The Administration is proposing a big change to the Endangered Species Act (ESA). They want to redefine “harm” so that it no longer includes impacts to species’ essential habitats.  To put it simply, this is like someone bulldozing your home down while you’re away, and saying you weren’t harmed because you weren’t physically there at the time.

This argument is just as absurd for wildlife species as it is for people.  To help people understand this we’ve been working with wildlife and endangered species specialists around the country to assemble “Harm-related Species Assessments” or “HSAs” providing a quick profile of each species and information about how the proposed rule change would affect them. Our goal is to add HSAs for every animal species on the Endangered Species List, beginning with the ones that were included in our Federal Register Comments. We think you’ll quickly come to recognize that this change would result in the Endangered Species Act being unable to achieve the very purpose Congress identified for passing it:  to conserve the “ecosystems” upon which threatened and endangered species depend.