By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block

Over the last several weeks, the Trump administration has followed through on its November 2025 declaration of war on the Endangered Species Act and other wildlife protection laws.

On Friday, the Department of the Interior delivered the latest attack: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will ditch what’s called the blanket 4(d) rule. This rule has been instrumental in granting protections to threatened species before they slip too far down the perilous slope toward extinction. Without it, newly listed threatened species will not automatically be protected from killing, harassment or other harms under federal law. To abandon such a commonsense approach could make it far more difficult to save them.

That’s why, earlier today, we and a coalition of conservation organizations, represented by Earthjustice, put the USFWS on notice that we’d see the agency in court if it does not reverse this decision in 60 days.

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The USFWS also revised its critical habitat designation process under section 4(b)(2), to prioritize consideration of the economic, national security and other impacts that might follow from the designation of an area as “critical habitat.” Among other things, the revision requires the USFWS to defer to claims made by landowners and other economically interested parties when deciding whether to exclude an area from a “critical habitat” designation. The USFWS should be doing its own due diligence, not relying on the word of profit-driven entities who are incentivized to make sure their land isn’t deemed critical habitat.

This move is one of a suite of attacks on the Endangered Species Act that began early in the Trump administration with the declaration of a national energy emergency, which set the stage for the weaponization of the federal Endangered Species Committee, the “God Squad,” which has the power to nullify endangered species protections at will. The committee did so in less than 15 minutes in a March meeting, granting sweeping exemptions under the Endangered Species Act to oil and gas companies working in the Gulf of Mexico.

Then, on July 10, the USFWS and the National Marine Fisheries Service moved to rescind long-standing definitions of what it means to “harm” a species under the Endangered Species Act, removing an important safeguard against habitat degradation.

Next, on July 15, the USFWS proposed major changes to endangered species protections for grizzly bears in the Lower 48 states, transferring management of their populations to the very states that have consistently mismanaged them, while leaving the door open for a grizzly bear delisting in the future.

And just two days later, the blanket 4(d) announcement, which signifies the abject failure of leadership at the Department of the Interior and the USFWS to fulfill the federal government’s basic mandate and responsibility to protect America’s wildlife. A rescission of the blanket 4(d) rule will undermine safeguards for threatened species and create unnecessary hurdles that hinder future protections. Not only that—the USFWS’s suggestion that it might move to develop species-specific regulations for every newly listed threatened species would be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process likely to make the loss of vulnerable wildlife all but inevitable.

Every one of these actions by the very government agencies responsible for wildlife in the U.S. confer substantial benefits to special interests whose desire to see the Endangered Species Act dismantled forever is coming true in a shockingly short span of time.

It should be clear to all observers that this barrage of hostile moves by the executive branch, coupled with a raft of equally dangerous proposals in the U.S. Congress, amounts to an unprecedented threat to one of the most important laws for wildlife ever passed in the U.S.

For more than half a century, with the support of tens of millions of Americans, and a legacy of achievement in preventing the extinction of America’s most vulnerable wildlife species, the Endangered Species Act stands at the very heart of wildlife protection in the U.S. And we intend to make sure that it stays that way. So, we’ve announced our intent to sue the USFWS if the agency does not change course immediately.

We demand that USFWS do its duty and faithfully implement the Endangered Species Act, and we also demand that Congress uphold essential protections for wildlife.

Join us: Tell Congress to keep wildlife protected. 

Kitty Block is president and CEO of Humane World for Animals.