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In 'Death Knell for America's Wildlife,' Trump Admin Guts Habitat Protections for Endangered Species
"If animals don’t have a place to live, they can’t live," said one critic.
Jul 10, 2026
President Donald Trump's administration on Friday paved the way for letting US corporations destroy the habitats of endangered species by rescinding a longtime interpretation of the Endangered Species Act.
As reported by The New York Times, the Interior Department and the Commerce Department announced that they were narrowing the law's definition of what constitutes harming endangered species.
Whereas the law has for decades been interpreted as protecting endangered animals' habitats from significant "modification or degradation," the administration said that offenders would have to directly injure or kill an endangered animal to be considered in violation of the law.
"The change could open the door for fossil fuel companies, agricultural interests, land developers, and others," wrote the Times, "to disturb or even destroy the habitats of vulnerable species."
The Endangered Species Act has been interpreted as protecting animals' habitats for decades, and that interpretation upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1995.
Environmental advocates expressed horror in response to the rule change, which they said would put endangered species at unprecedented risk.
Kristen Boyles, attorney for Earthjustice, vowed that the administration would face legal challenges for its rule change, which she said would jeopardize endangered animals' ability to "raise their young, or search for food."
"Let’s be clear: There is no support for the Trump Administration’s rule—no scientific support, no legal support, no public support," Boyles said. "We will see the Trump Administration in court."
Ben Greuel, wildlife campaign manager at the Sierra Club, called the rule changed "a direct attack on the foundation of the Endangered Species Act" that, if kept in place, would put species "on a path to extinction."
"This rule ignores that reality in an unlawful attempt to open the door for corporate polluters to degrade vitally important habitats, wildlife be damned," Greuel emphasized. "The Endangered Species Act is a bedrock law that must be followed."
Tara Zuardo, a senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, pointed out that "habitat destruction is the number one threat to endangered species," while calling the Trump administration's new policy "a death knell for America’s wildlife."
"If animals don’t have a place to live, they can’t live," Zuardo said. "Spotted owls, Atlantic salmon, Florida panthers, and thousands of other species need protections for the wild places where they make their homes."
Andrew Bowman, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, accused the Trump administration of embracing an "erroneous and nonsensical interpretation" of the Endangered Species Act that he vowed to challenge in court.
"We intend to fight back with the full force of the law," said Bowman, "to defeat this attack and innumerable others by the administration on the statutes and regulations that protect America’s cherished wildlife."
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Trump's ANWR Oil and Gas Auction Was a Bust—But Alaskan Arctic Still Faces Fossil Fuel Threat
"Even though the interest in today’s sale was tepid, the new leasing still poses significant threats to habitat, iconic wildlife, and Indigenous ways of life," said Earthjustice.
Jun 05, 2026
In an embarrassment for President Donald Trump and his "drill, baby, drill" energy policy, Friday's third oil and gas lease sale in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge once again drew no bids from Big Oil—but conservationists stressed that fossil fuel expansion still poses a serious threat to the pristine wilderness and its human and animal inhabitants.
The US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) offered 60 tracts on 689,000 acres in the ANWR in northeastern Alaska's Coastal Plain for lease sales. Just two companies—the government-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and Hex LLC, an Alaska firm—bought five leases that generated a paltry $3.7 million in total receipts.
“Yet again, no major oil and gas companies showed up to bid, because they know that drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a losing proposition,” said Kristen Moreland, executive director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee, which represents the Gwich'in Indigenous people and opposes drilling.
“We will continue to fight the Trump administration’s leasing program, and work with our friends and allies to protect this sacred and irreplaceable landscape from development of any kind," Moreland added.
The Trump administration had touted fossil fuel lease sales as a way to help pay for tax cuts in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that mostly benefited corporations and wealthy individuals. The law, which was signed last July by Trump and extends tax cuts the president enacted in 2017, is expected to result in over $5 trillion in lost revenue through 2034, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation, the world's leading independent tax policy nonprofit.
Despite the underwhelming result, the BLM described Friday's ANWR lease sale as "successful," with agency Director Steve Pearce calling it "another important step toward restoring American Energy Dominance and responsibly developing the vast resources Congress directed us to make available in the Coastal Plain."
Friday's lease sale was the third such auction, the first of which was held in 2021 during Trump's first term and generated just 1% of the administration's projected revenue. The Biden administration—which canceled the leases issued in the 2021 sale—held another lease auction last year because Trump's 2017 tax cut law required two ANWR lease sales within seven years. The 2025 auction drew no bidders.
Green groups and other drilling opponents warned that Friday's flop does not diminish the threat posed by fossil fuel development in ANWR, which is home to the North Slope Iñupiat and the Gwich’in peoples and 270 animal species, including all of the world’s remaining South Beaufort Sea polar bears and the 200,000 porcupine caribou upon which the Gwich'in—who call the area the "sacred place where life begins—rely upon for their survival. The North Slope Iñupiat broadly support drilling and called Friday's lease sale "an important milestone."
"Even though the interest in today’s sale was tepid, the new leasing still poses significant threats to habitat, iconic wildlife, and Indigenous ways of life in one of the nation’s most wild and beautiful landscapes," Earthjustice—one of the groups leading a lawsuit challenging the lease sales—said in a statement. "All of today’s leases are in important polar bear habitat, for example."
Athan Manuel, the Sierra Club's director of lands protection, said that "today's lease sale was another embarrassment and broken promise. The Trump administration has pushed leasing out the Arctic Refuge as the way to finance huge tax cuts, yet today generated $3.7 million for the federal government."
“Let's call that what it is, another scam to trick Americans into giving away our precious natural world," Manuel continued. "It does nothing to change the reality that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge remains a risky, controversial, and fundamentally flawed proposition."
"For years, the public was promised that sacrificing the refuge would generate significant economic benefits," Manuel added. "Instead, this leasing program has been plagued by uncertainty while putting one of America's most important public lands at risk."
Autumn Hanna, vice president of the advocacy group Taxpayers for Common Sense, said, "From two previous failed lease sales that delivered less than 1% of promised revenue, taxpayers already know that drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a bad deal."
"Today’s lease sale is yet another reminder that oil and gas development in the refuge is high-risk, low-reward, with zero interest from real industry players," Hanna added. "Americans will not see relief at the pump and, instead, face greater risks from the drilling in a sensitive region.”
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'Direct Attack on the Health of Americans': Trump EPA Greenlights More Mercury Pollution
Sierra Club said the rollback "puts the public at greater risk of heart and lung disease, cancer, and even premature death, as well as causing severe neurological damage to fetuses and children.”
Feb 20, 2026
The Trump administration on Friday finalized its rollback of clean air regulations limiting mercury and other toxic pollutants from power plants, sparking condemnation from public health and environmental advocates who warned that the move will increase the risk of death or serious illness for millions of people in the United States.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it is repealing the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which were implemented during the Biden administration in order to protect people from mercury and other toxic air pollutants—including arsenic, lead, and chromium—from fossil fuel power plants.
The Trump administration contends that rescinding MATS will lower financial costs for utilities running older coal-fired plants during a period of rapidly rising demand from consumer and data centers powering artificial intelligence systems.
“The Biden-Harris administration’s anti-coal regulations sought to regulate out of existence this vital sector of our energy economy," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said Friday at the Mills Creek Power Plant, a coal-fired facility in Louisville, Kentucky. "The Trump EPA knows that we can grow the economy, enhance baseload power, and protect human health and the environment all at the same time."
However, the Sierra Club said Friday that "rolling back the new and more protective [MATS] will allow coal- and oil-fired power plants to emit more damaging pollution that puts the public at greater risk of heart and lung disease, cancer, and even premature death, as well as causing severe neurological damage to fetuses and children."
"According to the Sierra Club’s Trump Coal Pollution Dashboard, reversing the 2024 improvements and reverting to the 2012 standards will allow the dirtiest coal-fired power plants to emit 50% more mercury pollution," the group added. "In May 2025, the Trump administration exempted 68 power plants—including some of the biggest polluters in the nation—from MATS after soliciting exemption requests from big polluters over email."
Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign director Laurie Williams called the MATS rollback "a direct attack on the health of Americans."
Last June, Sierra Club was a key part of a coalition of environmental and community groups that sued the Trump administration over the exemptions.
“These protections from mercury and other toxic pollution existed to protect communities from reckless polluters," Sierra Club campaign organizing strategist Bonnie Swinford said Friday. "By repealing these protections, the Trump administration is giving handouts to the coal industry elites—and waging war on the public’s ability to hold polluters accountable."
The Environmental Protect Network also decried the MATS repeal, saying it "will allow hundreds of facilities across 45 states to avoid meeting critical safety standards—jeopardizing public health, degrading ecosystems, and disproportionately harming children, pregnant people, and communities already overburdened by pollution."
"This is no way to make America healthy again."
Moms Clean Air Force co-founder and director Dominique Browning focused on the harms to children the rollback will inflict.
"The science is clear, and profoundly alarming. No amount of mercury is safe for babies’ developing brains," she said. "Mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin that damages the architecture of babies’ and children’s developing brains."
“The mercury rules were working," Browning argued. "Toxic emissions from US coal plants were dropping, and water bodies were getting cleaner. But now EPA Administrator Zeldin’s rollback... will allow coal plants to emit more toxic heavy metals like mercury, chromium, and lead—pollutants that contaminate our air, fall into our lakes and waterways, and poison our food supply."
"This is no way to make America healthy again," she added, referring to one of President Donald Trump's campaign slogans.
Julie McNamara, associate policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy Program, said in a statement Friday: “Once again, the Trump administration is abandoning science and abandoning statute to give polluters a free pass. And once again, the Trump administration is doing so at the expense of people’s health."
National Resources Defense Council senior attorney John Walke asserted that "the coal industry is in decline, and dismantling clean air protections won’t bring it back."
“It will only lead to more asthma attacks, more heart problems, and more premature deaths, especially in communities living in the shadow of coal plants," Walke added. "We have a right to breathe clean air, and we will fight for that right even if Trump’s EPA refuses to.”
The EPA’s newest decision will allow power plants to emit more brain-damaging mercury and dangerous soot pollution, putting frontline communities at especially greater risk of heart and lung disease, cancer, and premature death.
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— NRDC (@nrdc.org) February 20, 2026 at 9:09 AM
Friday's EPA announcement followed the agency's repeal earlier this month of the endangerment finding, the Obama-era rule empowering climate regulation over the past 15 years that treated six greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels as a single air pollutant for regulatory purposes.
Speaking at a Friday press conference in Washington, DC organized by Moms Clean Air Force, Talia, a local fourth grade student, said that “climate disasters are becoming more common, and they’re hurting our planet, our health, and the future of kids like me."
“Adults in the government are supposed to protect kids from climate change and not ignore it," she said, adding in a message to Trump officials that "we are taught to listen to scientists and doctors and moms—why don’t you listen to them?”
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