As Biden seeks a turn on environment, Trump rules to linger

Longtime safeguards for U.S. bird populations took a hit under former President Donald Trump, whose administration made it harder to prosecute industry-caused deaths — such as the 2019 destruction of a sprawling Virginia seabird nesting ground — and chipped away protections for endangered species.

President Joe Biden wasted little time seeking to turn things around. Hours after taking office, he ordered a review of his predecessor’s decision to weaken enforcement of the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It was among more than 100 business-friendly Trump actions on the environment that Biden wants reconsidered and possibly revised or scrapped.

A White House statement Wednesday described them as “harmful rollbacks of standards that protect our air, water, and communities.” And the president targeted oil and gas leasing on federal land and subsidies for those industries in his bid to slow climate change, while promising stepped-up land and water conservation.

Despite the quick start, it will take months or years to reverse policies set in motion by Trump’s team — including those involving the bird treaty rollback, which happened as North American populations continued a decline that has reached 3 billion — a one-third overall drop — since 1970.

Many rules Trump went after originated with former President Barack Obama and took him years to undo, continuing a decades-old, back-and-forth between Democratic and Republican administrations with starkly differing approaches to environmental regulation.

“You have the worst-case scenario of partisan ping pong,” said Clint Woods, a former Environmental Protection Agency deputy assistant administrator under Trump.

Environmental activists are pressing for fast action. They say returning to the pre-Trump status quo is no longer enough as hundreds of...