The Biden administrationĀ on Thursday restoredĀ rules to protect imperiled plants and animals that had beenĀ rolled backback under former President Donald Trump.

Among the changes announced, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will reinstate a decades-old regulation that mandates blanket protections for species newly classified as threatened. That means officials wonā€™t have to craft time-intensive plans to shield each individual species while protections are pending, as has been done recently withĀ North American wolverinesĀ andĀ alligator snapping turtlesĀ in the southeastern U.S. andĀ spotted owls in California.

The blanket protections regulation was dropped in 2019 as part ofĀ a suite of changes to the application of the species lawunder Trump that were encouraged by industry. Those changes came asĀ extinctions accelerateĀ globally due to habitat loss and other pressures.