Americans often turn to biblical values when debating abortion, immigration, and criminal justice. Few, however, are asking how the Trump Administration’s recent rule curbing protections under the Endangered Species Act may undermine biblical values.
I studied at a rabbinical school in Jerusalem, I teach the Bible to my children, and I read from the Torah each week in synagogue. Scripture helps shape how I see the world, so I turned to it after the Trump Administration finalized a rule narrowing protections under the Endangered Species Act.
The rule rescinds the longstanding regulatory definition of “harm,” which included a significant habitat modification that actually kills or injures protected wildlife by disrupting essential behavior such as breeding, feeding, or sheltering.
The administration argues that the regulation stretched the statute beyond its plain meaning and imposed excessive burdens on landowners. Critics warn that the change will make it easier to destroy habitat that endangered species need to survive.
Protecting endangered species did not begin as a partisan cause. Republican president Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act in 1973, after it passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support.
Nixon called threatened wildlife an “irreplaceable part of our national heritage” and described America’s animal life as a treasure held in trust for future generations.
US President Donald Trump has long cast himself as a defender of the Bible and religious faith. That makes his administration’s new rule a fitting reason to ask: What does Scripture actually say about protecting God’s creation?
The answer begins in Eden. Genesis says God placed Adam in the Garden “to work it and keep it.” The Hebrew word shamar can mean to guard, preserve, or protect. Humanity’s first assignment was not simply to use creation, but to care for it.
That theme echoes throughout Scripture. When God instructed Noah to build the ark, He did not tell him to save humanity alone. Noah also had to preserve representatives of the animal world so that life could continue. The Bible’s first great rescue story was also an extraordinary act of species preservation.
The Psalms celebrate God as the One who feeds lions, provides homes for birds, and sustains creatures that offer no obvious economic benefit to humanity. In the Book of Job, God points to mountain goats, wild donkeys, ostriches, hawks, and Leviathan, not because they are useful to people, but because they belong to Him.
If creation belongs to God, humans are not absolute owners free to exploit it however we please. We are caretakers.
Preserving wonder
Biblical law also restrains humanity’s use of animals and the land. Deuteronomy forbids taking a mother bird together with her young, preserving the source of future life even when permitting human use. Every seventh year, the land must rest, and what grows naturally is available not only to people but also to wild animals.
None of this resolves every legal question surrounding the Endangered Species Act. Reasonable people can disagree over statutory language, private property rights, economic development, and the proper reach of federal regulators. The Bible does not prescribe the wording of an American environmental regulation.
But Scripture answers a deeper moral question. God values creation for reasons beyond its usefulness to us.
When preventable human conduct drives a species to extinction, we lose more than a scientific curiosity. We erase a unique expression of God’s creativity and silence another voice in creation’s chorus of praise.
Long before Congress passed the Endangered Species Act, the Bible taught that humanity’s greatness lies not in how completely we dominate creation, but in how faithfully we protect what God entrusted to us.
Just last week, in Bahia de Loreto National Park, I watched sea turtles lift their ancient heads above the turquoise Gulf of California before slipping silently beneath the surface. Manta rays launched themselves high into the air, then crashed back into the sea.
Nearby, blue-footed boobies perched on rocky outcroppings, their vivid blue feet almost too extraordinary to be real.
Those creatures live under Mexico’s protection, not America’s Endangered Species Act. But seeing them reminded me of the wonder every nation is responsible for preserving within its own borders.
A country that claims to honor the Bible should ensure that its most vulnerable creatures, and the habitats sustaining them, never become only a memory.
The writer has written at the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Reuters, Fox News, CNN, and others on the Middle East, law, society, and religion. X: @elifederman.
Source:
www.jpost.com
