For decades, the federal government has protected places to live for the country’s most vulnerable wildlife, helping species such as bald eagles recover from the brink of extinction.
But a recent change by the Trump administration drastically weakens those protections, opening up critical habitats to potential development and industry.
“In effect, the administration is saying the Endangered Species Act doesn't let you hunt a species to extinction, but it does let you destroy the habitat and drive it to extinction that way,” said Ben Levitan, an attorney for the nonprofit Earthjustice, which is leading a lawsuit against the change.
“There's no way to prevent a species from going extinct if it doesn't have a place to live.”
In southeastern Virginia, animals federally listed as endangered or threatened range from shorebirds and sea turtles to bats and beetles.
The shift in protections stems from a tweak to the government’s definition of the word “harm.”
The Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 to conserve endangered wildlife. Part of the law prohibits the “take” of a listed species, such as hunting, shooting or trapping the animals.
Federal officials also interpreted harming the species to include modifying or degrading the habitat on which they rely. (In 1995, the Supreme Court upheld that definition after a challenge from private landowners.)
That meant if someone wanted to build, log or drill on a property home to a protected species, they had to show the government they would not affect critical feeding and breeding grounds.
Now, the Endangered Species Act, or ESA, only prohibits actions “directed immediately and intentionally against a particular animal.”
In a news release earlier this month, the Departments of Interior and Commerce said the change “will end years of federal overreach.”
“President Trump is rescinding overly broad and burdensome regulations that have restrained our fishermen for too long,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in the statement. “We’re returning the ESA to its foundational purpose to ensure legitimate conservation goals are met without sacrificing economic growth and American prosperity.”
Last week, the administration also canceled automatic protection for species that are listed as threatened, meaning they are likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future.
Global conservation officials say habitat loss is a main threat to 85% of at-risk species.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Virginia’s Eastern Shore overlaps with critical habitat for the threatened red knot shorebird. Western Tidewater serves as critical habitat for several types of endangered freshwater mussels.
Other vulnerable animals in the region include piping plovers, northern long-eared bats and sea turtles, including Kemp’s ridleys and loggerheads.
Many Virginia species have success stories after years of conservation work.
Take the red-cockaded woodpecker. The small, quirky bird relies on old-growth pine forests, particularly the wide longleaf pine savannas that once covered parts of southern Virginia.
Sergio Harding, a bird conservation biologist with the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, said the birds declined alongside the loss of longleafs from clearing land for timber and agriculture.
Red-cockaded woodpeckers excavate cavities almost exclusively in living pine trees, which makes them unique among North American woodpeckers, he said.
During the past few decades, a large collaboration has helped boost the species’ recovery through preserving land, relocating birds from private land and building artificial nesting cavities.
The woodpeckers – known as RCWs in the biology trade – are among a tiny portion of bird species worldwide that use a cooperative breeding system, with adult birds helping other pairs raise their young.
Since the early 2000s, the population has grown from three breeding groups in Virginia to more than 22, representing more than 100 individual birds, Harding said.
They live only in protected pine forests in Sussex County, as well as a small population at the Great Dismal Swamp.
In 2024, the U.S. downlisted the RCW from endangered to threatened status, though it remains endangered at the state level.
Harding said the federal law has contributed to the recovery.
“It just generally provides a regulatory mechanism that helps to make all of this possible,” Harding said. “We've made progress collectively across the country in helping to recover the species. I think we still have a ways to go.”
Virginia has its own Endangered Species Act that prevents the killing, transport or sale of wildlife listed at the federal or state level.
But it’s unclear whether the state has any regulations that would replace the federal habitat protections. A DWR spokesperson said officials are reviewing the potential scope and impact of the change.
Levitan, with San Francisco-based Earthjustice, said state rules are important but not as comprehensive as the federal law. Plus, “species cross state boundaries.”
Leda Huta, vice president of government affairs for the nonprofit American Rivers, said it takes a long time to even get a species on the federal list.
“The conservation community talks about these species as being in the emergency room,” she said. “I really think of it as, by the time it gets to be endangered, it's like in hospice care. So you want to keep it from getting to that level.”
Huta said people tend to think of endangered animals as the charismatic creatures we see on land. But many are small, underwater powerhouses like Virginia’s freshwater mussels, which help clean the water.
“We just expect our water to come out of our tap clean. Most of the time we're not really thinking about that line all the way back to mussels and the Endangered Species Act and the role that it plays in our own health.”
