Seven former leaders of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries have sent a letter to Interior Secretary Douglas Burgum and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urging the administration to withdraw its recent rollback of the Endangered Species Act’s definition of “harm.”
The bipartisan group, whose service spans Democratic and Republican administrations, argues that excluding habitat destruction from the definition of “harm” would undermine one of the law’s most important protections for endangered wildlife. They warn that species do not disappear only when individual animals are killed, but also when the places they need to feed, migrate, breed, and raise their young are destroyed.
In their letter, the former officials state that habitat loss and fragmentation are among the leading causes of species decline and extinction and that Congress intended the Endangered Species Act to protect both species and the ecosystems on which they depend.
“The Administration is arguing that you can protect endangered animals without protecting the places they need to survive,” the letter states. “Fifty years of science and common sense say otherwise.”
The signatories include former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Directors Daniel Ashe, Jamie Rappaport Clark, H. Dale Hall, Martha Williams, and Steven Williams, along with former NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrators Janet Coit and Eileen Sobeck.
The letter was also highlighted by Politico, underscoring the growing concern among former federal wildlife leaders, conservationists, and legal experts about the consequences of weakening habitat protections under the Endangered Species Act.
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