Maine Audubon said that proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act would harm protected plants and animals across the country and in Maine.
The Trump administration has proposed changing the law's definition of "harm" to exclude threats to a species' habitat, focusing only on direct injury or death to a species itself.
Laura Minich Zitske, associate director of conservation at Maine Audubon, said that undercuts the effectiveness of the Act.
"One of the things that keeps on striking me, is how this is really, not only not within the spirit of the law, but it's also not in the spirit of what I think the average American wants," she said.
Zitske said that for the majority of species loss of their habitat could be devastating, such as Piping Plovers that utilize Maine's large sandy beaches to nest and raise their chicks.
"That would, by practice, cause the extinction of piping plovers, even though no individuals were actually harmed in the process because they were on their wintering grounds at the time," she said.
Zitske said that although Maine has some protections at the state level, they don't apply to all of the species covered by the federal law —leaving them vulnerable if the rule change goes into effect.
And she said Maine's protections are designed to work in concert with the federal law and many of Maine's protected species migrate to other states, which vary in the levels of protection they provide.
