Trump administration is changing Endangered Species Act. How will it affect US wildlife?

In July 2026, a claim (archived) circulated online that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump “legalized the hunting and killing of … animals formerly protected under the Endangered Species Act.”

For example, a Facebook page shared the claim alongside a list of 20 species it claimed had lost protections through the Trump administration’s changes to the act. 

The claim and the list of species also circulated elsewhere on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived) and X (archived). Snopes readers contacted us to learn more about it.

The specific claim that the Trump administration’s changes to the Endangered Species Act would allow the “hunting and killing” of 20 named species was misleading and lacked context. 

The Trump administration did outline three changes to the Endangered Species Act in July 2026, some of which critics warned could amount to a “death sentence” for animals that were awaiting classification because the changes weakened protections for threatened and endangered animals and their habitats.

The changes did not outright legalize hunting threatened or endangered animals. The Department of the Interior wrote on July 10, 2026, that “actions that directly injure or kill listed wildlife will continue to be prohibited.” 

Critics of the changes feared that removing legal protections for threatened or endangered species’ habitats would eventually kill the animals anyway.

The 20 species named in the Facebook post were relevant to the proposed changes because, although they aren’t classified as of this writing, they might soon become eligible to receive threatened or endangered classifications. While social media posts claimed the animals lost Endangered Species Act protections, this was only true compared with animals classified before the Trump administration’s rule changes would take effect in August and September 2026. At the time of this writing, because the Fish and Wildlife Service had not classified the listed species, the act provided them no protections.

Considering that the effects of the Trump administration’s changes to the Endangered Species Act remained to be seen at the time of this writing, we leave this claim unrated.

Trump admin rescinds ‘harm’ from act

On July 10, the Department of the Interior announced it would rescind the definition of “harm” from the Endangered Species Act. Before the department’s change, harming an endangered animal included modifying or degrading its habitat in a way that caused the animal death or injury and was prohibited under the U.S. Code.

According to the conservation organization World Wide Fund for Nature, habitat loss poses “probably the greatest threat” to species diversity on the planet. According to the organization, 85% of threatened or endangered species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” have habitat loss identified as the main threat to their existence. (The IUCN is a global environment network made of both government and civil organizations.)

The Center for Biological Diversity, a charity working to protect endangered species, said in a news release on July 10 that rescinding the definition of harm from the Endangered Species Act was, “a cynical attempt to open species’ habitats to logging, mining, oil and gas drilling and other destruction.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a news release that the department’s change “restores common sense, respects private property, provides much-needed certainty for landowners and follows the statute Congress actually passed.”

‘Blanket rules’ are out

On July 17, the Interior Department announced two more changes, the first of which was that it would eliminate “blanket” rules, also known as Section 4(d) rules, that meant species classified as threatened generally received the same protections as endangered species. 

After the Trump administration’s changes to Section 4(d) rules, the Fish and Wildlife Service must list species-specific protections for species classified as threatened based on what level of protection the agency deems “necessary and advisable.”

The Center for Biological Diversity said in a news release that a species-specific approach to protections would “create additional work for the already beleaguered agency and potentially mean species receive little to no protection.”

Burgum said in a news release that the change reflected the department “following the original intent of the law.”

New procedure for designating ‘critical habitat’

The Trump administration’s July 17 changes also included a new subpart that described how officials should decide whether to designate an area as a critical habitat for an endangered species. In most cases, the Fish and Wildlife Service designates critical habitats for endangered species that cannot be destroyed or adversely modified.

Burgum said the Endangered Species Act had previously been “weaponized to stop almost any new project in America,” appearing to suggest that the administration’s rule changes would make critical habitats and endangered species less of a roadblock for industry.

The Center for Biological Diversity suggested in a news release that the new rules gave undue weight to corporations and landowners, who could exclude areas from becoming critical habitats by claiming they would suffer economic loss.

What’s next

The three changes to the Endangered Species Act were due to take effect in August and September 2026, though they were not without opposition.

On July 21, lawyers for several conservation groups that included the Center for Biological Diversity announced the groups would sue the Trump administration over the two rule changes announced on July 17. The center also was one of several groups that sued the Trump administration over the July 10 rule change.

For further reading, Snopes previously investigated how one of the Trump administration’s changes would affect the whooping crane.

Sources