White House limits wildlife law to intentional harm
- A new Interior memo limits Endangered Species Act enforcement strictly to intentional wildlife harm.
- Commercial operators face no federal fines for accidentally killing protected animals or destroying habitats.
Accidental destruction of endangered wildlife is no longer a federal crime.
An internal Fish and Wildlife Service memo obtained by New York Times reporter Katrin Einhorn upends five decades of environmental enforcement. Under the directive, commercial operators are shielded from liability under the Endangered Species Act unless they intentionally target protected species. Ships striking whales or loggers felling trees containing roosting bats will no longer face federal fines, removing the primary legal mechanism forcing companies to mitigate ecological collateral damage.
The shift operationalizes late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's 1995 dissent in Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter.
Scalia argued that treating habitat modification as statutory harm unfairly penalized landowners by ignoring explicit intent. Legal precedent dating back to 1979 - when environmental groups successfully sued Hawaii over feral sheep damaging the habitat of the rare Palila bird - established that habitat destruction constitutes illegal harm. That principle expanded in 1990 during logging restrictions to protect the northern spotted owl, eventually compelling Congress to create incidental take permits that required developers to fund conservation offsets.
By discarding the requirement for incidental take permits, the White House removes financial incentives for corporations to negotiate habitat conservation plans. Environmental attorneys and former agency biologists warn the rule guts core protections, given that most protected species face extinction from industrial expansion and habitat loss rather than direct hunting.
The policy shift aligns with a broader push to centralize regulatory authority directly within the White House. Alongside the wildlife ruling, the administration barred reporters from CNN, MS Now, and Politico from press facilities and drafted an executive order allowing political appointees to veto National Institutes of Health research grants.
Administrative independence across scientific, regulatory, and media domains is dissolving into political control.
Federal courts will soon decide if a mere executive memo can rewrite statutory law.