Sponsors (27)
Introduced March 6, 2025 by Bruce Westerman · Last progress March 6, 2025
The bill increases regulatory clarity and predictable pathways for agencies, states, landowners, and businesses while shifting discretion and procedural barriers that, together, reduce the scope and speed of protections for species and habitat — trading stronger, quicker conservation safeguards for greater predictability and reduced regulatory costs.
Federal, state, and local agencies — and the stakeholders who work with them (businesses, landowners) — get clearer statutory definitions, standards, and limits that reduce ambiguity and make consultations, permitting, and enforcement more predictable.
Private landowners, developers, and covered parties receive more predictable, potentially faster approvals through approved conservation benefit agreements (CBAs) and programmatic CBAs that can provide explicit permit assurances and streamline multi-party conservation efforts.
Federal agencies, Congress, and stakeholders gain transparency and planning tools via required multi-year workplans, standardized priority criteria for listings, and funding estimates tied to listing work, improving predictability of agency workloads and budgeting.
Listed species and their habitats — particularly those on the margins of ranges or in uncertain situations — face weaker protections because the bill narrows definitions (habitat, foreseeable future), restricts precautionary assumptions, and limits what effects agencies must consider, increasing extinction and habitat loss risk.
Species, conservation nonprofits, and communities could experience long delays in protections because the bill replaces statutory petition deadlines with resource-driven, multi-year workplans and budget-linked scheduling that allow lower-priority species to be deferred for years and make listing timing more political.
Public oversight and interagency environmental review are reduced because approved CBAs are exempt from NEPA and section 7 consultation and may be shielded from FOIA, limiting transparency about voluntary agreements and the adequacy of mitigation measures.
Based on analysis of 22 sections of legislative text.
Rewrites many ESA rules: tightens definitions and consultation standards, requires a listing work plan, creates approved Conservation Benefit Agreements, expands State recovery roles, and limits some agency and litigation authorities.
Changes the Endangered Species Act by redefining key terms, altering how federal agencies consult on and approve actions affecting listed species, and creating new administrative tools and timelines. It requires a multi-year national listing work plan tied to the budget, creates voluntary Conservation Benefit Agreements that can be credited in listing and permitting decisions, expands state roles in recovery for threatened species, increases transparency and reporting requirements, and limits some agency authorities and court-awarded fees.