Trump is gutting the Endangered Species Act. These 10 species show what’s at stake.

The Trump administration has reinterpreted two words at the core of the Endangered Species Act: 'harm,' which used to cover habitat destruction, and 'take,' now narrowed to intentional killing. The practical effect, lawyers and biologists say, is that bulldozing the wetland a threatened rattlesnake lives in, or failing to slow ships in waters where a critically endangered whale swims, may no longer carry federal penalties.

North Atlantic right whales, down to about 380 animals with only 70 breeding females, are already dying faster than they can reproduce, mostly from ship strikes and fishing gear, deaths that are rarely intentional and therefore increasingly hard to prosecute under the new definition. NOAA had already moved to rescind vessel speed limits meant to protect them before this rule change arrived.

The eastern massasauga rattlesnake, listed as threatened since 2016, has lost habitat as Midwest wetlands shrink, fragmenting populations and weakening their genetic diversity. Nearly two dozen state attorneys general have sued over the changes, arguing the new rules gut protections Congress built the law around decades ago.

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