Trump’s Extinction Proposal
10 Endangered Species Jeopardized by Trump’s Proposal to Strip Habitat Protections
Introduction
The Trump administration on April 16, 2025, issued a proposed rule to rescind nearly all habitat protections for endangered species across the country. The proposal has profound, life-altering implications for endangered animals in the United States that are currently protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Habitat loss is a key driver of extinctions around the globe and in the United States. The protection of habitat has therefore been a crucial element in preventing extinction for species protected under the Act.
Currently, the Endangered Species Act prohibits “take” of endangered species by any person, including individuals, government entities and corporations. Take has been defined to include actions that “harm” endangered species through “significant habitat modification or degradation.”
This definition of harm has been pivotal to protecting and recovering endangered species and preventing the destruction of their most important habitat. It was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995.
The Trump administration’s extinction proposal would fully rescind this definition, opening the door for industries to mine, log, bulldoze, drain, pollute and otherwise destroy habitat that’s fundamental to the survival of endangered species.
For this report, we highlight 10 endangered species under direct threat from Trump’s proposal — wildlife whose very existence on the planet will be jeopardized by the destruction of their most important habitat.
Read the report, "Trump's Extinction Proposal: 10 Endangered Species Jeopardized by Trump’s Proposal to Strip Habitat Protections."
Species: Whooping crane
About: Whooping cranes are North America’s tallest birds — with males standing nearly 5 feet tall — and the rarest crane species in the world. There are around 500 in the Texas population and likely fewer than 100 in the eastern population. They rely on a variety of habitats during their epic, annual migrations, including freshwater marshes, prairie pools and coastal wetlands.
Status: There were once tens of thousands of whooping cranes in North America but their numbers fell after European expansion. There were 1,400 in 1896 and 15 left by 1938, putting them on the knife’s edge of extinction. They were protected in 1967 and listed as endangered when the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973. Their recovery has been gradual and they remain threatened by the destruction of their nesting habitat and migration corridors. Other threats including pesticides, climate change and shooting.
The Trump extinction proposal: Whooping cranes cannot survive without safe places to stop along their migration, including those who travel some 2,500 miles each year between coastal Texas and breeding grounds in Canada. Trump’s proposal to gut habitat protections means whooping cranes will see more of their life-preserving wetlands drained, polluted, paved and destroyed. Without safe migration routes, which whooping cranes have relied on for thousands of years, there’s no way they can fully recover and it’s likely their populations will fall dangerously low in the coming years.
Species: Desert tortoise
About: Desert tortoises have lived in the deserts of California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah since the Pleistocene. In the early years of the 20th century, they still thrived within the Southwest's arid landscapes: As many as 1,000 tortoises per square mile once inhabited the Mojave. The biggest among them can weigh 15 pounds and some live as long as 80 years. They hibernate in burrows for up to nine months a year and feast on herbs, grasses and cactuses.
Status: Desert tortoise populations have fallen by 90% since 1970. The Mojave population was protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1990 and serious threats remain to some of their most important habitat, including livestock grazing, an ever-increasing use of off-road vehicles, roads and urban development.
The Trump extinction proposal: Desert tortoises have been in serious trouble for decades. The Trump plan will allow more cows to trample their burrows and more off-road vehicles to run roughshod over some of their last remaining safe havens. Sprawl development, left unchecked by federal protections, will also make it harder for desert tortoises to expand their range, find new food sources and adapt to climate change and other changing conditions.
Species: Monarch butterfly
About: Monarch butterflies are found across the United States during summer and migrate each fall to the coast of California or the mountains of Mexico to spend the winter clustered together in groves of trees. These graceful orange-and-black beauties were once common, pollinating plants across the country and delighting generations of school children and backyard gardeners.
Status: Monarchs have declined by 90% and are threatened by pesticide overuse, loss of grasslands and prairies, climate chaos, and logging of their overwintering forests in California and Mexico. The latest count showed the second-smallest population on record. Their decline was driven by widespread loss of milkweed, the caterpillar’s sole food source, to increased herbicide use and to sprawl. Monarchs are also threatened by neonicotinoid insecticides. Climate change threatens every stage of their life cycle and migration.
The Trump extinction proposal: Monarchs were proposed for Endangered Species Act protection in 2024. The Trump proposal would undercut their hope for recovery by removing proposed protections for their overwintering forests in California and allowing the last remaining native grasslands and prairies to be converted to pesticide-intensive industrial agriculture. The proposal would also allow harmful activities in national wildlife refuges that are critical to the monarch migration.
Species: Eastern hellbender
About: Hellbenders are North America’s largest salamanders reaching 2 feet long and weighing up to 5 pounds. These ancient river dwellers, which have changed little in 160 million years, breathe through their skin and must have clean water to survive.
Status: Hellbenders were once found from New York to Georgia, but only 12% of populations remain healthy. Hurricane Helene devastated populations in the healthiest part of their range in North Carolina and Tennessee. After more than a decade of delay, hellbenders were finally proposed for Endangered Species Act protection in 2024. They are threatened by water pollution, climate disasters and disease outbreaks, which are worse in contaminated waters.
The Trump extinction proposal: The Trump proposal would allow the activities that endangered hellbender habitat to expand unabated including clearcut logging, coal mining and fracking.
Species: Florida panther
About: Florida panthers are the largest wild felines to call the Sunshine State home and the only pumas still remaining east of the Mississippi River. The reclusive panthers are separated from their puma cousins in the mountainous West by more than 1,000 miles. Only between 120 to 230 of these awe-inspiring Floridian carnivores now survive in tiny chunks of habitat in South Florida, accounting for roughly 5% of their former range. Habitat loss and fragmentation and vehicle strikes due mostly to human development and highways are the biggest threats facing Florida panthers today.
Status: Florida panthers were first protected as an endangered species in 1967 and retain that protection. While their population has increased since the 1970s, these panthers are still threatened with extinction. Protecting the places where Florida panthers live is essential for them to truly recover. The only habitat protections specifically for the panthers come from Endangered Species Act restrictions against harm due to habitat degradation and destruction.
The Trump extinction proposal: If the Trump administration is allowed to destroy habitat protections under the Endangered Species Act, it’s likely that development will continue to threaten Florida panthers. It will also bring more vehicles to roads that the panthers are forced to cross and increase the number of panthers who are struck and killed each year.
Species: Florida manatee
About: Gentle and curious manatees are one of the most instantly recognizable aquatic species. They spend their days drifting through fields of seagrass — their favorite food — and have long delighted anyone lucky enough to see them. But manatees are in trouble. Development that drives habitat loss and causes nutrient pollution is wrecking their seagrass beds. Manatees are also threatened by boat collisions and climate change.
Status: Florida manatees are suffering from degrading water quality, which in turn leads to a loss of seagrass. Pollution from wastewater treatment discharges, leaking septic systems, fertilizer runoff and other sources is causing the collapse of the Indian River Lagoon — a haven for manatees during the cold winter months. This collapse led to the deaths of nearly 2,000 manatees in 2021 and 2022 combined.
The Trump extinction proposal: Without strong habitat protections, the warm-water refuges and seagrass beds that manatees need to survive will become polluted and uninhabitable. Corporate polluters, wastewater treatment plants and even federal agencies all threaten to drive manatees to the brink of extinction if the Trump administration is successful in reducing Endangered Species Act habitat protections.
Species: Chinook salmon
About: Chinook salmon are anadromous fish that spend the first 1-3 years of their life in fresh water before migrating to the ocean as adults and returning to fresh water at the end of their life to spawn. Like other salmonids, these iconic animals of the West Coast have been entwined with the cultures and economies of the people who live along their migratory pathways for thousands of years. Chinook salmon, sometimes called king salmon, are the largest Pacific salmonids, with adults reaching 3 feet in length and weighing 30 pounds or more.
Status: Nine populations of Chinook salmon are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Salmon, including Chinook, have suffered from habitat destruction since the 1800s due to indiscriminate logging, development, dams, river diversion and dramatic reductions in coastal wetlands. The Snake River once supported Chinook runs of half a million fish each autumn but this once-mighty population had a run of only 78 fish in 1990 and remains at less than 10% of its historic numbers today.
The Trump extinction proposal: Above all else, salmon rely on clear, cool water and long swaths of connected habitat in order to complete their migration. Under Trump’s proposal, migrating salmon will no longer be protected from dams, water-diversion projects and development that render their ancestral pathways uninhabitable. Adult salmon will die in the lower reaches of streams, blocked by culverts and impassable dams, while juvenile salmon who hatch above dams with fish ladders will die in hydroelectric turbines as they try to reach the ocean. Fundamentally, these celebrated, iconic fish will face grim prospects for recovery.
Species: Green sea turtle
About: Green sea turtles are one of the largest sea turtles in the world. These graceful, slow herbivores can weigh up to 400 pounds and live as long as humans do. Every 2-5 years, green sea turtles leave their foraging grounds and migrate hundreds or thousands of miles to the nesting beaches where they lay eggs. Hatchling sea turtles instinctively orient away from darkness and toward the brightest horizon, which is meant to be the reflection of the moon on the water. Baby turtles see this light and shuffle down the sand dunes until they reach the ocean.
Status: Six green sea turtle populations, living in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Protection has helped address hunting and poaching of eggs of sea turtles, but loss of nesting beaches to shoreline development or armoring remains a serious threat. Coastal developments that outshine the moon at night with streetlamps and lit windows can disorient and confuse hatchlings, ultimately leading them away from the water and dramatically lowering their chances of survival. Other considerable threats include bycatch in fishing nets, pollution and sea-level rise.
The Trump extinction proposal: The preservation of sandy nesting beaches with no artificial light is critical to the continuation of green sea turtle populations within the U.S. Rising sea levels and climate change already threaten many of these beaches, but Trump’s proposal would open the door to destructive shoreline armoring projects and coastal developments. These changes would compromise both female green sea turtles’ ability to come ashore to lay eggs and hatchling turtles’ ability to move toward the ocean after emerging from the nest. Without habitat protections, these beaches are also greatly threatened by pollution, marine debris and oil spills.
Species: Northern spotted owl
About: No animal is more emblematic of the majestic old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest than the northern spotted owl. Chocolatey-brown with dark eyes, these curious owls can only live in mature and old-growth forests. Only these forests support the dense, multi-layered canopies that allow the owls to forage and stay cool and have the big, old trees with broken tops, large cavities or other structures where the owls nest. Northern spotted owls primarily feed on flying squirrels, red tree voles and woodrats.
Status: Logging of forests across Washington, Oregon and northern California has eliminated 90% of old-growth forests in the region, leading to dramatic declines in spotted owl numbers and distribution. In some portions of their range, owls have declined by as much as 80%. Under the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, millions of acres of federal land were set aside to protect the spotted owl and other old forest-dependent species. Despite this protection, spotted owls were expected to continue to decline for 40-50 years because of ongoing habitat loss on private lands and to some extent public ones as well, but then stabilize. This unfortunately has not occurred largely because of increased numbers of non-native barred owls, which push spotted owls out of their territories and sometimes even prey on them. With this new threat, spotted owls need as much habitat protection as they can get.
The Trump extinction proposal: Trump’s proposal will allow more logging of the owl’s old-growth forests on both public and private lands in the Northwest. Indeed, the administration is pushing for more logging on both Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands and private timber companies will no longer have any incentive to protect the owl’s nesting sites. Given the owl’s precarious status, any increase in loss of habitat could be the nail in the coffin for its survival.
Species: American wolverine
About: Known for their tenacity and ferocity, wolverines are known to chase animals like grizzly bears and wolves from their kills. They are short, stocky members of the weasel family with thick brown fur. True creatures of winter, wolverines overwinter in snowy dens in the highest, coldest mountains of the western U.S. When striking out for new territories they can travel hundreds of miles, with one wolverine migrating from the mountains of Idaho to the Sierra Nevada in California, where it lived a solitary life from 2008-2018.
Status: Decades of trapping and habitat destruction led to a massive decline in the wolverine’s range and abundance. Once found in the Cascades and Sierra Nevada in California, Oregon and Washington and the Rockies from northern New Mexico to the Canadian border, wolverines are now primarily limited to the northern Rockies and north Cascades and believed to number fewer than 300 individuals. Although trapping is no longer the threat it once was, wolverines are vulnerable to habitat loss and fragmentation from roads, winter recreation development such as ski areas and snow-mobile trails, resource extraction and more. Worse still, the winter habitats relied on by the wolverine are at risk of disappearing as climate change shrinks spring snowpack.
The Trump extinction proposal: Trump’s proposal would allow the winter haunts of wolverines to be overrun by snowmobiles, fragmented by roads and lost to other development, such as lodges and winter homes. The Lower 48 already has lost a number of other animals of the north, including mountain caribou and lynx, and wolverines could be next as habitat destruction pushes them over the edge.
