Speaker 1: The Trump administration has withdrawn pending regulatory actions to protect
Speaker 1: forty two endangered species, from the green sea turtle to
Speaker 1: the yellow billed cuckoo, many of which detailed how to
Speaker 1: protect animals or plants already deemed to be in peril,
Speaker 1: according to Office of Management and Budget data compiled by Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: Environmental activists say these regulatory actions were already scheduled and
Speaker 1: the US Fish and Wildlife Service is violating the law
Speaker 1: and putting species at risk of extinction. The Fish and
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service was also criticized by environment environmental groups last
Speaker 1: week when it declined to list twenty five species, including
Speaker 1: the Pacific wal rusks, as endangered. Joining us are Charles Warren,
Speaker 1: the head of the environmental law practice at Cramer Leven
Speaker 1: and Patrick Parento, professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School.
Speaker 1: Chuck explain what these regulatory actions require, what they would do. Okay,
Speaker 1: There's two types of actions that you generally see under
Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Act June. One is the listing of
Speaker 1: a species as either an endangered species one that's about
Speaker 1: to go extinct, or a threatened species one that almost
Speaker 1: on the verge of being endangered and So those are
Speaker 1: the listing actions, and some of these involved listing actions
Speaker 1: like you talked about the walrus. The other actions that
Speaker 1: they take our habitat protection and that means once you
Speaker 1: have one of these threatened or endangered species, you have
Speaker 1: to take steps to protect the habitat. And those are
Speaker 1: other kinds of regulations that they put out and uh,
Speaker 1: needless to say, these are all controversial under have been
Speaker 1: for a number of years because many people develop, real
Speaker 1: estate developers, oil and gas interests and others. I think
Speaker 1: that all that does is just stifle development in this
Speaker 1: protection of habitats, and that's why it's always been a
Speaker 1: controvers feel program ever since the law was enacted in
Speaker 1: ninety three. So, pat, what what did the government do
Speaker 1: here in terms of delaying these rules. Well, technically, this
Speaker 1: was a decision by Mick mulveney, the head of the
Speaker 1: Office of Management and Budget, which performs kind of an
Speaker 1: oversight role on rulemakings for the government, and they put
Speaker 1: out this agenda every year of the rules that are
Speaker 1: in process, and they developed work plans for the individual agencies.
Speaker 1: This time around, mulvaney um basically unilaterally from what we know,
Speaker 1: not even consulting with the Vision Wildlife Service, which administers
Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Act, just made a decision that that
Speaker 1: a whole slew of these rules that list species, says
Speaker 1: Chuck was describing, um, simply wouldn't be done this year.
Speaker 1: They just pulled them off of the rulemaking calendar and
Speaker 1: put them in kind of a limbo status to be
Speaker 1: dealt with later. And I can tell you why that's problematic.
Speaker 1: If you like, yes, go ahead. Yeah. So the problem
Speaker 1: is that the Endangerous Species Act contains some very strict deadline,
Speaker 1: statutory deadlines written right into the law that requires that
Speaker 1: these decisions be finalized. Once a species is proposed for listing, UM,
Speaker 1: it has to be made final within twelve months. And
Speaker 1: as Chuck was talking about the designation of what's called
Speaker 1: critical habitat for those species, that has to be done
Speaker 1: either at the same time of the final listing or
Speaker 1: within a year of it. So, these statutory deadlines, it
Speaker 1: looks like for many of these are going to be
Speaker 1: violated by this action, which is simply gonna throw us
Speaker 1: right back into court where we've, as Chuck was saying,
Speaker 1: where we've been for decades, really fighting over how badly
Speaker 1: the backlog of these listing decisions has grown. So this
Speaker 1: is really self defeating even for the administration, because it's
Speaker 1: going to mean the government, the Department of Justice official
Speaker 1: life if they're going to have to be defending actions
Speaker 1: which will likely have found to be illegal, which doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to benefit anybody, Chuck. There are regulations about withdrawing regulations,
Speaker 1: rules about withdrawing rules that we've talked about before. How
Speaker 1: has the Trump administration been faring in court cases involving
Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Act? They haven't been faring that well, June.
Speaker 1: You know, they've lost a number of lawsuits that have
Speaker 1: been brought by groups that seek to protect species when
Speaker 1: they've tried to do some of these things. And I
Speaker 1: think they're going to continue, as Pat said, to lose
Speaker 1: these things because they're really doing things which are against
Speaker 1: the law. And and the the interesting thing about it
Speaker 1: is the o MB Officer Manage and Budget procedure that
Speaker 1: Pat talked about. That's really sort of a procedure. It
Speaker 1: is an internal administration procedure. It's really not necessarily laid
Speaker 1: out by the statute, and the Fish and Wildlife Service
Speaker 1: and the Department of Interior have these obligations under the statute,
Speaker 1: and you just can't sort of say, okay, just drop that.
Speaker 1: And I think we're gonna find out, as Pat said,
Speaker 1: that it's going to be counterproductive. So Pat, assuming that, uh,
Speaker 1: this doesn't hold up, you know what what ends up happening?
Speaker 1: What will the federal government in fact take action? I
Speaker 1: think they're going to be forced to take action at
Speaker 1: some point. But of course, nothing happens very fast in litigation. UM,
Speaker 1: so it maybe months or longer before we know the
Speaker 1: outcome here. Um. The environmental groups will be moving as
Speaker 1: fast as they can. I'm sure that their computers are
Speaker 1: busy typing out complaints as we speak to get into
Speaker 1: court and to try to get the courts to intervene
Speaker 1: in this. But the longer these species are delayed they're
Speaker 1: listening to the data shows, the worst their condition becomes
Speaker 1: in the harder it becomes to recover them, the more
Speaker 1: costly it is to try to recover them. You lose
Speaker 1: opportunities the longer you wait, and so on. So you know,
Speaker 1: once again the best way to deal with these problems
Speaker 1: is to try to get out in front of them
Speaker 1: and not let them get worse and worse Chuck. So
Speaker 1: we've been talking about the regulatory actions to protect those
Speaker 1: forty two endangered species, but as far as the failure
Speaker 1: to list twenty five species last week, including the Pacific
Speaker 1: Walls as endangered, is there anything that can be done
Speaker 1: about that in a lawsuit? Yes, because a lot of
Speaker 1: times groups petition to have species listed, and uh as
Speaker 1: as Pett I think was saying, before there's a clock
Speaker 1: that starts to run on that they have to react
Speaker 1: to the petition in a certain period of time, and
Speaker 1: then they have to take some action. I mean, then
Speaker 1: have they can say we refuse to list, and then
Speaker 1: that that goes into the question of what data there
Speaker 1: and that subject again to a lawsuit. So these are
Speaker 1: these are also challengeable and uh I think history has
Speaker 1: shown that a number of those things have also been
Speaker 1: overturned in court. So it's a I think that they've
Speaker 1: been discussions for years about trying to change the Endangered
Speaker 1: Species Act because people find it, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: very difficult statute to get out of, and they've been unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: And I think there's going to be a continued effort
Speaker 1: to do that now in this Congress, and we'll see
Speaker 1: what happens with Anna, but I thank you it will
Speaker 1: be successful. Thank you both for being on. You are
Speaker 1: environmental duo Charles war On, the head of the environmental
Speaker 1: practice at Cramer Levin and Patrick Parento, Professor of environmental
Speaker 1: law at Vermont Law School.