Agencies Get Their Ducks In A Row On Revising Endangered Species Act Rules

Last week, final rules from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service (collectively, "the Services") impacting key components of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) were published in the Federal Register.¹ The new rules represent some of the most significant changes to the Act's administration in decades. The finalized rules accomplish the following, among other things:

• Eliminate a "blanket rule" that afforded threatened species the same protections as endangered ones by default.
• Set a list of circumstances that do not warrant designating "critical habitat" to protect species, including a new requirement that an unoccupied area must have one or more of the physical or biological features essential to the species' conservation in order to be considered as potential critical habitat.²