The Endangered Species Act was intended to protect ecosystems as well as individual species but it has no provisions to do so directly. For decades, conservationists successfully plugged that hole by arguing in court that the ESA’s prohibition of harm to individual species includes destroying a species’ habitat. Now the Trump administration wants to negate that argument by asserting that to harm an endangered species means only to injure or kill it directly: to rip it out by the roots or blow it away with a shotgun. Habitat destruction has been the most common threat to endangered species in the US since 1975. If the administration succeeds in redefining harm to exclude it, the Endangered Species Act won’t be able to effectively protect most endangered species. …Preserving old-growth forest for a single owl species means the forest—and everything living there—suddenly loses protection if that owl goes extinct anyway. [to access the full story an Atlantic subscription is required]