How environmental groups fight back Against Trump’s attack on ESA

On July 21, three tiny reptiles found only in South Florida—the Florida Keys mole skink, the Key ringneck snake, and the rim rock crown snake—were finally given one of the strongest protections available under the Endangered Species Act.

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which had spent more than a decade pushing for their protection, said in a press release that the three were the first species the Trump administration added to the endangered species list in its second term.

This was also the longest any administration had gone without listing a new species in the law’s more than 50-year history, the group noted.

The three species survive in restricted habitats across the Florida Keys and Miami-Dade County, including sandy areas, pine rocklands and rockland hammocks. As noted in the filings by the Fish and Wildfire Service, those habitats face pressures from development, sea-level rise, saltwater intrusion and increasingly severe storms.

With recent changes, are species really protected?

While the administration included these species on the list, they “failed to concurrently issue lifesaving critical habitat protections,” CBD said, adding that recent changes to the act also weakened its protections and critical aspects of the act’s oversight are now curtailed.

The three species survive in restricted habitats across the Florida Keys and Miami-Dade County….Those habitats face pressures from development, sea-level rise, saltwater intrusion and increasingly severe storms.

A few days before the listing, the Trump administration finalized two rules changing to the Endangered Species Act. One eliminates the future use of the ESA’s so-called “blanket” rule, which automatically extended most prohibitions applying to endangered species to newly listed threatened species.

The other establishes criteria and procedures for deciding when areas can be excluded from critical-habitat designations because of economic, national-security, or other impacts.

Both rules took effect on August 20.

Another rule, finalized September 14, rescinds the regulatory definition of “harm” and calls it “misguided”.

NPQ previously reported that in March 2026, the administration exempted Gulf of Mexico oil and gas activities from the law’s requirements on grounds of national security.

“The biggest concern is just that there’s an acceleration of that habitat destruction,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species co-director at the Center for Biological Diversity in an interview with NPQ. “Once habitat is destroyed, you know, that’s it often, right?…for it to come back will take great effort.”

Greenwald’s 2026 study identified species that needed protection but were not listed. His study found that 92 percent of the species identified are threatened primarily by habitat destruction.

“Under the ESA and the Administrative Procedure Act, we can challenge rules that are contrary to law or that were issued arbitrarily,” said Benjamin Levitan, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, in an interview with NPQ. “The administration is attempting to weaken and circumvent those requirements, which blatantly violates the law and exceeds the president’s authority.”

Fightback

Within a few days, a coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Seattle, Washington, against the rescinding of the definition of “harm” and noted it “contradicts all scientific and legal understanding” of the law.

“The administration is attempting to weaken and circumvent those requirements, which blatantly violates the law and exceeds the president’s authority.”

Ryan Shannon, an attorney with Defenders of Wildlife, who is part of the coalition fighting the lawsuit, said to NPQ, “I think that this was the biggest shock of what we’ve seen from the Trump administration this go around.” He said that, unlike most of the administration’s other ESA changes, which had parallels in Trump’s first term, this move went further.

The Trump administration has now used the same Supreme Court decision, Babbitt v. Sweet Home, that upheld the definition of “harm” to justify rescinding it.

The case was based on a petition filed by the Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon which included small landowners, logging companies, and families dependent on the forest products industries against the government’s interpretation of “harm” that defined it as “an act which actually kills or injures wildlife”.

And now, the administration is relying on Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion, rather than the majority opinion that upheld the broader interpretation.

The other two changes in Section 4(d) and Section 4(b)(2), as mentioned above, the administration said, are to restore the ESA to what it calls its original intent, reducing regulatory burdens and tailoring protections to individual species.

“For too long, the Endangered Species Act has been weaponized to stop almost any new project in America…” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in the press note. This sentiment holds true to much of the actions taken by the Trump Administration related to environmental advocacy and protection.

All three changes are being challenged in court, Shannon explains. He felt confident at both the district court and appellate court levels, but said, “the big question mark out there is what will the Supreme Court do if this were to reach it.”

Indigenous tribes have also weighed in on these changes and sued the administration, such as the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and Squaxin Island Tribe’s lawsuit in the US District Court for Western Washington, noting that the changes would affect recovery efforts for Chinook salmon in the Puget Sound and Skagit River.

In April 2026, the tribes submitted more than 20,000 pages of scientific evidence against the proposed rule.

Shannon said it was the first time he had seen tribes become directly involved in litigation over these changes.

Dramatic deregulations

Talking about changes in ESA, the scope is “unprecedented,” Shannon explained. “At least since probably the Reagan administration…and they certainly outstrip the first Trump administration, the Bush administration, or any of the Democratic administrations.”

“They really…don’t have any love in their hearts for the natural world…[or] for future generations,” Greenwald said. “All they care about is money…money is made in the short term.

The administration’s environmental rollback is much broader, with a series of attempts to dismantle existing environmental safeguards, some of which may ultimately survive legal challenges while others may not.

“It’s essentially trying to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks,” Greenwald said. “It’s across the board. It [the ESA] protects our air, for our water, for our wildlife, for our land.”

The administration has moved to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act, including by preparing a proposed “categorical exclusion” that could allow winter seismic surveys and exploratory drilling in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve without project-specific environmental review. Drilling could be permanently damage and change the landscape of the reserve.

The administration has also moved to repeal the nationwide Roadless Rule, loosen federal restrictions on off-road vehicle use on public lands, shrink Bears Ears National Monument, lift federal protections that had blocked mining in the Superior National Forest near the Boundary Waters, and reopen hundreds of thousands of acres around Chaco Culture National Historical Park to mineral leasing and mining.

“They really…don’t have any love in their hearts for the natural world…[or] for future generations,” Greenwald said. “All they care about is money…money is made in the short term, that’s good enough.”

It was because of Greenwald and his team’s work that the three South Florida reptiles made it to the list after years of waiting. But the statute that protected their habitat is itself threatened.

Levitan explained that these “unpopular and unlawful changes” are imposed through regulations. And “we’ll keep going to court to defend the statute and give endangered species a last chance at survival.”