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The Trump administration proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act on Thursday, an unsurprising move given that it asked the public for comments on the 45-year-old rule in 2017. The proposal features recommendations from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service, and boils down to two main changes: First, the administration wants to end the policy of applying the same level of protection to threatened species as it does to endangered species. This would only apply to species that are listed as threatened going forward, not retroactively. The text of the proposal emphasized that this change would bring USFWS into line with the current strategy practiced by NOAA, and noted that if implemented, the change would mean that individual species ought to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

from Stories from Slate https://ift.tt/2LuGSqq