… U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement that the Trump administration is merely restoring the ESA to its “original intent” and ending “years of legal confusion and regulatory overreach.” Of the five new ESA rules so far, four are essentially repeats from the first Trump administration that were in effect for a few months before the Biden administration mostly did away with them. … Karrigan Börk, a professor of law and director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at U.C. Davis, calls the new rules a “wholesale attack” on the ESA, compounded by the administration’s attempts to weaken other bedrock environmental laws, such as the Clean Water Act and Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Other endangered species news:

• San Diego Foundation: Blog: Saving the Tijuana River estuary: a fight for one of Southern California’s last wetlands
• Center for Biological Diversity: News release: Western spadefoot recommended for California endangered species review