Opportunity to Join NWF Litigation Opposing Endangered Species Act Section 7

Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service announced changes to Endangered Species Act regulations that would dramatically reduce independent scientific review of actions that affect imperiled species. The regulations are described more fully in the attached memo. These regulations become effective in mid-January, which means that the Obama Administration would need to undertake a new rulemaking process in order to overturn them. During this rulemaking, ESA protections for listed species would be greatly reduced and important habitats would be destroyed and degraded.

NWF plans to file litigation on Tuesday, December 16, to block these rules from going into effect. Our hope is that the Obama Administration, which stated its opposition to the rules during the campaign, will settle our case (and the parallel cases to be filed by other conservation groups) with an agreement to stay implementation of the rules indefinitely.