Trump’s plan to clip the wings of the Endangered Species Act

Several threatened species in the U.S., including the bald eagle, the grizzly bear and the humpback whale among others, were destined to perish had it not been for The Endangered Species Act, a law now under threat from an insidious overhaul proposed by the Trump administration.

The strict regulations of the ESA Act often handcuff the industries, like mining and oil and gas drilling, keeping them from infesting the areas inhabited by protected species, but now the Trump administration is advancing changes that dilute the law in the garb of tailoring a certain rule on case-by-case basis for “threatened” species, notes Vox.

Kalyani Robbins, an environmental law professor at Florida International University, is appalled by the “catastrophic” proposal, which she likens to licensing the developers to “kill threatened species,” with lax regulations, writes Earther.