Sponsors (27)
Official title: To amend the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to optimize conservation through resource prioritization, incentivize wildlife conservation on private lands, provide for greater incentives to recover listed species, create greater transparency and accountability in recovering listed species, streamline the permitting process, eliminate barriers to conservation, and restore congressional intent.
Introduced March 6, 2025 by Bruce Westerman · Last progress March 6, 2025
This bill increases predictability and reduces regulatory and litigation burdens for agencies, businesses, and landowners but does so by narrowing what agencies may consider, limiting review and judicial oversight, and creating pathways that could weaken protections for species and public transparency.
Federal, state, and local agencies, plus regulated businesses, will face clearer statutory definitions and narrower rulemaking authority, making consultations, permits, and agency decisions more predictable and reducing ambiguity and some litigation risk.
Businesses, farmers, utilities, and landowners could see lower compliance costs and regulatory uncertainty because the bill narrows habitat/mitigation obligations, limits long-term mitigation exposure, and caps some litigation-related payments.
The Interior/USFWS must publish predictable multi-year workplans, priority assignments, and funding estimates for listings and critical-habitat actions, improving transparency and allowing state, local, and non‑profit planners to anticipate agency workloads.
Listed species and critical habitat protections could be substantially weakened—by narrowed habitat/foreseeable-future definitions, limits on considered effects, and barred mitigation tools—raising extinction and decline risks for many species.
The bill narrows what agencies may consider (by excluding distant, uncertain, or cumulative effects and disallowing precautionary assumptions), letting some indirect or landscape-scale harms go unaddressed in consultations and permitting.
Exempting approved CBAs from NEPA and section 7 consultation and creating FOIA/process exemptions reduces public and interagency scrutiny of conservation assurances and may hide how well voluntary measures actually protect species.
Based on analysis of 22 sections of legislative text.
Revises ESA definitions and procedures, creates creditable Conservation Benefit Agreements, shifts listings to multi-year work plans, narrows consultation/enforcement scope, and adds transparency and fee limits.
Makes wide-ranging changes to how the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is implemented by redefining key terms, changing timelines and priorities for listing species, creating a new path for voluntary private conservation agreements to be credited in ESA decisions, expanding state involvement in recovery plans, increasing transparency and reporting requirements, and narrowing some agency authorities for consultations, permitting, and enforcement. The bill shifts several procedural deadlines to multi-year planning, limits aspects of Section 7 consultation and Section 9/10 permit coverage for certain nonnative imports, and caps legal fee recoveries in many ESA suits. Overall, the measure moves ESA decisionmaking toward greater reliance on negotiated conservation agreements, state-developed recovery strategies, and prioritized work plans while constraining some federal regulatory and enforcement tools and adding new reporting, fee, and data-disclosure rules.