In 1970, Mexican wolves went nearly extinct in the wild, their numbers dwindling to just five. Six years later, they were listed under the new Endangered Species Act. Today, there are over 300 Mexican wolves across Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico, still listed as endangered but much recovered.
They aren’t alone. The Endangered Species Act, a landmark environmental law, brought hundreds of animals back from the brink, including desert natives like California condors, Sonoran pronghorn, narrow-headed garter snakes, Gila trout and Mexican spotted owls. They are among 74 species in Arizona protected under the Endangered Species Act — all of whose futures, wildlife advocates say, just got a lot more fraught with uncertainty.
On July 10, the Trump administration finalized a rule that eliminates a key protection for endangered species by narrowing the definition of a single but fundamental word included in the law: “harm.”
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For over 50 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has defined “harm” as any activity that directly kills or eliminates the habitat of protected species, an interpretation upheld in a 1995 Supreme Court case.
Now, that definition has been recast, opening up lands designated as critical wildlife habitat to oil and gas drilling, mining and logging.
Today, there are over 300 Mexican wolves across Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico, still listed as endangered but much recovered. But they are among 74 species in Arizona protected under the Endangered Species Act whose futures, wildlife advocates say, just got a lot more fraught with uncertainty.
“For years, federal agencies abused the E.S.A. to obstruct lawful land use and burden American families and businesses,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in a statement. “That approach turned routine activity into a regulatory trap, drove up costs that impacted people’s lives, and expanded federal authority beyond what Congress intended.”
The change will go into effect in September, but it will have to hold up in court. On July 14, a coalition of environmental organizations sued the federal government over the move, which they say essentially nullifies the Endangered Species Act.
”There really is no protecting an animal without protecting its home,” said Tara Zuardo, a senior advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups involved in the suit. “Habitat destruction is the primary driver of extinction.”
A state like Arizona could see greater effects than other states, she said, because so many of its listed species depend on isolated mountain ranges, fragile desert springs and riparian streams where habitat loss is the primary driver of endangerment.
“Losing habitat is a huge issue, whether it's the Mexican gray wolf, the jaguar, the ocelot, the southwestern willow flycatcher, the Chiricahua leopard frog,” she said. “ This is the worst thing to ever happen to the Endangered Species Act.”
Why one word matters in the law
Many parts of the Endangered Species Act have evolved over the decades, but its interpretation of harm has remained virtually unchanged, said Justin Pidot, a law professor at the University of Arizona who served as general counsel for the White House Council on Environmental Quality during the Biden administration.
The biggest challenge to the law’s definition came in 1995. When logging companies in Oregon were unable to operate on land that was designated as critical habitat for endangered northern spotted owls they sued the government, citing financial losses.
”In that particular case they were interpreting the prohibition of ‘take,’ and within that, the definition of harm via regulation,” Zuardo said. Under the law, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service defines “take” as any action "to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect."
In Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon, the word in question was “harm,” which amounts to significant habitat modification or degradation that kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding, or sheltering, Zuardo said.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court upheld that position in a 6-3 decision. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said that “to define 'harm' as an act or omission that, however remotely, 'actually kills or injures' a population of wildlife through habitat modification, is to choose a meaning that makes nonsense of the word that 'harm' defines.”
Public supports wildlife protections
The rule change hasn’t occurred in isolation.
“The administration is firing on conservation across the board,” Pidot said. “Whether it's getting rid of national monuments, rolling back environmental rules, opening up lands to mining, issuing more oil and gas leases — it’s all part of a sort of ‘all of the above’ strategy.”
In March, the Endangered Species Act Exemption Committee, or “God Squad” (so-called for its ability to override protections for listed species), met to exempt oil and gas companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico from the law, putting animals like sea turtles and Rice’s whales at risk.
The rule change also creates uncertainty, Pidot said. It could undercut the viability of programs meant to conserve habitat in exchange for activities on certain lands, like incidental take permits, which allow companies to “basically destroy habitat at one place but fund restoration or mitigation somewhere else.”
The administration’s decision upends decades of precedent and enforcement, Zuardo said.
“Habitat conservation plans, incidental take permits, biological opinions, every single one of them has this understanding incorporated in them,” she said. “It remains somewhat elusive how the change will be reflected in all these respects.”
Across the country, the Endangered Species Act has broad support. About 99% of public comments submitted last year when the administration proposed the rule were written in opposition to the change, according to a New York Times analysis.
“The Endangered Species Act is a very popular statute because Americans want to preserve the species that inhabit our country,” Pidot said. “I think that's the place I find some hope, that this is a deeply unpopular thing in terms of the way that Americans think about our shared country and stewarding it.”
Thirty-six years ago, Dave Parsons spearheaded the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Mexican Wolf Recovery Program. As a wildlife biologist, he helped reintroduce the wolves in Arizona and New Mexico when their numbers were at their lowest.
The rule change is "very bad news for imperiled wildlife," he said, likening it to someone burning down his house while he’s away.
“No physical harm to me, no foul, no crime,” he said. “According to the administration, endangered species don’t need habitat, which, of course, is their home.”
This past year, wildlife agencies counted 319 Mexican wolves across the two states. Up from 286 the year before, it marks a decade of steady recovery under protections afforded by the Endangered Species Act, without which they might've disappeared forever.
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