THE SET-UP: President Donald Trump doesn’t see landscapes or biodiversity or ecosystems. He sees untapped resources. And he’s populating the Departments of Interior and Energy and the EPA with ideologues and corporate shills who are eager to covert the natural world into dollars.
He’s also committed to killing wildlife. Eric and Don Jr. are infamous “big game” hunters who’ve posed with the corpses and dismembered body parts of animals they killed for pleasure. You probably saw the pictures when they circulated during his first administration. They were unabashed about it, too.
That wasn’t a coincidence.
Radical special interests like Safari Club International and Protect The Harvest shaped the First Administration policies … and key positions were filled by a ghoulish group of puppy mill enthusiasts and lead ammunition devotees. They did a lot of damage. They might’ve done a lot more if not for the Endangered Species Act.
The ESA’s astounding resilience has become an obsession for many Right Wing culture warriors. And many MAGA enthusiasts and GOP lawmakers hate the ESA with a passion. It comes up often in Congress … particularly in the House. That’s why I suspect Trump’s “energy emergency” is as much about finding precedent-setting ways to challenge and/or break the ESA as it is about “drill, baby, drill.” - jp
TITLE: Trump Seizes Wartime Powers in Battle for More Fossil Fuels
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-26/trump-seizes-wartime-powers-in-battle-for-more-fossil-fuels
EXCERPTS: President Donald Trump’s declaration of an energy emergency opens the door to wield sweeping Cold War-era powers and little-known authorities to fast track pipelines, expand power grids and save struggling coal plants.
By invoking the country’s national and economic security, the plan lays the foundation for energy projects to move forward with unprecedented speed — even if it involves encroaching on habitat for endangered species or tapping powers usually reserved for wartime.
Critics say the idea of an energy emergency flies in the face of soaring oil and gas production. The US has solidified its position as the world’s top crude producer in recent years, with record output far surpassing any other nation.
One of the biggest changes Trump is setting in motion is speeding up project reviews using emergency consultations under the Endangered Species Act. Usually reserved for natural disasters such as forest fires and hurricanes, the process allows quicker approvals of projects that may harm — but not completely jeopardize — at-risk wildlife.
Trump has also ordered quarterly meetings of a committee of cabinet-level officials that’s authorized to green light ventures even when the survival of a species is at stake. The panel — known as the “God Squad” — has met only a handful of times over the past four decades.
“They are definitely reaching deep to utilize pretty specific exceptions,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This executive order is a death warrant for polar bears, lesser prairie chickens, whooping cranes and so many more species on the brink of extinction.”
Industry leaders have long complained that conservationists have weaponized the Endangered Species Act to challenge plans to expand oil drilling, build power plants and develop mines. During Trump’s first term, efforts to protect the greater sage-grouse — whose habitat overlaps with prime oil hotspots — stalled plans to expand drilling in the western US.
TITLE: Trump resurrects ‘God Squad’ to bend the ESA
https://www.eenews.net/articles/trump-resurrects-god-squad-to-bend-the-esa
EXCERPTS: “The God Squad hasn’t met in forever,” said Patrick Donnelly, the Center for Biological Diversity’s Great Basin director. “It has kind of been irrelevant.”
That now changes with Trump’s executive order, although the real-world consequences remain open to question.
Resurrecting the group — made up largely of high-ranking federal government officials — could prompt more ESA exemptions and flex more muscles against what the executive order calls “obstacles to domestic energy infrastructure.” The committee, for the first time, will start meeting regularly to assess the ESA writ large, the order states.
Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, attended all four of the committee’s proceedings between 1978 and 1992. He characterized Trump’s executive order as both “specious” and unlikely to affect many species.
Parenteau, who also helped craft the underlying law, said the group does not have jurisdiction until an entity seeks an ESA exemption. That effort must meet specific criteria, including a formal consultation process with a biological finding that concludes a project threatens the survival of a protected species.
He pointed to a 2019 study showing that federal officials rarely issue such opinions.
Donnelly likewise added that jeopardy biological opinions are rarely issued.
Trump’s executive order, though, also empowers the God Squad by directing that it convene quarterly to “identify obstacles to domestic energy infrastructure specifically deriving from implementation of the ESA or the Marine Mammal Protection Act.”
The order also directs agencies to employ “to the maximum extent permissible” provisions of the ESA that loosen requirements during declared emergencies.
These provisions allow for consultations with the FWS or NOAA Fisheries to be “conducted informally” in emergency situations, which federal regulations identify as “situations involving acts of God, disasters, casualties, national defense or security emergencies, etc.”
The regulations add that formal consultations will start once “the emergency is under control.” So long as Trump sticks with the energy emergency designation, the speedier informal consultations would seem to be sufficient.
“The exemption process is a complex affair, and even without extensions, could take 280 days,” the Congressional Research Service noted in a report several years ago.
The Trump executive order calls for a much faster track, stating that the Interior secretary shall “ensure a prompt and efficient review” in order to have the committee make an initial determination within 20 days and then “resolve the submission” within another 140 days.
TITLE: Grizzly Bear ESA Status in Question as FWS Cancels Public Meetings
https://mountainjournal.org/grizzly-bear-esa-status-in-question-as-fws-cancels-meetings
EXCERPTS: A series of federal public meetings on grizzly bear Endangered Species Act status was canceled just one day before the first was to start in Missoula.
“In light of the recent transition and the need for this Administration to review the recent grizzly bear proposed rule, the Service is cancelling all four of the public meetings and hearings that the agency voluntarily scheduled on this proposal,” a statement on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s “Grizzly Bear Lower 48 Rulemaking” web page read on Monday afternoon.
Tuesday’s Missoula meeting was to be followed by gatherings in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho on Thursday and Cody, Wyoming on February 10, as well as an online session on January 30. FWS officials were expected to present details and answer questions about the service’s January 8 announcement that grizzly bears would retain their Endangered Species Act protection for the foreseeable future.
Mike Bader, an independent consultant and advocate for grizzly protection, had planned to bring testimony to the Missoula meeting. He added that several pro-grizzly groups planned to rent a conference room in the same hotel as the FWS Missoula meeting to present their own findings on grizzly recovery.
“I guess I’m not surprised by the cancellation,” Bader said on Monday. “This is just the shutdown of everything good.”
Grizzly bears have carried ESA protection since 1975, when fewer than 700 remained in the Lower 48 states. Since then, their numbers have recovered to more than 2,000, with most concentrated in the Northern Continental Divide and Greater Yellowstone ecosystems of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. That represents about 4 percent of their historic range. Before 1800, an estimated 50,000 grizzlies roamed from North Dakota to Texas and west to the Pacific Coast.
[G]rizzly delisting has been a hot topic in Washington, D.C., as Trump began moving his leadership nominations into place. During his January 16 confirmation hearing, incoming Interior Secretary Doug Bergum told Montana Senator Steve Daines, “I’m with you,” when asked if he agreed grizzly bears were recovered and should be delisted from the Endangered Species Act.
The governors of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have all petitioned the federal government to delist grizzly bears and turn them over to state wildlife agency management. That could lead to greater flexibility in killing grizzlies suspected of harming domestic livestock and property, or threatening people.
It could also allow for grizzly bear hunting seasons. Wyoming’s Legislature has a bill pending that would add a grizzly bear hunting coupon to elk hunting licenses. In recent court cases, liberalized state hunting regulations for wolves have prompted federal judges to restrict their use because of the potential for killing grizzlies by mistake or accident.
“This anti-carnivore fervor is completely out of control,” said Nick Gevock of the Sierra Club. “It’s just part of the culture wars now. They want to kill a lot of bears and thwart recovery.”
TITLE: Here’s What Hunting and Conservation Groups Are Asking of the Trump Administration
https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/conservation-groups-trump-administration/
EXCERPT: Safari Club International’s political wing was vocal in its support for the Trump candidacy, and notes that many of the incoming administration’s policies align with the club’s priorities. In many swing states, where the presidential election results hinged on a few thousand votes, hunters and gun owners voted for Trump in decisive numbers.
“Hunting was on the ballot in this election, and hunters showed up,” stated SCI in a news release, noting that the club “educated and mobilized a record number of hunters who voted for President Trump because he understands that hunters have made and will continue to make our country great.”
In detailing its policy priorities under the second Trump administration, SCI stresses that it is not looking for “big government programs and handouts” but rather a regulatory climate that enables private-sector conservation efforts and promotes traditional values.
Specifically, SCI will support administration policies that “ensure that states are the primary managers of their own wildlife with limited interference from the federal government.”
But other SCI priorities seem to require federal-agency intervention, including “increasing public land access for hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting, modernizing and responsibly administering the Endangered Species Act, protecting access to traditional ammunition and fishing tackle for sportsmen and women; and bolstering the importance of the Pittman-Robertson Act and the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.”