Longtime safeguards for U.S. bird populations that were stripped away by the Trump administration are among more than 100 business-friendly rules getting a second look under President Biden.
Longtime safeguards for U.S. bird populations took a hit under former President Donald Trump, whose administration made it harder to prosecute industry-caused deaths – such as the 2019 destruction of a sprawling Virginia seabird nesting ground – and chipped away protections for endangered species. President Biden wasted little time seeking to turn things around. Hours after taking office, he ordered a review of his predecessor’s decision to weaken enforcement of the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It was among more than 100 business-friendly Trump actions on the environment that Biden wants reconsidered and possibly revised or scrapped. A White House statement Wednesday described them as “harmful rollbacks of standards that protect our air, water, and communities.” And the president targeted oil and gas leasing on federal land and subsidies for those industries in his bid to slow climate change, while promising stepped-up land and water conservation. Despite the quick start, it will take months or years to reverse policies set in motion by Trump’s team – including those involving the bird treaty rollback, which happened as North American populations continued a decline that has reached 3 billion – a one-third overall drop – since 1970. Many rules Trump went after originated with former President Barack Obama and took him years to undo, continuing a decades-old, back-and-forth between Democratic and Republican administrations with starkly differing approaches to environmental regulation. “You have the worst-case scenario of partisan ping pong,” said Clint Woods, a former Environmental Protection Agency deputy assistant administrator under Trump. Environmental activists are pressing for fast action. They say returning to the pre-Trump status quo is no longer enough as hundreds of millions of birds die annually at the hands of industry, global temperatures rise and poor communities remain vulnerable to air and water pollution. Biden faces similar challenges as he inherits Trump’s actions across the environmental spectrum – from removal of endangered species protections for gray wolves, to loosened energy standards for washers and dryers and reversal of the Obama administration’s proposed ban on chlorpyrifos, a crop pesticide some scientists say could harm children. Business groups lobbied for Trump’s deregulatory approach. Critics said it crippled bedrock environmental protection laws, slashed agency funding and slackened enforcement. “There’s a huge amount of work to be done,” said Erik Olson, a senior strategic director with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
