wildlife habitat’s and the forestry, and every time someone makes a great comment on how important it is and to see how many people tell us they don’t care and there’s nothing we can do, it’s not really what we can or can’t do, it is what we should do, there are so many people in this corrupted world that all they care about is money and themselves yes money is a really big deal but should it really be that important to make money by destroying the animals homes.
Besides do animals make money for working hard protecting the resources and creating life for us to enjoy, do they get to tell us what they want and what they need NO they get treated horribly and they get pushed around, forced out of their places and killed and people don’t think or care about what’s important to them, they need their properties protected to continue their way of life, how many people would do everything they can to protect there homes and families and work hard to keep paying for there homes and how many people help each other out when things get hard, do animals get that no they just to get thrown out and it’s like it’s no big deal they can move somewhere else but where are they going to move if they is no place for them, there is no justice for the animals and there land because there not people they don’t get to decide what’s best.
But remember this God put us on the earth to protect all it’s living things whether you care or not we are all part of the world.
I know I never really payed much attention to anything and I’m just as bad as everyone else but I know what’s important to me but unfortunately I’m not the kind of person to do anything about it either I’m just hoping that something or someone can