Changes the Trump admin made to the Endangered Species Act | Tomorrow's headlines tonight

I want to bring in Brian P.J. Cronin. He's a journalist from the Highlands Current. Hello, Brian. Thanks for being with us here on Newsroom Live. Hi, Stephanie. Thanks for having me. So we appreciate your time. I want to look at some reporting, recent reporting you've done, but also this is sort of part of a body of work that you've worked on for a while. The most recent piece called A Threat to the Threatened, and you're looking at endangered species and how some changes federally could really be posing greater threats to the threatened, as your title says. Can you kind of... First of all, put the most recent report into context for us. Sure. So this summer, the federal government unveiled some changes to the federal Endangered Species Act that has got a lot of people really worried. Mainly, it changes the definition of what it means to harm an animal. Under the accepted definitions of the Endangered Species Act, harming an endangered animal's habitat counts as harming it. And it's understood that if you accidentally kill an endangered animal, that counts as harming it. And There's been a lot of changes that the current Trump administration has undertaken, but the big one is that it changed the definition of harm. And under the new definition, if you destroy an endangered animal's habitat, that does not count as hurting the animal. Also, if you accidentally kill an endangered animal, that also does not count as illegal. It's only if you intentionally kill an endangered animal does that count. As illegal now, according to the new changes. So can you kind of take me to the inception of this? Because you've been reporting already on endangered species. But did you start looking more closely this summer when you were confronted with this news piece, news peg, as we might refer to it in the business? Or did you really have a lot of speculation or theories already before the summer? Can you kind of take us back? Sure. Well, as you know, the last couple of years, there's been a lot of rapid changes in the environmental field. There's been a lot of rollbacks at the federal level, and sometimes it's hard to keep track of everything that's happening, which is one of the reasons why I want to do this story now. I feel like with the public, every day there's another regulation that's getting rolled back, and it can be hard to keep track of them all. In terms of endangered species, that's just in my own work, writing about things happening up here in the Hudson Valley. Anytime a big project, a development project, has to happen. You know, there's an environmental review, and one of the things they have to look at is, are there any endangered species in the area? And if so, what are you going to do about it to minimize the harm? And what regulations do we have to put in place to make sure that if you are going to hurt these animals or their habitat, that you restore the habitat later, that you add new habitat somewhere else? Right. And so, in one sense, that's always coming up. But the changes this summer... It really took me and a lot of people in the environmental community by surprise by how drastic they were. If you're completely changing the definition of what the word harm means, and you're saying that now if you destroy an animal's habitat, that doesn't count as hurting it, it kind of throws out the entire Endangered Species Act out the window. So this recent piece, it was published. The date I have here is October 30th. That's correct, right? It was last week. A threat to the threatened. I was able to read it in its entirety to prepare for our interview. You open with flags on a construction cranes and you're talking specifically along Hudson Highlands Trail. So can you can you describe that a bit for us in terms of what you're describing in the article? And also, how did you discover that? Because it's there to give a signal to to birds. Yeah. So this, again, when you talk about how long have I been reporting on this project, the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail is a project that's being built right now. And when it's complete, it's going to be a seven and a half mile park that connects Beacon to Cold Spring along the Hudson River. And because it's such a huge project and it goes through Hudson Highlands State Park, there's been an enormous environmental review that the state had to do. And they published it last year and it was a thousand pages. My job being what it was, I read the whole thing and I had to report on it. And when I was reading it, it really struck me how... How many changes and how many things they have to take into consideration when you are building something in a place where there is endangered species or where even there have been endangered species in the past. So I wanted to report on that to give our readers a sense of this is what it means on the ground when you are dealing with the Endangered Species Act. These are the changes. These are the things that a construction project has to take into consideration. In this case, one of them is that any crane or any tall piece of construction equipment It has to have flags on top of it so that bald eagles or golden eagles or peregrine falcons won't build a nest there. Because there are eastern timber and rattlesnakes in the area where they're building, and that is a federally endangered species, they have to have a trained wildlife monitor. On the construction site, all the time, and at least once an hour, they have to walk through the entire site and make sure there's no eastern timber rattlesnake there. They have to check under every car, every truck, into every pipe. And if there's one there, they have to remove it, which, again, it's a poisonous snake. So that takes a lot of specialized handling. You're only allowed to cut down trees certain months of the year so that you don't affect endangered bats or birds that might be in them when they're building in the river because right now there's a proposed section that would be a boardwalk that goes in the Hudson River. They can't build it during the spring because that's when the endangered Atlantic sturgeon migrates up from the ocean and goes up the Hudson River. So I wanted to talk more to them about that. And so that's one of the pictures you'll see their environmental, their conservation manager is showing me a section where the trail is going to be built there in that last shot. And what he's pointing out is an area where there was going to be a stone staircase. And as part of the environmental review, an ecologist walked through and said, well, this isn't a great place to have a stone stair. That photo there. This is not a good place to have a stone staircase because this is where amphibians travel to get through a wetland. And so they have to alter that. So, I mean, I can just imagine so much fieldwork likely involved in this most recent piece. And then, of course, you're building on fieldwork you've done over the years. Anything surprised you? Anything that surprised you? Can you share with us in this recent reporting? Well, it's always surprising when you realize just how in-depth a construction project has to take all these things into consideration. It's really kind of humbling, everything that they have to consider, every sort of species that could possibly be in the area. The other thing that was surprising is the other photos that you're seeing are from The Great Swamp of New York, which runs through Putnam County and Dutchess County. So it's also, yeah, the picture there is they wanted to get rid of some invasive species there. And it's very hard to remove things in a swamp because it's so dense. That's what it looked like before. So they brought in some goats to clear the area. So this is, they shared with me, this is a drone shot of what it looked like before. And then they brought in some goats to clear out all the invasive species. But the thing that's always interesting when I got to spend some time going through the Great Swamp is really how beautiful it is. You know, we don't think of swamps as beautiful. Nobody goes on a vacation on a swamp. That's the first thing that comes to mind, right? Yeah, drain the swamp. I mean, this is one thing I spoke to the people at the Fjord Trail about. You know, swamps have such a negative connotation in our culture. But they're so ecologically important. They do so many good things. They store so much carbon in the atmosphere that would otherwise be making climate change worse. They help store stormwater, which is important to think when we're forecasted to have a lot of rain this winter and spring because of this big El Nino. When you get a lot of rain, a swamp absorbs all that water and a parking lot doesn't. But also walking through with the people who... work to protect the Great Swamp, I was really struck by how beautiful it was. I had spent a little bit of time there. But, you know, again, I didn't think of this, you don't think of a swamp as let's go for a hike in a swamp. Yeah. But it struck me as just a really, really, not just ecologically important, but a really beautiful place. And I kept thinking when I was done with this story, I think I want to write about this more, just if nothing else, for an excuse. To get back here and walk around. Get back to the swamp. Well, you know, it's true, though. I mean, when you're working as a journalist, especially if you have a beat, I find, what I've learned over the years, that you're really always kind of in that learning mode. And obviously, being in that learning mode, it can often lead to kind of the next story or the next thing. So that's some of what you're saying. Sometimes we can talk about it lightly, but sometimes it really does get us to the next big, big piece that we're working on, right? Yeah. There's another story that I did that came out actually the week before this, even though it came up when I was reporting on this. The group that had the goats, people kept talking to me about this group called Wildwoods Restoration, and the name kept coming up. And you know how it is as a journalist. When somebody's name keeps coming up in all these different contexts, eventually you start to think, oh, I've got to get in touch with these people. I've got to talk to that person. I've got to talk to them. So this is a group. It's run by a woman who used to be at the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference who dealt with removing invasive species. And she explained to me it's easy to get a whole bunch of volunteers out to rip plants out of the ground for a day. The problem is that if you rip out invasive species, they just come back. So it's harder to get people to replant native species. And so she has a project with volunteers where they go to landscapes, they harvest the seeds in the fall. of the plants that they'd like to see more of they bring them home and then people just pop them in their houses or they have a greenhouse they use and they grow them from seed and then the next year they go back and replant them and again i don't think i would have heard that's a whole nother story that came out of the reporting that i did for this story So the piece, it frames around changes to the Endangered Species Act, how it could affect wildlife in the state and conservation efforts. But we're talking about something that's part of a bigger picture, because as you mentioned in your reporting, New York is just one of several states with a suit right now when it comes to the federal government. So was that a challenge in being able to tell this story? Yeah. Yeah, it's always a challenge anytime that there's a lawsuit because of course, you know, I reach out to the people in the state. I usually talk to you about this sort of thing. And of course, you know how it is. If there's a lawsuit, they can't talk about it. They can't talk, yeah. Right. They can't talk about it because there's litigation. Fortunately, there's enough people involved in the conservation space, which, you know, I've been writing about this for years that are more that are not, you know, currently suing the federal government or therefore happy to talk to me about it. So that that's been, you know, that's been good. But that has been a challenge over the past two years because there are always are so many lawsuits against the federal government. And once there's a lawsuit in place and these things, as you know, can drag on for years. You know, nobody involved with the lawsuit will understandably talk to you about it. You can find other people not involved with it to talk to you about it. And I'd imagine in the framing of our segment having you on tonight, there will be more stories. And there's still a lot of questions I'm sure you have. I'm sure when you put out a piece like this, I'm assuming, but I'm going to ask you, people come to you and say, like, can you look at this aspect or maybe do more reporting here? I mean, from your editors to people who live in that neighborhood. Not yet, but there usually does come out of it. The piece does raise some questions that even people that I interviewed are trying to find out. One of them is, let's say, even if these changes do stand up in court, many states, and New York is one of them, has its own endangered species regulations. There's a list of animals that are endangered in New York that are not on the federal list and vice versa. So let's say these changes do stand, and they say, okay, if you run over an endangered species or you destroy an endangered species habitat, it's fine. on the federal level. And so let's say you live in New York state and then, you know, you cut down a tree, even though there's an endangered species in it. And the state comes to you and says, well, that's illegal. And they say, well, the federal government says it's not. And the state says, well, our law says that it does, says that it does. Well, whose law takes precedence? That's, um, I don't think we know that yet. And we might not know that unless It comes to court on another wave if somebody ends up suing the state. Right. So more questions and more to see as this continues to unfold. You mentioned the changes that happened this summer, but specifically federally, we've seen a change in the definition. Can you kind of break it down, distill it in terms of what was changed when it comes to defining endangered species and why this poses a problem, particularly in New York state? Sure. So, again, when it was first written in 1973, the definition was that it was illegal to, the word they used was take. And at the time it was understood take meant killing or hurting an animal. But you know how it is when you cover legal stories. Eventually lawyers will get involved and they'll say, all right, what does that mean? And you have to further define it. So then take was further defined to mean a whole list of different words like harass, capture, kill, and harm was one of them. And harm, of course, is another really vague term. What does it mean to harm an animal? Does it mean physically? Does it mean its habitat? And so in 1981, it was further defined that if you destroy an endangered animal's habitat, That counts as harming it because, you know, if you destroy the tree it's living in, it doesn't have a place to live. And interestingly enough, that was held up already by the Supreme Court in 1995. There was a case that came before the Supreme Court that argued that if you destroy an endangered animal's habitat, it does not count as harm. And the Supreme Court at the time ruled that harm does mean destroying an animal's habitat. And the dissent was written by Justice Scalia. And interestingly enough, what he wrote in his dissent. was used by the federal government in their memo this summer to kind of make their case and say, this is what we believe. We believe that it doesn't count if you destroy where an animal is living or the habitat an animal is living. It doesn't count as harm. Now, why that's such a big deal is because you can imagine most of the Endangered Species Act isn't just so much about protecting species. It's about protecting the habitats they live. And so now if you're saying if it's not illegal to destroy a wetlands because there might be a bob turtle or something else there, Then it makes it a lot easier for you to pave it over and build whatever you want there. Right, right. You know, there's obviously going to be so many different legs that continue to evolve. I want to know, though, because you do have some expertise in this area, when did this version or this current of the story really crystallize for you? Was it this summer? Thank you, Summer. Do you see it as something different now and maybe the next story you do, does it have a theme that's different? Did something happen this summer that changed it for you? Has this been a buildup over the years, as you mentioned, as you've been seeing these changes come about? Well, the new changes this summer, when they change, and it was announced this summer and came out again in September. I think it was September when it really, they released the memo and you could see that they were changing the definition of the word harm. I mean, the Endangered Species Act, since it came out in 1973, you know, it's a law that is credited with saving so many species to bring back from the brink of extinction, like the bald eagle and sturgeons. And so it's been celebrated all around the world. But as you can imagine, Can you imagine anything that makes it harder to build stuff? is going to have some very powerful enemies right off the bat. So the Endangered Species Act is always under contention. There are always people trying to see how they can get around it to do what they want to do. But this change this summer was just such a drastic change when you're saying that it doesn't matter, not only if you destroy an animal's habitat, but if you accidentally destroy, if you accidentally kill an endangered animal, that that doesn't count. Because if you can imagine, you know, if you're driving in your car and you run over a person, And the police pull you over, and you say, oh, I didn't mean to do it. I didn't see them. They're not going to let you go. So the idea that it could be different if you accidentally kill an endangered animal. And the language in the memo is very specific. It even says, if you're driving a boat, and you accidentally hit a whale and kill it, that's fine, because you didn't mean to do it. Right. And part of the regulations with the Endangered Species Act is when you're doing a big project, you have to think about the fact that, well, if there are endangered species there, it's possible you might accidentally kill one. So what will you do to minimize that? And if you remember when the Mario Cuomo Bridge was being built to replace the Tappan Zee Bridge, Because of the Atlantic short-nosed sturgeon and the short-nosed sturgeon, both of which were endangered, they had to go through this exact federal process. They had to say, we understand there's no way you're going to get through this entire years-long process and not accidentally kill a sturgeon. So how can you get that number as low as possible? What can you do? And there's all sorts of things they had to do about when they were doing construction, these kind of underwater curtains to rig in the soil, things to lessen the noise, and then other habitat reconstruction they had to do around the bridge when the project was done. And under these new regulations... They wouldn't have had to do any of that. It's fascinating to me, Brian, that you can really draw on all this context because you know the history, you've done the stories again and again, and that's the advantage of covering a beat or doing so many stories under one topic, so to speak. You wrote about at least one official that didn't get back to you. I mean, what kind of hurdles did you have from either FOIAs or sending emails that weren't returned or getting officials to speak on this, sort of getting all sides of the story? Troy, can you kind of address that part? of the process for you and your reporting. Sure, I mean, one advantage of, again, after doing this for a while, as you know, you start to get an idea with certain stories. You know, there are people you contact, but you know they're not going to get back to you. Or, you know, there's a FOIA that you file, and you know you're not going to get that in time. So there's always a plan B. You start to, you know, it's that hope for the best, expect the worst. You think, all right, well, if this person gets back to me, great, but I have to assume that they're not. So who is going to talk to me? Who do I know that will be more than happy, like when I get in touch with the friends of the Great Swamp? And I say, hey, can I go muck around in the swamp with you and talk about turtles? And they're like, absolutely. Come out next week. Meet me in a parking lot of an antique store, and we'll go out and do it. And that's what's great because, like I said, once the lawsuit was announced, you know the state's not going to talk to you. So you have to – that's the advantage of being on the speed for a while is you know the people who will talk to you and are absolutely happy to meet you in the middle of the field and talk about snakes. Yeah, you kind of got to get crafty with getting all the sides that you need. I want to ask you one more question, if you can help us just maybe reveal a couple tidbits. In terms of what's to come next, your next story, I want to know, when you look at these changes in the context, are you particularly concerned about a particular endangered species or a particular environment? Is there something specific that you really want to hone in on? Is it more of a wide picture for you? Maybe the next story is more of a national look? I mean, what's next when it comes to your work, do you think? Well, in terms of endangered species, there's actually a big national story that is about we're all going to be dealing with very soon. Now that the midterms are over, you know, you think everyone can take a breath and relax. But starting on Monday, the Senate is going to be discussing the new permitting infrastructure bill. I think the name, the official name of it is the bipartisan American. The acronym spells out Baja, because it's always got to be an acronym that's easy to remember. And this is about making it easier to build power plants and renewable energy and also fossil fuel plants. For building things, transmission lines, the process takes way too long. And everybody on both sides of the aisle, fossil fuel companies, renewable energy companies, agree that this has to get easier to do because it takes years and some projects are too easy to slow down. So this has been in the works for a while and they're going to start discussing in the Senate, might even vote on it as early as Monday. And one of the things it does is in certain contexts, it weakens the Endangered Species Act. One of them is, as it stands now, federal highways would be exempt from having to deal with the Endangered Species Act. A lot of the things would get kicked down to the states in terms of how they want to deal with endangered species, which for New York, maybe not so bad. Because the state has such a robust program dealing with endangered species. But in other states, it might not. So, you know, the Endangered Species Act is going to be back in the news for all of us starting on Monday as Congress brings this up and starts trying to figure out what to do. And as you also, as you know, we had a pretty big election a couple days ago. And the makeup of Congress has changed. So it's also possible that they might, you know. The Democrats might come into the Senate and go, you know what, let's just not do anything about this until January. So you kind of got to be also tapped in politically to really be able to handle this beat as it evolves. Last question for you. What do you hope your readers take away from your most recent piece, the one that came out last week? A couple of things. I do hope they appreciate the great lengths that people who do build and follow these rules have to go to, to make sure that habitats are intact and animals are protected. But the big thing I want to take, and this is one of those, you know, sometimes you ask a stupid question on purpose just because you want to get the answer. And everybody I interviewed for this story, you know, the one big dumb question I kept asking is, okay, but why is this important? You know, like, we know, like, think instinctively why it's important, but there's so much going on in the world, and you can understand why with everything going on, gas prices, energy prices, food prices, political unrest, people's rights being taken away. It's understandable that somebody might think, okay, it's sad that some tiny blue butterfly I've never seen before might go extinct, but I've got bigger things to worry about. The thing that everybody kept stressing to me is that the Endangered Species Act isn't just about protecting butterflies and birds. It's really about protecting us. Once you start messing with an ecosystem. And you start having biodiversity collapse. It affects the food chain. It affects biodiversity, affects ecosystems. It makes the places we live more vulnerable to storms, more vulnerable to forests being wiped out. And so in the end, anything we do to upset the natural balance is just going to come back and hit us at the end. So in the end, you know, the endangered species, it's. We're really the endangered species here. That's a fascinating take on this, a real takeaway from your work. We keep looking at these images. Marianne Brown, we saw her image again and again. She was a key piece in your reporting. Yeah, she was great. When I reached out to the Great Swamp, she's their head of conservation. And again, just a fascinating character. Somebody who's, you know, she kept joking like I'm supposed to be retired. Yeah. You know, and she's in the swamp every day planting, you know, planting plants for butterflies. And just showing me all the places where the native species, and there's that one shot of her in kind of like the big open swamp area, and she was explaining where, you know, they're trying to take out the phragmites, which is an invasive species, and bring back cattails, or there's that, but the other one, and she was pointing out where, yeah, that one. Kind of behind her, she pointed out a section where there used to be a lot of cattails, and then they were gone. But she said the thing about wetlands is that, you know, the seeds are still there. Yeah. Eventually, they're going to come back, and I hope that I'll be alive to see it. But if not, I'll know that with the work that I've done. For future generations, they'll be able to see this landscape restored. So fascinating, your work. And we know that you also have a takeaway, which is that a swamp is a place that you can find peace, maybe tranquility, meditate, like you said, maybe take a vacation. Now we're doing a bit tongue-in-cheek. I can't wait to go back. We appreciate you joining us on Newsroom Live. This is Brian P.J. Cronin. He says there's a lot of Brian Cronins out there. That's why you go by Brian P.J. Cronin from the highest career. I teach journalism at Marist and there's another Brian Cronin who also teaches at Marist and it's not a big school. So you can imagine the confusion that causes. Thank you so much for sharing your work and what it took to get there. We really appreciate it, Brian. Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie.