This is more than a legal sleight of hand — it's a deliberate gutting of the bedrock law that has actually helped recover species and protect ecosystems for decades. Calling an orca or bat death “inadvertent” doesn’t make it harmless; it just shifts the cost of industrial activity onto wildlife and future generations. The memo and the rescinding of the “harm” definition ignore decades of science showing that incidental deaths and cumulative impacts drive species to extinction. Brett Hartl is right: this move effectively gives a green light to careless development and shipping practices, and it rewards corporate profits over ecological and public interest. The ESA has long enjoyed broad bipartisan support because once species are gone, they’re gone — there’s no reversing extinction. If you care about clean oceans, healthy forests, and the species we share this planet with, now is the time to support conservation groups, push your representatives to defend the ESA, and prepare to fight this in court. We can’t afford to pretend “accidental” killing isn’t killing.