Florida’s Wildlife Icons Face Uncertain Future Post-endangered Species Act Rollbacks

BRUCE, Florida — Matt Aresco stands on the border of two tracts of land, one side private timberland full of close-crowded pine trees in perfect rows. The other is open flatwoods carpeted by wiregrass and scrubby underbrush, restored to native habitat for rare wildlife like gopher tortoises, black bears and reticulated flatwoods salamanders.

The Nokuse Land Conservancy, a nonprofit that owns the open forest, is studying the federally endangered salamanders. Little is known about the adult amphibians, said Aresco, who is Nokuse’s director and a wildlife biologist. But the greatest threat to their survival is undoubtedly habitat loss.

“This guy could go and sell his land to a developer to build houses,” he said, referring to the private timberland. “What if half of the salamanders are over there, you know? Another half over here. All of a sudden, you've just destroyed half the population.”

Aresco is imagining a worst-case scenario for Florida endangered species under the newly finalized rule changes to the Endangered Species Act. In July, the Trump administration rescinded the definition of “harm” to no longer include habitat changes that could be detrimental to a species’ survival. Other ESA rollbacks soon followed the harm rule change, including undoing automatic protections for threatened species and giving more weight toward economic interests in critical habitat designations.

The Sunshine State has one of the highest numbers of federally listed endangered and threatened species in the country. It’s also booming with development, sprawling out from large cities into rural, more sparsely populated counties. Yet some researchers, lawmakers and environmental advocates worry the new rules could accelerate habitat loss and leave pollution unchecked, tipping the scales in favor of developers and industries.

The harm rule rescission doesn’t go into effect until Sept. 14, and environmental advocates, including a Florida plaintiff, have already filed a flurry of lawsuits challenging the recent changes. Yet Florida’s environment department has already moved to use the change to the state’s advantage.

In July, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, led by an appointee of Gov. Ron DeSantis, asked a panel of appeals judges to overturn a previous ruling that linked the state’s wastewater regulations to the deaths of more than 1,000 manatees in 2021. Florida manatees are federally listed as threatened under the ESA.

Bear Warriors United, an environmental advocacy group, filed the original lawsuit in 2022 after hundreds of manatees starved to death following large die-offs of seagrass, their primary food source. In the district court’s ruling, a judge found wastewater systems permitted by DEP caused algal blooms and killed the seagrasses.

That ruling, which required DEP to pursue a federal permit under the Endangered Species Act, was a historic win for environmental advocates. Three days after the Trump administration announced the finalization of the harm rule, DEP asked the appeals court to reverse the lower court’s ruling.

“[The harm rule] change forecloses Plaintiff’s theory of liability here, which relied entirely on DEP permitting activity that was alleged to indirectly affected manatee habitats, not on any conduct intentionally directed at particular manatees,” an attorney representing DEP wrote.

Citing pending litigation, DEP declined to answer questions about why the agency sought to apply the rule change or whether it would do so in future permitting, saying in a statement that the agency ”is committed to protecting Florida’s environment and natural resources.”

Manatees are often called an umbrella species; the federal protections they receive can indirectly benefit other species and Florida’s waterways, many of which are tainted by an overabundance of nutrients and pollution. Katrina Shadix, executive director of Bear Warriors United, said she’s concerned there could be another mass starvation if manatee habitats aren’t protected under the ESA, and that unlisted species and water quality would suffer, too.

“Nothing shocks me from [the Florida government] anymore,” Shadix said. “But it does extremely disappoint.”

If the appeals court rules in DEP’s favor, it could set a new and potentially lasting precedent for how the new ESA rules will be implemented in some Republican-led states and how the judicial system interprets the act going forward. The new ESA changes are the latest — but likely not the last — in the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul environmental regulations deemed burdensome in the name of national security and energy dominance.

The administration and many GOP lawmakers have argued that regulators weaponize the ESA as a way to halt development. A campaign spokesperson for Rep. Byron Donalds, the Trump-endorsed GOP front-runner in the state governor’s race, said in a statement that former President Joe Biden’s administration had used the ESA “like a blunt instrument” to shut down projects nationwide and “drive up costs for families.”

“As governor, Byron will be a champion for Florida’s environment and animals while fighting back against invasive federal overreach,” spokesperson Gates McGavick said.

Yet some Florida Republicans have been wary of changing the ESA. Florida’s ecotourism industry pumps billions of dollars annually into the state’s economy, and Republican and Democratic voters often oppose large-scale developments that threaten wildlife habitats.

State Sen. Ileana Garcia, a Miami Republican who sponsored legislation related to endangered species during the state’s last legislative session, said in a statement that she had “serious concerns” about the federal ESA changes.

“Removing automatic protections for newly threatened species and narrowing the definition of harm could leave important wildlife without timely or adequate safeguards,” she said. “For a state as environmentally sensitive as Florida, I don’t believe this was the right move.”

Republicans have tried for years to overhaul the ESA, though the latest attempt in the House was scuttled in April by Florida GOP lawmakers who were wary the bill would expand the use of the “God Squad,” a group of high-ranking officials who have the power to waive ESA regulations. In April, the “God Squad” issued an ESA exemption for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Some of the apparent opponents to that bill included Rep. Kat Cammack, who said there was concern around “opening up any potential avenues for drilling in the Gulf,” as well as Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who posted on X at the time, “Don’t tread on my turtles. Protected means protected. #EndangeredSpeciesAct."

After the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the harm rule, Cammack and Luna have been largely silent on the issue. Neither of their offices responded to multiple interview requests for this story.

Florida Republicans have historically drawn a hard line on oil drilling, citing the state’s biodiverse coastlines and the economy’s reliance on ecotourism — which usually requires pristine, oil-free beaches to attract tourists.

State Sen. Jason Brodeur (R-Sanford) said he hadn’t reviewed the new changes to the ESA, but added that Florida lawmakers don’t want oil drilling near Florida.

“That could be separate and apart, because if for some reason somebody thinks it's going to be an end-around that they can start putting up giant drilling derricks within sight of our beaches, they got another thing coming,” he said.

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has sought to overhaul the ESA. During his first term, the Fish and Wildlife Service also rescinded blanket protections for threatened species and allowed regulators to assess the economic impact of protecting a species.

Jake Li, a former Biden-era official who oversaw implementation of the ESA at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency almost always issued species-specific conservation plans. The new changes to the blanket rule are not likely to have a large impact, Li said, but the harm rule could be “the most significant ESA rulemaking in decades.”

“You don't always have a dead body to prove someone's running the red light,” he said. “And so that ability will largely disappear with the rescission of the harm rule because the other definitions of take can be very difficult to prove.”

Even with the harm rule in place, Li said, it was often difficult to enforce ESA violations, especially on private lands. Under the new rules, FWS staff may also voluntarily pull back on enforcement to avoid potential retaliation.

“No one wants to stick their neck out and risk getting decapitated,” Li added.

The U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees FWS, said in a statement that employees “are expected to carry out their responsibilities professionally and faithfully enforce the laws and regulations entrusted to the agency.

“The suggestion that employees should refrain from carrying out those responsibilities because of fear of retaliation does not reflect the Service’s expectations of its workforce or how the agency administers the Endangered Species Act.”

For Aresco of the Nokuse Land Conservancy, his solution is to keep buying land. On what was once planned to be an RV park, gopher tortoises now forage and burrow. The conservancy has relocated more than 6,000 tortoises from Florida development sites to the preserve.

Yet land prices have shot up in recent years, Aresco said, and he’s usually competing with wealthy developers. Once the new harm rule takes effect, he’s concerned Nokuse could become an isolated protected area for the state’s endangered species.

“Sometimes I lay awake, like, all night thinking, ‘How are we going to do this? How are we going to protect this land?’”