Federal Agencies Issue Major Changes to Endangered Species Act Regulations

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service has issued a set of three new final rules that substantially revise regulations implementing the Endangered Species Act. The new rules change the criteria and procedures for (1) establishing protections for "threatened" species; (2) the listing and delisting of species and the designation of critical habitat; and (3) the interagency consultation process under Section 7 of the ESA, which is used to determine whether a federal action would jeopardize a listed species' continued existence or result in an adverse modification of a listed species' designated critical habitat. As described in our prior update, the FWS and NMFS published proposed rules on these three topics on July 25, 2018. Our complete report on the proposed changes, by Donald Baur, Marc R. Bruner,  Bradley H. Oliphant  and Christian Termyn is available here.