President Trump’s environmental record during his two terms is abysmal, at best, including his record on protecting endangered species. In July 2026, the Trump administration finalized a rule rescinding the Endangered Species Act’s definition of harm. The rule removes protections for the critical habitats of endangered and threatened species.
In 1973, President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law. How far the Republican Party has come since then, when Nixon said that nothing was “more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed.”
The ESA is wildly successful, with 99 percent of listed species avoiding extinction. For example, the bald eagle, the nation’s national symbol, nearly went extinct in the mid-1900s because of habitat destruction and degradation, illegal hunting, and contamination of its food source by Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), a now-illegal insecticide. Habitat protection from the ESA and the ban on DDT helped bald eagles come off the endangered species list in 2007.
Opening Up Public Lands to Development
The Clinton administration enacted the Roadless Rule in 2001 to which protect national forest areas across the U.S. from logging, road construction, and other development. In June 2025, Trump’s USDA announced the rule’s repeal, eliminating protections for roughly 45 million acres of forest important to wildlife. In a fit of Orwellian logic, the announcement characterizes the rule as “overly restrictive and poses real harm to millions of acres of our national forests.”
“Once again, President Trump is removing absurd obstacles to common sense management of our natural resources by rescinding the overly restrictive roadless rule. This move opens a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation’s forests.” USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins.
The Trump administration is not content with rescinding the Roadless Rule. In May 2026, Trump issued an executive order calling for more development of national forest lands. Trump said in the executive order that regulations preventing development in national forests “often result in barriers to energy and timber production.”
Trump asked Congress to reduce the 2027 funding for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The 2027 budget request for FWS is $1.3 billion, down from $1.65 billion in 2026. The Interior Department stated in its announcement that “the 2027 budget increases funding to reduce environmental review timeframes for energy projects under the ESA.”
Financing Destruction
Two sectors gave significant campaign contributions to Republican candidates, including Trump, in 2024. The logging industry gave $2,036,400 to candidates in the 2024 election cycle, with $1.3 million to Republican candidates. Trump received $353,212. The oil and gas industry spent $450 million to influence Trump and congressional Republicans that same year — through donations, lobbying, and advertising. Trump received $96 million in direct donations.
The Trump administration is not only opening national forests to development, but also removing protections for the habitats endangered species need to survive. In June 2025, the Interior Department moved to rescind the rule that protected habitats and culturally important lands in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Interior made 5.5 million acres in the area available for auction to oil and gas companies.
Fifty years ago, a Republican president called America’s wildlife a treasure worth preserving. Today’s administration is dismantling the law that made that promise real — redefining “harm” so habitat no longer counts, opening protected forests to the chainsaw, and cutting the very agency charged with keeping species alive. The bald eagle recovered because the law forced the country to protect the places it lived. Strip those protections away, and the next species may not be so lucky.
