Trump Budget Cuts Impede States’ Protection of Imperiled Species

The Trump administration’s plan to wipe out federal assistance to states to help recover endangered plants and animals is drawing criticism for undermining the law and leaving all levels of government ill-equipped to protect imperiled plants and animals.

Proposed US Fish and Wildlife Service budget cuts attack the structure of the Endangered Species Act because Congress designed the law to encourage the federal government to cooperate with state wildlife agencies and use their local knowledge to protect declining species, said Murray Feldman, partner at Holland & Hart LLP in Boise, Idaho.

Grants to states that help those species will be ...