New Endangered Species Rules ‘Certain’ to Draw Court Challenges

New rules unveiled this week implementing the Endangered Species Act are destined for court as environmental groups assail them as possibly contributing to the further decline of imperiled plants and animals.

Attorneys representing the energy industry say the new rules’ legal vulnerability is unclear, but they are in some ways unprecedented because they’ll require some developers to pay for offsets to their impact on imperiled plants and animals.

The three rules finalized Thursday by the US Fish and Wildlife Service include an update to the Trump administration’s 2019 ESA regulations, a rule governing the designation of critical habitat for endangered ...