SEATTLE (AP) — Seventeen states, including Washington, sued the Trump administration Wednesday to block rules weakening the Endangered Species Act, saying the changes would make it tougher to protect wildlife even in the midst of a global extinction crisis.
The lawsuit, in federal court in San Francisco, follows a similar challenge filed last month by several environmental groups, including the Humane Society and the Sierra Club.
The new rules begin taking effect Thursday. They for the first time allow officials to consider how much it would cost to save a species. They also remove blanket protections for animals newly listed as threatened and make it easier for creatures to be removed from the protected list.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, in announcing the lawsuit in a Seattle news conference, called it “death by a thousand cuts for the Endangered Species Act”.
The law, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1973, has been credited with helping prevent the extinction of more than 220 species, including bald eagles, grizzly bears and humpback whales.
The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have said the new rules will improve the law’s enforcement.
Scientists say that globally about 1 million species are at risk of extinction, mainly because of habitat destruction by humans, overfishing and climate change.
Other states challenging Trump’s rules are California, Massachusetts, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont.