Trump administration calls endangered species protections a 'regulatory burden'
Interior Department deputy secretary David Bernhardt says the way the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is implemented today causes an "unnecessary regulatory burden" on U.S. taxpayers and companies.
Bernhardt makes the case for the administration's recently proposed changes to ESA implementation in a Washington Post op-ed on Friday, arguing that plans to strip "threatened" species of the same protections as listed "endangered" ones would clean up the "muddle" of the current state of the law.
Likening the ESA protected species list to a hospital's intensive care unit, Bernhardt writes that the new changes will ensure that the species with the "greatest need" get the most protections.
“Like with a hospital’s intensive care unit, the goal is not to keep patients there forever. The goal is recovery — to send the healthier patients home where they can continue to receive the lower level of care they still need,” Bernhardt writes.
Since its inception in 1973, the ESA has treated threatened species who are at the risk of being endangered the same as officially endangered ones when it comes to habitat regulations. The Trump administration aims to loosen those regulations for threatened species under the new plan. The new plan also proposes to make it easier to de-list species from their endangered status.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/401250-trump-administration-calls-current-endangered-species-protections-a
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