John Barrasso

Cynthia Lummis

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The fight to change regulations used to enforce the Endangered Species Act (ESA) continue to yo-yo from one administration to the next. Now, as the Biden administration plans to roll back Trump-era regulations intended to clear the way for new oil and gas drilling, mining and development in and around habitats of threatened and endangered species, Wyoming’s Republican senators are introducing legislation to prevent the administration from funding the rollbacks.

The fight has been months in the making. In June, the Biden administration announced the plan to roll back Trump-era changes to the ESA. Then in August, Wyoming Sens. Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso signed a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service expressing “strong concerns” about rolling back Trump administration updates.

In September, Republican senators introduced legislation to prevent the Departments of the Interior and Commerce from finalizing the rollbacks. Then Lummis followed that up Friday by introducing five amendments to the current appropriations bill, one of which prohibits the use of funds to finalize the rollbacks.

“Families across Wyoming and the West should not be funding this administration’s unhinged environmental agenda and my amendments will roll back its harmful policies,” Lummis said in announcing the amendments.

Four additional amendments seek to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy from promoting or finalizing rules unless it is determined that the rule in question will not raise consumer prices, prohibit the use of public money to fund training to federal employees emotionally struggling with the climate crisis, prohibit the use of funds to implement a proposed national recovery plan for gray wolves and prohibit the use of funds to carry out cashless entrance fee policies at National Park Service units.

Despite Congress making several changes to the ESA, including significant changes in the late 70s and 80s, the framework for the legislation remained largely intact. However, the Trump administration in 2019 made major overhauls of rules allowing agencies to consider the economic impacts of listing species and designating critical habitat, retracting protections from threatened species until they are upgraded to endangered species protections, and changing the way federal agencies are required to consult the Department of Interior and Energy on ESA issues.

In 2020, the Trump administration made two more rule changes, including revising the definition of habitat as it pertains to the ESA and ways that the Fish and Wildlife Service designates and excludes critical habitat while pushing for increased energy production, including in Wyoming.

The ESA was signed in 1973 during the Nixon administration. Since the Act was passed, about 1,650 species have been listed as threatened or endangered, 54 species have been delisted due to recovery, and another 56 species have been down-listed from endangered to threatened, according to the Department of Interior.

In 2021, the Fish and Wildlife Service removed 23 species for protections under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) due to extinction. The most notable species on that list was the ivory-billed woodpecker, which some contend still exists in isolated areas in the wild.

The American Bird Conservancy reports the last confirmed sightings of the ivory-billed woodpecker came from the 81,000-acre Singer Tract of Louisiana, the largest piece of old-growth swamp forest left in the South.

“Despite efforts by the National Audubon Society and other nascent conservation groups to buy the land for conservation, the lumber company that owned the Singer Tract refused to sell it, and that virgin forest was logged to the ground,” the organization claims in its online bird library.

A lone female ivory-bill hung on for a few years at a roost hole in the area, but was last spotted in 1944 — the final universally accepted sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker in the United States.

The Service's current work-plan includes actions that encompass 60 species for potential down-listing or delisting due to successful recovery efforts.

In May, the Senate passed a resolution sponsored by Lummis to retain the regulatory definition of habitat within the ESA. The Senate also passed resolutions to overturn the listings of the northern long-eared bat and western prairie chicken as endangered under the ESA. The habitat definition resolution is currently awaiting consideration in the House and the efforts to undo federal protections for two endangered species that have seen their populations plummet over the years were passed by both the House and Senate but were vetoed in September by President Joe Biden.

The prairie chicken, a member of the grouse family and facing very much the same challenges in their habitats as the greater sage grouse, has seen its historical habitat on the Great Plains diminished by approximately 90% and populations have plummeted.

Biden said he was vetoing the legislation based on its attempt to “overturn a science-based rule-making that follows the requirements of the law, and thereby undermines the ESA.”  

“The lesser prairie-chicken serves as an indicator for healthy grasslands and prairies, making the species an important measure of the overall health of America’s grasslands,” Biden said.

Environmentalists have long sought stronger federal protections for the prairie bird, considered significantly at risk due to oil and gas development, livestock grazing and farming, and the placement of power lines in their habitat.

“Once numbering in the hundreds of thousands across nearly 100 million acres, lesser prairie-chicken populations have declined drastically due to habitat loss and fragmentation. As a result, we are listing the lesser prairie-chicken under the Endangered Species Act,” the Fish and Wildlife Service announced late in 2022.

Meanwhile, the northern long-eared bat now faces threats of extinction due to white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that has spread across approximately 79% of the northern long-eared bat’s entire range and is expected to affect 100% of the species’ range by the end of the decade, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Data indicates white-nose syndrome has caused estimated declines of 97% to 100% in affected northern long-eared bat populations, Biden cited in his veto.

“Bats are critical to healthy, functioning ecosystems and contribute at least $3 billion annually to the United States agriculture economy through pest control and pollination,” Biden said in announcing the September vetoes.

The northern long-eared bat is also listed as endangered in Wyoming. Other protected species in the state listed as endangered include the grizzly bear, whooping crane, black-footed ferret, gray wolf, yellow-billed cuckoo, Wyoming toad, Kendall warm springs dace, Preble’s meadow jumping mouse, Canada lynx, blowout penstemon, Colorado butterfly plant, desert yellowhead and Ute ladies’-tresses. 

Lummis, chair of the Senate Western Caucus, said she is pushing for bills that prioritize western states and roll back the Biden administration’s outrageous Green New Deal policies.

“For far too long, the Biden administration has catered to climate extremists inside the D.C. beltway by passing radical environmental policies at the expense of the American West,” she said. “This administration’s systemic failures have unnecessarily raised energy prices for consumers at a time when families are already struggling due to record-breaking inflation and spent billions of taxpayer dollars on laughable environmental causes while the national debt continues to skyrocket.”

Of course, depending on the results of the 2024 election, the issues might once again yo-yo in another direction.