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Red knots, piping plovers, bog turtles and fireflies are among several vulnerable species in the Philadelphia region facing threats of development, pollution and climate change.
Conservationists have worked hard to track populations of these creatures while protecting and restoring their habitats along streams and wetlands, and across the coast.
But these threatened species are now at risk of losing federal protections as the Trump administration has proposed weakening parts of the Endangered Species Act.
The proposed changes include allowing the government to consider potential economic impacts before deciding whether to list a species as endangered or before protecting their habitats from activities like oil drilling and logging.
“This introduction of cost-benefit analysis and economics into an equation that is supposed to be based solely on the best available science is going to doom hundreds of species to extinction,” said Will Harlan, southeast director and senior scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity.
The Endangered Species Act aims to prevent extinction and protect habitats by restricting development, oil drilling, logging and mining authorized by federal agencies. Since its passage in 1973, the act has helped dozens of species bounce back from the brink of extinction, including populations of the bald eagle, which have grown along the Delaware Bay.
The latest proposal from the Trump administration would also reduce protections for species listed as threatened, a designation below endangered, such as the bog turtle and the red knot bird.
The proposal, announced Nov. 19, mirrors changes implemented during President Donald Trump’s first term that were later reversed by the Biden administration. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said the proposal would strengthen American energy independence, while reducing regulatory overreach.
However, environmentalists say the move could harm animal and plant life, as well as several threatened species in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey.
“I think what will happen is a gradual concentration of wildlife into fewer and smaller protected areas,” said Larry Niles, a biologist formerly with New Jersey’s Division of Fish and Wildlife. “It’ll be increasingly harder for endangered and threatened species to exist outside of public land.”
The proposed changes could impact species that are not currently in danger of extinction, but may become endangered in the future.
Currently, threatened species receive the same protections as those listed as endangered. The Trump administration’s proposal would dismantle protections for threatened species, however.
“Threatened species aren’t yet in the emergency room, but are about to be if they don’t have urgent action,” Harlan said. “[The proposal] is just going to put more patients in the ER, more critically wounded species on the brink of extinction.”