Endangered Species Act changes will strip already weak protections for plants

A set of rule changes recently announced by the Trump administration will weaken protections under the Endangered Species Act — not only for animals listed under the law, but also for listed plants.

The rule changes, already prompting concern and legal challenges from conservationists, have been described by the federal government as "commonsense reforms" to enhance "transparency, clarity, predictability and efficiency" in administering the 53-year-old federal law. It is a law widely supported by four in five Americans, according to one study.

READ MORE: Three of the planet's rarest reptiles, found only in South Florida, join the endangered species list

The three changes

The first federal rule change, announced by the U.S. Departments of Commerce and the Interior, will take effect Sept. 14. It redefines the word "harm" to exclude harm to habitat for protected species.

Another two rule changes taking effect sooner, on Aug. 20, both have to do with Section 4 of the ESA. That section of the law addresses how federal agencies determine which plant and animal species to protect. Those species then get classified as either threatened or endangered — the more severe designation — depending on how imminently they are facing extinction.

One rule change will require federal agencies to consider economic and national security interests when designating critical habitat for a protected species. It also allows for areas to be excluded from the critical habitat designation "if that exclusion will not cause the extinction of the species," according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The last rule change will eliminate what's known as the "blanket rule" under Section 4 of the ESA. For species newly designated as "threatened," the blanket rule automatically activates protection against "take," which means "to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct."

The annual herb known as Carter’s warea is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. In Central Florida, it can be found growing in Lake and Polk counties. / Courtesy Valerie Anderson, Florida Native Plant Society

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Courtesy Valerie Anderson, Florida Native Plant Society

The problem for plants

Already, even before the rule changes, the ESA provides relatively less protection for plants than animals, according to Gene Kelly with the nonprofit Florida Native Plant Society.

On private and public lands alike, animals listed as endangered or threatened under the law are protected from take. But for listed plants, that protection only applies if the plants are on public land.

"If it's private property, the plant is the property of the landowner. The landowner can choose to protect those species or not," Kelly said.

That said, endangered or threatened plants often end up being protected incidentally: simply because they are found to co-exist in the same place as a listed animal species.

"They happen to co-occur with an endangered animal, and therefore, that habitat [is] protected," Kelly said.

Now, though, habitat will no longer be protected from harm, according to the first rule change recently announced by the Trump administration.

"That will certainly impact the animals, and it will really eliminate one of the few mechanisms by which endangered plants were protected through the Endangered Species Act," Kelly said. "How can you conserve the species, plant or animal, if you're not going to protect the habitat?"

Molly Duerig / Central Florida Public Media

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Central Florida Public Media

Habitat destruction and degradation are a chief threat facing both animals and plants. Sometimes, animals are able to move away from the threat and to another location — but plants can't.

"Plants, nearly all of them, are rooted in place," Kelly said.

'Plant blindness'

Plant enthusiasts, Kelly said, have coined a term known as "plant blindness." It refers to the tendency many people have to get more excited about wildlife than plants.

"When people do go out in the woods to appreciate nature, they're typically going to be looking for what kind of birds or other wildlife they might be able to see," Kelly said. "And there really isn't as much recognition given to the plants that they're going to see, the diversity of the plants that they might see."

In reality, plants are the habitat animals need to survive, Kelly said.

"They're why the wildlife is there," he said. "They are what supports the wildlife; provides the shelter and the food that they need to live there. … I just don't see how the Endangered Species Act can work at all, if you don't protect habitat."

According to the federal government, the rule change redefining "harm" to exclude harm to habitat "will end years of federal overreach" and better protect private property rights.

Kelly said he's hoping the lawsuits recently filed by environmental groups will prevail to halt the ESA rule changes.
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