For more than 50 years, the Endangered Species Act has recognized a basic truth: wildlife cannot survive without the places they live. Destroying the habitat a species depends on to breed, feed, and shelter counts as "harm" and the law has treated it that way since 1975.

In July, the U.S. Department of Interior finalized a rule that erases that definition. Habitat destruction that injures or endangers threatened and endangered wildlife will no longer count as "harm" under the law once the rule takes effect on September 14, 2026 — leaving some of the country's most vulnerable species with far weaker protections at the exact moment they need them most.

Why This Matters 

Across the country, we continue to lose and fragment the natural landscapes that sustain life — forests, wetlands, grasslands, and rivers. Grassland birds have seen some of the steepest declines of any group of birds in North America. Here in the Midwest, Openlands works every day to protect and restore the habitat that species like these depend on, from ongoing grassland restoration at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie to our advocacy for stronger state and federal wildlife protections.

Openlands filed public comments opposing this rule change in 2025 — a position shared by 99% of the roughly 220,000 public comments the government received. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined fifteen other state attorneys general and filed comments formally opposing the rule, warning that it "risks undermining decades of progress in species conservation and places America's wildlife under an even greater threat of extinction."

Now, bipartisan legislation in Congress offers a path to undo the damage. U.S. Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Mike Quigley (D-IL) have introduced the Safeguarding Endangered Species Act (H.R. 9901), which would nullify the new rule and restore the longstanding definition of "harm" — preserving the basic principle that protecting a species means protecting the habitat it needs to survive. Since 1973, the Endangered Species Act has prevented the extinction of 99% of the species under its protection, including the Bald Eagle. That track record depends on keeping habitat protections intact.

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