Daniel Herrera Carbajal
ICT
A new proposed bill introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives would lessen the requirements for tribal consultation pertaining to the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
The Endangered Species Amendment Act of 2025 would overhaul the current ESA and essentially remove section seven consultation requirements.
Section seven of the ESA requires consultation with federal agencies.
The proposed bill would streamline permitting processes and would block judicial review of a removed-species from the ESA list for five years.
The bill was criticized by U.S. representative Debbie Dingell in a Natural Resources subcommittee hearing.
“The Endangered Species Amendment Act of 2025, would strip ESA protections, making it harder to protect wildlife,” Dingell said. “This act delays new listings while fast tracking removals and narrowly redefines key terms to limit the loss reach. If this bill were passed, it would weaken current and future agreements. Specifically, it would remove agreements from section seven consultations.”
The Endangered species act of 1973 was a bipartisan bill which aimed to protect and recover endangered and threatened species, as well as their ecosystems, from the threat of extinction.
The ESA never explicitly included anything about tribal consultation but Monte Mills, the director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington says through various policies tribal consultation became part of the endangered species process.
“The Secretary of the Interior issued an order back in the 1990s, Secretarial Order 3206 that directs the fish and wildlife service to really apply and interpret the endangered species act with respect to the trust duty, with respect for tribal sovereignty,” he said.
The current ESA has strict requirements for consultation with federal agencies to determine the impact of any proposed activity on endangered species. It is through consultation where tribal nations have been able to exercise their voice.
“The process by which the Fish and Wildlife Service or NOAA engages in those section seven consultations is by no means perfect,” Mills said.
“But at the very least it does require stop and consideration. If there are going to be effects they may have to produce what’s called a biological opinion and study what are the impacts of this action on this species and those bi-ops have been a basis on which Tribes have been able to challenge the action itself. Here in the Northwest about the impacts on salmon of dam operations. That’s been the way in which Tribes have been able to continue to move change with regard to how water is passed through the dams and how that affects the salmon.”
But the ESA has had a complicated legacy in Indian Country with it being seen as both a positive and negative in regards to tribal sovereignty.
“The ESA can be both a kind of sword and shield for Tribes,” Mills said. “They can challenge where the agency isn’t affirming their trust duty, recognizing their sovereignty. They can also use the ESA to sort of defend or assert their interests.”
U.S. Representative Bruce Websterman, the sponsor of the proposed amendment act, said it was time to bring the ESA into the 21st century
“It is time that congress brings the ESA back to its original intent, which is to recover listed species to the point where they no longer need to be protected. . . after more than 50 years, it’s time that we make changes to bring the ESA into the 21st century,” he said.
The ESA amendment act has been seen as part of a wider agenda to loosen environmental protection laws to make way for extractive industries.
“Well, it’s part of a larger effort under this current presidential administration and congress to sort of tear apart all of the laws that have been fundamental to protecting our environment,” Bryan Bird, Southwest Director at Defenders of Life, said.
“I think we’re going to see more attacks like this on the framework of our environmental protection in this country and I can only imagine that is being done so that industry and other profit driven endeavors don’t have to think about these things.”
“The endangered species act is not broken, it’s just inconvenient for certain industry polluters,” U.S. Representative Jaredd Huffman said. “Any other bill, in America that had a 99 percent success rate, as this [ESA of 1973] legislation does of keeping the listed species from going extinct would be held up as a model of success.”
The ESA Amendment Act has a ways to go before it would become law.
It will need to be approved by both the subcommittee and full committee before it can be considered for a vote in the house.
It would then need to be voted for in the senate then signed by the president.
