Last week, The New York Times reported that an internal memo had been quietly distributed across US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) field offices, directing staff to radically reinterpret the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in a move that blindsided conservationists. Staffers were essentially asked to start looking the other way when private interests cause preventable deaths of vulnerable animals. Instead of prohibiting habitat modifications that injure animals or cause accidental deaths, the ESA will now only prohibit actions “specifically intending to target an animal,” FWS Director Brian Nesvik instructed staff in the September 14 memo.

A vessel that inadvertently strikes a whale has not taken it because the vessel’s course was not set against the whale,” Nesvik’s memo said. “Felling a tree is not a take of the bats roosting in it unless the tree is felled for the purpose of killing or capturing them.”

FWS did respond to Ars’ request to clarify if this rule change has already taken effect, but environmental advocates are alarmed because it follows a rule change earlier this year that removed the destruction of habitat from the ESA’s definition of harm. At that point, the administration insisted the goal was to prevent extra costs to landowners when animals weren’t in danger. But the more recent rule change goes much further, allowing the animals to be killed as long as that’s not the landowners’ motivation for taking an action.

Ben Levitan, a senior attorney for legal conservation nonprofit Earthjustice, told the nonprofit news organization Stateline that advocates felt they were falsely reassured when the definition of harm was changed and that the administration would not use that change to justify a policy of ignoring preventable deaths. “This is an incredibly sneaky and disingenuous way of going about things,” Levitan said.

Such incidental takings are the most common way that endangered animals die, the NYT reported, so advocates fear the move largely guts the ESA. Previously, businesses had to conduct environmental reviews to identify critical habitat, then either take steps to preserve it or get permits to offset any accidental killing by donating to conservation funds elsewhere.