DAILY TRIFECTA: An Appetite For Destruction
Trump doesn't care about the environment
THE SET-UP: One of the earliest environmental moves Trump made back in 2017 was to reverse an Obama Administration rule forbidding the use of lead ammunition on Federal lands. The rule also banned the use of lead fishing sinkers in Federal waters. But it wasn’t a PETA-inspired scheme to halt hunting on public lands. The rule still allowed people to kill animals for pleasure or punishment. They just had to use copper bullets. That’s because copper does not poison the land, the water and the animals who ingest it. That final problem has been particularly acute for bald eagles. They often feast on carcasses and, as a result, they were ingesting lead-contaminated corpses. That, in turn, led severe lead poisoning among the protected birds.
Bald eagles were canaries the coal mine … harbingers of a widespread problem dispersed throughout publicly-held ecosystems … and it was hampering their storied comeback from the endangered species list. After all, it was an easy fix.
But … no. None of that mattered to Donald Trump.
His calculus was simple and it’s been the same equation he’s applied to every environmental issue. For Trump, “the environment” and all the Earth’s plant and animal life are nothing more than as-yet unconverted wealth. And everything on and in this planet is subject to the whims and desires of human beings. That basic attitude was expressed in every decision his first administration made … even to the point of, as I wrote at the time, “making puppy mills great again.”
Amazingly, the second incarnation of Trump’s Presidency is already making his first look like an Earth Day celebration. This time, his team is more like a trophy hunting party and they are closing in on the long-stalked quarry of a handful of the most destructive extractive industries—the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The ESA has managed to survive in an increasingly hostile environment. But like a beleaguered mountain lion, they’ve finally driven it up a tree … not with a pack of dogs, but with a handful of Supreme Court justices … and they are itching to finally pull the trigger.
They have the support of a cadre of right wing Evangelicals who like to use the word “harvest” as a euphemism for “kill” (as in “harvesting” the resources the Lord has given us to use as we see fit) and, thanks in no small part to Trump’s utter indifference to the natural world, they are about to “harvest” the ESA and turn the environment into a trophy they can display on a wall. - jp
TITLE: By Redefining ‘Harm,’ Agencies Aim to End Longstanding Wildlife Protections
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/climate/trump-endangered-species-act-harm.html
EXCERPTS: The Trump administration is moving to effectively eliminate a crucial protection in the half-century-old Endangered Species Act by redefining a single word: harm.
A proposed rule, issued on Wednesday from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, would repeal a longstanding interpretation of what it means to harm imperiled plants and animals to exclude the destruction of habitat.
The move is part of a plan by President Trump to increase drilling, logging and development in the United States, and to eliminate regulations that slow the issuance of permits.
Administration officials called the current definition of harm to endangered species overly broad, siding with businesses that have long argued that the language imposes a burden. They called for a more narrow interpretation, saying that species should be protected only from intentional killing or injury, like through hunting or trapping.
Habitat loss is the single biggest reason that many species face extinction. Environmental advocates said the changes would make it all but impossible to protect the forests, grasslands, rivers and other habitats that threatened species rely upon to survive. “The vast majority of imperiled wildlife listed as endangered or threatened under the ESA are there because of loss of habitat,” said Andrew Bowman, president and chief executive of Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental group, using an abbreviation for the Endangered Species Act.
The Endangered Species Act prohibits actions that “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect” endangered plants and animals. The word “harm” has long been interpreted to mean not just the direct killing of a species, but also severe harm to their environment. Building a dam, for example, might make it impossible for salmon in a river to survive.
In 1995 the Supreme Court upheld that interpretation, ruling against property owners who had claimed that while the law prohibited them from killing protected wildlife outright, it should not prevent activities like logging that would indirectly endanger plants and animals.
Since then, industry groups and many Republicans in Congress have sought to change the definition of harm. Industry representatives “want to get rid of this definition so they can make the argument that unless you actually put a gun to a species and kill it,” Mr. Caputo said, “your activity is perfectly legal under the Endangered Species Act.”
Oil-industry advocates welcomed the proposed change.
TITLE: Trump Allows Migratory Bird Killings, Cancels Further Protection
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/trump-allows-migratory-bird-killings-cancels-further-protection
EXCERPTS: The Trump administration will allow unintentional bird killings under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and will cancel a rulemaking that would have enhanced bird protections from oil and gas operations.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday it is withdrawing a proposed rulemaking announced by the Biden administration in 2021 that would have helped to protect migratory birds under the 1918 act.
Ninety percent of migratory bird deaths are related to oil and gas operations, and a primary focus of the Biden rule was to fine oil companies for killing birds in oil spills and pits dug near oil wells, Fish and Wildlife Service officials said in 2021. The agency permits some bird killings necessary for industrial activity, deaths known as “incidental take.”
TITLE: Trump Opens a Huge Marine Protected Zone to Commercial Fishing
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/climate/trump-fishing-marine-protected-zone.html
EXCERPTS: President Trump on Thursday said he was allowing commercial fishing in one of the world’s largest ocean reserves, introducing industrial operations for the first time in more than a decade to a vast area of the Pacific dotted with coral atolls and populated by endangered sea turtles and whales.
Mr. Trump issued an executive order opening up the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, which lies some 750 miles west of Hawaii. President George W. Bush established the monument in 2009 and President Barack Obama expanded it in 2014 to its current area of nearly 500,000 square miles.
A second executive order directed the Commerce Department to loosen regulations that “overly burden America’s commercial fishing, aquaculture, and fish processing industries.” It also asks the Interior Department to conduct a review of all marine monuments and issue recommendations about any that should be opened to commercial fishing.
“The United States should be the world’s dominant seafood leader,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Robert H. Richmond, a marine ecologist at the University of Hawaii, pushed back on the idea that opening the monument would help the fishing industry and said there was strong data showing that large protected areas actually enhanced fishing. That’s because they provide a safe area free from vessels where fish can accumulate, grow and be in higher density where spawning is more successful.
“What they are really are bank accounts where fish are the principal,” Dr. Richmond said, “and their reproductive output is the interest.”