Last week, the Interior Department proposed fundamental changes to the Endangered Species Act, essentially weakening a law that has protected wildlife for the last 45 years. The proposal shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the current administration has aggressively pushed a deregulation agenda on behalf of free enterprise.

Congress passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973 to stop the decline and extinction of plants and animals. Many iconic American species have survived thanks to the ESA—the bald eagle, the American alligator, and the grizzly bear, among others. The act has received overwhelming support in the past on both sides of the political spectrum.

But for some—such as business owners, industry leaders, and land developers—the Endangered Species Act has been an albatross for purely economic reasons. Resistance to the ESA stems from conflict between environmental protection and the American pocketbook. The recent proposal by the Trump administration would serve to tip the scale toward the latter in the name of deregulation. “We are proposing these improvements to produce the best conservation results for the species while reducing the regulatory burden on the American people,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service principal deputy director Greg Sheehan in a press release. 

But many of these proposed changes, as well as more than two dozen pieces of legislation, would weaken the foundation of the act by obscuring the scientific process that determines whether a species should be listed. 

Nothing has changed yet for the Endangered Species Act. A public comment period will run until the end of September. If the proposal is instituted, however, a number of species could lose their protections, while many other species with declining populations could be brushed aside.

Here are just a few species that could be adversely affected by a weakened Endangered Species Act.

Greater Sage-grouse

Approximately 200,000 sage-grouse live in the heart of the American West, a small fraction of previously recorded population numbers. But the sage-grouse, characterized by its complex courtship displays and prized by hunters, has had a hard time making the endangered species list. The high desert bird relies on sagebrush country for nesting and feeding, which means that the sage-grouse has long found itself at the center of public lands debates between conservationists and farmers, ranchers, and oil and gas developers in western states. 

Just this week, a defense-bill provision stipulated that sage-grouse be kept off the endangered species list for the next 10 years, no matter the damage to its habitat, citing military readiness. “The supposed rationale is that protections for these species limits the use of lands important to the military,” wrote Audubon digital editor Andrew Del-Colle. “That reasoning, it turns out, is hogwash.” Earlier this week, lawmakers excluded this provision. But either way, under the current administration, the sage-grouse has an uphill battle ahead to receiving federal protection.

Bull Trout

The historic range of bull trout has been cut in half by mining, dams, and other causes of habitat fragmentation. These prized trout depend on clear, flowing waters free of sediment. They are not yet endangered, but the Fish and Wildlife Service designated the species as threatened, which under the Endangered Species Act grants them certain protections.

"The best way to turn a threatened species into an endangered species is not to give it protection against killing and capture,” Earthjustice attorney Timothy Preso told Montana Public Radio. In 2015, Preso sued the Forest Service and FWS for giving the green light to a copper-and-silver mine in the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness in northwest Montana. The mine would have threatened an important population of bull trout as well as grizzly habitat. Preso appealed to the Endangered Species Act and won. But under the current proposal, which aims to revise the standard of protection for threatened species, future cases to protect bull trout and other threatened species would lack the requirement on which Preso had relied to fight this case.

North Atlantic Right Whale

The right whale on our eastern seaboard has been listed as an endangered species since 1970, though its initial drastic decline in population can be attributed to the 18th-century whaling industry. We’ve curbed whaling in the Atlantic, but that hasn’t saved the right whale from certain industrial harms. In 2008, when scientists designated the North Atlantic right whale as its own species—differentiating it from other right whale populations—the species was already on track to going extinct.

According to a study by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, between 1970 and 2006, humans were responsible for nearly half of the 73 documented North Atlantic right whale deaths. That includes seismic exploration for oil and gas, ship collisions with whales, and heavy fishing lines and traps in whale habitat, which has recently led to the majority of these whales’ premature deaths. Earlier this year, conservation groups sued the National Marine Fisheries Service for failing to adequately regulate the U.S. lobster fishery in critical right whale habitat, where nearly 20 whales have been killed by fishing gear in the last year alone. Their case ensured protection not only for the whale itself but also for the habitat on which it depends for foraging and breeding. Even though the proposal claims that currently endangered animals would maintain protections, lowering the standard of habitat assessment and enforcement could quickly spell imminent danger for the right whale.

Gray Wolf

The gray wolf narrative in North America is considered a wildlife success story. Manifest destiny and the settlement of the West in the 19th and 20th centuries engendered federal and state-sponsored wolf extermination. On behalf of predator control, the gray wolf was virtually extinct in the contiguous United States. In the 1990s, ecologists recognized the gray wolf as a keystone species and reintroduced it into protected areas, particularly in the Northern Rockies. Today the gray wolf has recovered.

But this success story is far from over. The gray wolf still has its enemies, and even though wolf populations have increased in the long-term, scientists and wildlife advocates have questioned moves by the Interior Department to delist certain populations, leaving them susceptible to unregulated killing. Under the current administration, this trend will most likely continue. Congress has proposed amendments to the Endangered Species Act that would strip protections for certain wolf populations while arguably lowering the scientific standard used to make regulatory decisions. Evidently, the plight of the gray wolf—and other species both threatened and endangered—continues.