New Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulations are a product of an Executive Order issued by President Biden on January 20, 2021, which directed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service “to evaluate and, where appropriate, revise or rescind environmental and public health related regulations that were issued during the prior administration which conflicted with the objectives set forth in the Order.”

KWUA Attorney and ESA expert Brittany Johnson, along with Krisha Yadav-Ranjan, have recently explained the Biden Administration’s changes to the ESA through an informative article.
These changes are set to take effect on May 6, 2024.
The article explains that the new regulations will eliminate the existing requirement that agencies disclose the economic impacts of listing a species as threatened or endangered before making the decision to do so.
Johnson writes that the ESA requires the decision to list to be based only on scientific evidence regarding the species’ status. Without changing that principle, the Trump Administration adopted a rule requiring public disclosure of economic impacts, but the new regulations rescind that requirement.
The new regulations also increase legal protections for species listed as “threatened” rather than endangered and “reversed the [rules adopted during the Trump Administration] governing the factors for listing, delisting, or reclassifying species as threatened or endangered.”
The adopted changes include amendments to regulations implementing Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act and its requirements for biological opinions. According to the article, the new rules do not fundamentally change the Trump Administration’s 2019 clarifications and improvements to the Section 7 regulations.
“On the surface, it is good that the new regulations do not change much in the Section 7 regulations,” stated Paul Simmons, KWUA Executive Director. “However, as discussed in correspondence with federal agencies, KWUA, and its members believe that the process agencies are following for the Klamath Project bears no resemblance to either the old or modified version of the Section 7 regulations.”
Read the complete article at https://somachlaw.com/policy-alert/biden-administrations-final-endangered-species-act-regulations-set-to-take-effect-on-may-6/