Interior Changes Endangered Species Rules to Account for Climate

Federal officials can now introduce experimental populations of endangered plants and animals outside their historic habitat range as climate change shifts where imperiled species live, the Interior Department announced Friday.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has finalized revisions to Endangered Species Act regulations that will allow officials to account for climate change when looking for places to expand the habitat of endangered and threatened species as climate change forces them outside of their historical habitat range.

Earlier versions of the regulation, adopted after Congress updated the ESA in 1982, barred officials from introducing species outside their historical range except ...