{beacon} Energy & Environment Energy & Environment The Big Story Trump administration memo reduces ESA protections The Trump administration has further reduced protections for wildlife and plants under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). © Joy Asico, Associated Press Content Services for Center for Biological Diversity The law prohibits…
Page B2From§Eachthe midnight edition — 18 September 2026
Trump eased hunting limits, cut species protections by memo, and industry called the rollback 'a game changer.'
As it ran on the front
The Endangered Species Act, a federal protection under law, died this month by memo. It is survived by the hunting and fishing limits rolled back the same week, and preceded in death by a sibling: the Clean Water Act's stream and wetland protections, which the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers said on September 4th they would consider narrowing further. The family gathered in the Rose Garden — more than a hundred hunters and anglers invited to hear that public lands belong to the public, the President signing executive orders rolling back hunting and fishing restrictions and teasing a sequel, an Outdoors Act 2.0, for later. The same week, a separate memo did the quieter work: reducing what counts as protected under the Endangered Species Act, the law that prohibits any "take" of a listed species. A memo doesn't need a Rose Garden.
Cause of death, for the record: not repeal, which requires Congress and a vote somebody has to answer for, but memo, which requires a signature and nothing else. The Act is not gone from the books. It is gone from the ground — from whatever creek or wetland now sits one narrowing away from unprotected, waiting on the next Friday announcement.…
…(cont) The obituary would end there, except the trade came for its cut. A manufacturers' group looked at the administration's separate EPA rollback — its own deregulation, running on its own track — and called it a game changer. Not a burden lifted, not a compliance cost trimmed. A game changer, the kind of phrase usually reserved for a product launch, applied here to a regulation that used to cost the manufacturer something. Whatever changed, it changed for the manufacturer, not for the creek, not for the species the memo just stopped counting.
That is the arrangement, stated plainly: a dinner for a hundred, a memo for the rest of the ledger, and a trade association cheering from a sideline it was never really standing on. Malarkey, all of it, dressed as access — access to public land, access to markets, access to whatever "take" still means once enough memos have narrowed it.
In lieu of flowers, ask your representative for a floor vote. A memo can be undone by another memo. A vote is the only funeral anyone has to attend.
“They throw a hunters' dinner in the Rose Garden and call it public lands for the public, then the same week a memo quietly narrows who counts as endangered — that's not access, that's inventory management. The only guy cheering out loud is a manufacturer calling his own pollution rollback "a game changer," which tells you exactly who this was for. The creek doesn't get a seat at that dinner.”
“Look, public lands belong to the public — that's not spin, the President said it himself, at the dinner. The Endangered Species Act memo isn't a rollback, it's a modernization of what "take" means, which, okay, does mean less gets protected, but modernization! And sure, a manufacturer called it a game changer, but manufacturers say that about everything, so — wait, that's actually not reassuring, is it.”
The receipts
President Trump hosted over 100 hunters, anglers and outdoor industry officials for a dinner in the Rose Garden Thursday to announce executive orders rolling back certain hunting and fishing restrictions. “We believe that public lands belong to the American people and to the public, and hunters, fishers, and outdoorsmen should be able to…
· Trump considers narrowing water pollution protections from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Trump administration begins deportations of Haitians — slowly from the morgue, 30 Aug 2026
· Trump administration changes wording for Confederate-era statue removed in 2023 from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· White House puts Trump-style classic video games on website ahead of midterms from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.