Trump administration rolls back Endangered Species Act habitat protections

The Trump administration on July 10, 2026, finalized a rule that strips habitat modification and degradation from the Endangered Species Act’s regulatory definition of “harm,” narrowing a protection that for decades reached damage that actually kills or injures wildlife. The change makes it easier for developers, loggers, oil and gas companies, miners and federal agencies to disturb habitat without directly taking an individual animal.

The rule turns on one word: “take.” The statute defines take to include harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture or collect, and the revision reflects the “best reading” of that language after the Supreme Court’s 2024 Loper Bright decision overruled Chevron deference. The existing regulatory definition had long treated significant habitat modification or degradation as “harm” when it actually kills or injures wildlife, a reading the Supreme Court upheld in Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon in 1995.

Federal agencies first moved to erase that interpretation in April 2025, when NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed rescinding the definition. In the final rule, the revision applies prospectively and does not affect existing permits, limiting its immediate legal reach while changing how future projects will be reviewed.

The rollback lands as the administration presses a broader reset of endangered species policy. In November 2025, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed four rule revisions aimed at largely restoring the 2019 and 2020 Trump-era framework on listing, consultation, threatened species protections and critical habitat designations. In March 2026, the Endangered Species Committee, known as the “God Squad,” unanimously exempted Gulf of Mexico oil and gas drilling from ESA restrictions, a decision now facing a legal challenge.