Trump administration regulations that both reduced the amount of habitat that could be protected for threatened and endangered species and which allowed for economics to come into play when decisions are made for Endangered Species Act determinations will be rescinded by the Biden administration.

Last year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service redefined "critical habitat" for a species as only areas physically occupied by a threatened or endangered species. Outside of those areas, what constitutes critical habitat would be left to the Interior secretary to determine. The Trump administration also directed federal agencies such as the Fish and Wildlife Service to take into account economic impacts resulting from the designation of critical habitat before making such a designation.

On Tuesday the Biden administration signaled that it would revoke those regulations.

“We’re relieved that the Biden administration has taken this important step toward restoring critical protections for imperiled species,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s just no way to save animals and plants from extinction without safeguarding the places they need to live.”

According to the organization, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service have said they would rescind a third rule, which removed automatic protections for wildlife newly designated as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

“These rules were blatantly reckless and anti-wildlife,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife. “Amid a biodiversity and climate crisis, it’s frustrating that so much time has to be spent undoing the former administration’s damage. But this was time well spent, and we thank the Biden administration for these important actions.”

Across the National Park System, the plan to revise how critical habitat for threatened and endangered species is determined and to lessen protections for species under the act stands to impact migratory species as well as those species that need ESA protections to prevent them from sliding to "endangered" from "threatened" status.

Species that rely on habitat in and around national parks that could be impacted range from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bears, which in 2019 regained threatened status after a federal judge said the Fish and Wildlife Service erred in delisting the bears, to Kemp's ridley sea turtles, the smallest of sea turtles and which are considered critically endangered.