The Biden administration wants the the term “habitat” to be undefined under the Endangered Species Act—part of an effort to revise, rescind or reinstate a raft of regulations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday.
The announcement represents the next step in years of legal and regulatory battles over the ESA, which aims to protect the “critical habitat” of plants and animals spiraling toward extinction.
The 1973 law never defined “habitat.” But the Trump administration decided to define the term for the first time last year to avoid legal ambiguity following a 2018 Supreme Court case regarding dusky gopher ...