A federal judge has tossed out changes the Trump administration made to the Endangered Species Act/USFWS

A federal judge on Tuesday tossed out Trump administration changes to the Endangered Species Act that critics said would greatly weaken the act and endanger the outlook for species struggling to avoid extinction.

While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had announced plans to revisit the regulatory changes with the intent of revising them, it also had intended to keep the changes in place until revisions could be made, something conservation groups said could take two years. Judge Jon S. Tigar disagreed with the agency that blocking implementation of the rules would "cause confusion among the public, other agencies, and stakeholders, and impede the efficiency of ESA implementation" in his decision to throw them out.

Among the changes the Trump administration made was one that required 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. Another would deprive species designated as "threatened" from the same protections that applied to species designated as "endangered."

Conservation groups had challenged the rules for undermining protections for imperiled species and habitat necessary for their survival, and their lawsuit was joined by a group of states, led by California, and an animal welfare group. 

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 stood 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.

“The court spoke for species desperately in need of comprehensive federal protections without compromise,” said Kristen Boyles, attorney at Earthjustice, which brought the litigation on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Parks Conservation Association, Wild Earth Guardians and the Humane Society of the United States. "Threatened and endangered species do not have the luxury of waiting under rules that do not protect them.” 

At the National Parks Conservation Association, Bart Melton, wildlife program director, said the decision "is a win for America’s most at-risk wildlife, including species in national park ecosystems. We are grateful for the court’s restoration of protections that were removed by the previous administration. The climate crisis continues and it’s critical that the Biden administration as well as conservationists, tribes, states and communities work together to conserve America’s most imperiled species.”