US President Donald Trump's administration will no longer treat the unintentional killing of protected wildlife as unlawful, officials confirmed on Thursday, in a shift conservationists say effectively guts the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Under the sweeping new directive, deaths resulting from foreseeable risks posed by activities such as commercial fishing or logging will be exempt from the landmark 1973 law.

"What's being put forward by the Trump administration is going to cut the heart out of the Endangered Species Act," Gib Brogan, campaign director for Oceana Fisheries, said.

He said the law had been successful at saving species for five decades by finely balancing human economic needs against conservation.

The September 14 memorandum, posted online by the non-profit Centre for Biological Diversity, redefines the long-standing definition of "take" – a term that relates to pursuing, killing or capturing of a species.

It is now confined to "affirmative conduct intentionally directed against a particular animal or animals."

The move, first reported by the New York Times, explicitly cites a dissent by the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia in a 1995 case on the matter.

"A vessel that inadvertently strikes a whale has not taken it, because the vessel's course was not set against the whale," the document says, quoting the conservative justice.

"Felling a tree is not a take of the bats roosting in it unless the tree is felled for the purpose of killing or capturing them," it continued.

In the 1995 case, known as Babbitt vs Sweet Home, an association of landowners and loggers tried to challenge the prevailing definition of "take," arguing a species of woodpecker and an owl had injured them economically by preventing them from conducting their business.

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled against them in a 6-3 decision – but the high court has since shifted considerably rightward.

The new memo was signed by Brian Nesvik, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which falls under the Interior Department.

The department confirmed that the document was genuine.

"The memorandum accurately reflects the US Fish and Wildlife Service's guidance for implementing the Endangered Species Act following the final rule rescinding the regulatory definition of 'harm,'" the department said.

"Under the guidance, the ESA's prohibition on 'take' continues to prohibit conduct including harassing, pursuing, hunting, shooting, wounding, killing, trapping, capturing or collecting protected wildlife," it added.

The Trump administration has already finalised a series of rules weakening the ESA.

One rescinded the long-standing definition of "harm," which had covered habitat destruction. Another scrapped a rule that automatically applied endangered species protections to those listed as "threatened."

And a third requires the government to consider economic and national security trade-offs when deciding whether to designate a particular area as "critical habitat." But the latest attack "is maybe the most significant of them," said Brogan.

"We're very concerned what this is going to mean for sea turtles, for corals, for threatened and endangered whale species," he added.

The North Atlantic right whales would be one of the main species threatened by the changes. There are only around 380 of them left, and their main threats come from entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ship traffic. (AFP)



Edited by Cecil Wong