WASHINGTON— In a sweeping assault on the nation’s imperiled wildlife, the Trump administration today proposed a suite of regulations that would dismantle the Endangered Species Act and drive hundreds of species closer to extinction.

“If these Trump proposals had been in place in the 1970s, the only place you’d find a bald eagle today is on the back of a dollar bill,” said Stephanie Kurose, deputy director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This plan hacks apart the Endangered Species Act and creates a blueprint for the extinction for some of America’s most beloved wildlife.”

One set of regulatory changes would curtail the designation of critical habitat and weaken the listing process for imperiled species. If that’s finalized, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service would be allowed to weigh the economic impacts of protecting a particular species — something the Endangered Species Act explicitly prohibits.

This proposal would also prohibit designation of critical habitat for species threatened by climate change, like the wolverine and red knot. And it would gut the two agencies’ ability to designate habitat in unoccupied areas needed for recovery.

“Trump’s proposals are a death sentence for wolverines, monarch butterflies, Florida manatees and so many other animals and plants that desperately need our help,” Kurose said. “We assumed Trump would attack wildlife again but this dumpster fire of a plan is beyond cruel. Americans overwhelmingly support the Endangered Species Act and want it strengthened, not sledgehammered. We’ve fought this before and we’ll fight it again.”

A second set of changes would gut nearly all protections for wildlife newly designated as “threatened” under the Act, making it much harder for species like the California spotted owl or alligator snapping turtle to recover.

A third regulation would give developers and polluters the power to block habitat protections by overriding the recommendations of expert scientists. The last set of regulatory changes would weaken the consultation process designed to prevent harm to endangered animals and their habitats from federal agency activities.

“Trump’s rules aren’t about improving the Endangered Species Act or recovering imperiled animals and plants,” said Kurose. “This is about letting the biggest companies in the country drill for oil, log our old-growth trees, and mine for coal even if it causes iconic species to go extinct and cheats our children out of their natural heritage.”