It wouldn’t make much sense to prohibit people from shooting a threatened woodpecker while allowing its forest to be cut down, or to bar killing endangered salmon while allowing a dam to dry out their habitat.

But that’s exactly what the Trump administration is proposing to do by changing how one word in the Endangered Species Act is interpreted: harm.

For 50 years, the U.S. government has interpreted the Endangered Species Act as protecting threatened and endangered species from actions that either directly kill them or eliminate their habitat. Most species on the brink of extinction are on the list because there is almost no place left for them to live. Their habitats have been paved over, burned, or transformed. Habitat protection is essential for their survival.

As an ecologist and a law professor, we have spent our entire careers working to understand the law and science of helping imperiled species thrive. We recognize that the rule change the Trump administration quietly proposed could green-light the destruction of protected species’ habitats, making it nearly impossible to protect those endangered species.

The public, which has long supported the Endangered Species Act, has until May 19, 2025, to comment on the proposal.

The Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973, bans the “take” of “any endangered species of fish or wildlife,” which includes harming........

© Fast Company