Washington (United States) (AFP) โ President Donald Trump's administration will no longer treat the unintentional killing of protected wildlife as unlawful, officials confirmed Thursday, in a shift conservationists say could gut the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Under the sweeping new directive, deaths resulting from foreseeable risks posed by activities such as commercial fishing or logging will be exempt from the landmark 1973 law.
"What's being put forward by the Trump administration is going to cut the heart out of the Endangered Species Act," Gib Brogan, campaign director for Oceana Fisheries, told AFP.
He said the law had been successful at saving species for five decades by finely balancing human economic needs against conservation.
The September 14 memorandum, posted online by the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity and confirmed to AFP by the administration, redefines the longstanding definition of "take" -- a term that relates to pursuing, killing or capturing of a species.
It is now confined to "affirmative conduct intentionally directed against a particular animal or animals."
The move, first reported by the New York Times, explicitly cites a dissent by the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia in a 1995 case on the matter.
"A vessel that inadvertently strikes a whale has not taken it, because the vessel's course was not set against the whale," the document says, quoting the conservative justice.
"Felling a tree is not a take of the bats roosting in it unless the tree is felled for the purpose of killing or capturing them," it continued.
In that case, known as Babbitt v. Sweet Home, an association of landowners and loggers tried to challenge the prevailing definition of "take," arguing a species of woodpecker and an owl had injured them economically by preventing them from conducting their business.
The Supreme Court ultimately ruled against them in a 6-3 decision -- but the high court has since shifted considerably rightward.
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Ah but you see in the days of the defified founders things like Environment protection was not a thing. So the conservative policy is therefore to gut protections.
(Honestly I was trying to joke but the sad thing is this IS their logic.)