“Trump is openly defying the law and ignoring a court order by granting the fossil fuel sector carte blanche to endanger countless migratory birds,” stated one advocate.
The Trump administration took action on Friday to reduce protections for migratory birds facing threats from industrial activities, notably from the oil and gas sectors.
Gregory Zerzan, the Acting Solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), reinstated a previously invalidated Trump-era opinion stating that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) “does not cover incidental or accidental harm or death to migratory birds.” This opinion had been previously deemed illegal by a federal court.
“Trump is openly defying the law and ignoring a court order by granting the fossil fuel sector and other polluters carte blanche to endanger countless migratory birds,” remarked Tara Zuardo, a senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Over the past 50 years, the U.S. has seen a massive decline in bird populations, a trend that will only worsen due to this reckless, anti-nature policy. Nobody voted for the massacre of hummingbirds, cranes, and raptors, yet this is the grim reality stemming from Trump’s unlawful actions today.”
“We won’t be able to tackle the wildlife crisis if we allow these and other significant regulatory rollbacks to persist.”
As bird populations in the U.S. have decreased by about 30% since 1970, this new policy change comes at a critical time. Various factors, including the climate crisis, habitat destruction, declining insect numbers, collisions with windows, and predators such as outdoor cats, contribute to this decline. Nonetheless, conservationists have conveyed to The New York Times that industrial activities pose a greater risk were it not for the legal protections in place.
Zuardo explained to the Times that had Trump’s interpretation of the law been active during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which is estimated to have killed over 1 million birds, BP would have avoided paying approximately $100 million in fines that supported bird conservation initiatives post-disaster.
The directive issued on Friday is part of a broader effort across both Trump administrations to reinterpret the MBTA to focus only on intentional bird killings, thereby reducing enforcement related to accidental incidents such as oil spills, drownings in open oil pits, entrapments in mining pipes, and collisions with power lines or communication towers.
In 2017, Daniel Jorjani, the lead lawyer for the Interior Department, initially argued that the MBTA only pertained to intentional killings. This view was overturned by a federal court in 2020, which stated that the act’s explicit language directly conflicted with Trump’s interpretation.
Despite this, the Trump administration went ahead to finalize a rule that would cement its interpretation of the MBTA at the end of Trump’s first term, which was strongly opposed by bird conservation groups.
“We won’t be able to tackle the wildlife crisis if we allow these and other significant regulatory rollbacks to persist,” Erik Schneider, policy manager for the National Audubon Society, stated at that time.
However, within months of President Joe Biden’s administration, DOI principal deputy solicitor Robert T. Anderson withdrew the initial 2017 Trump administration opinion after an appeals court, at the request of the U.S. government, dismissed an earlier appeal of the 2020 court decision by the Trump administration.
“The lower court decision aligns with the Department of the Interior’s historical interpretation of the MBTA,” Anderson noted.
Later, the Biden administration also reversed the formal Trump-era rule that weakened the MBTA.
Now, in his second term, Trump is targeting the birds once more. The revocation of the Biden-era withdrawal was among 20 Biden-era opinions that Trump’s DOI suspended in March, and it was officially revoked and withdrawn on Friday.
In justifying its decision, Trump’s DOI referenced the president’s January 20 executive order “Unleashing American Energy,” which instructs federal agencies to “suspend, revise, or rescind all agency actions identified as excessively burdensome,” clearly indicating that the reduction in protections is primarily aimed at benefiting the fossil fuel and mining industries.
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