Dec. 22 is the last day to register public comments on the Trump administration’s proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act.
The new rules would make it easier to take a species off the endangered list and harder to add new species or designate critical habitat. They would also weaken federal oversight of development projects in sensitive areas.
Rabbi Daniel Swartz, executive director of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, said petitions opposing the changes have attracted signatures from more than 9,000 Christian evangelicals and 1,000 leaders of many faiths.
"It's something that we naturally gravitate towards in terms of just valuing life around us," Swartz explained. "While we each approach it through the lens of our particular faith tradition, there's that shared sense of awe and wonder at the world and appreciating it as an expression of the divine."
The Department of the Interior said the revisions are consistent with President Donald Trump’s directives to strengthen American energy independence and improve regulatory predictability. Specifically, it would eliminate the “blanket rule,” which automatically gives newly listed threatened species the same protections as endangered species unless a species-specific rule is written.
Swartz stressed environmental protection benefits humans, not just animals and plants.
When you harm the environment, the people who get hurt first and foremost are the most vulnerable," Swartz pointed out. "That's precisely who we're told to take care of in faith traditions, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the ones whose voices have been ignored."
