Trump Has Made it Legal to Destroy Endangered Species’ Habitats

Trump Has Made it Legal to Destroy Endangered Species’ Habitats By redefining the meaning of “harm” in the Endangered Species Act, the administration is giving big corporations a gift they have long demanded. When wildfires destroy homes in California, or climate change reduces waterfront properties in Florida to flotsam, or unscrupulous scammers using “deed theft”—a type of paperwork fraud—evict rightful owners from their New York City brownstones, most of us intuitively understand that the loss of those homes was harmful to the people who lived in there.

Even putting aside capitalistic human concerns like lost equity, and even for families who weren’t physically injured, we all recognize that displacement from the places we call home—our habitats—is pretty much the definition of “harm. ” But the Trump administration is trying to redefine “harm” so that it excludes the destruction of homes. At least, when those homes belong to the country’s most vulnerable species.