NATURE TRUMPED

With all the talk about Donald Trump – his recent UK state visit and controversy, I thought it would be useful to consider what he has been doing in the USA regarding nature conservation. Compared with our actions and attitudes in the UK, it is an eye-opener. Mind you, the UK’s current over-development and the government’s policies on greenspace protection do not exactly cast us in a favourable light just now.

During his first term (2017–2021), although he did support some funding for parks and conservation through the Great American Outdoors Act, Trump generally prioritized economic development, energy production, and deregulation over nature conservation goals. His administration often framed environmental regulations as “burdensome for businesses” (an attitude, like so much from the US, that seems to be spreading in the UK, too), particularly in fossil fuels, agriculture, and construction. While some conservation programs continued, protections were often reduced or repealed compared to previous administrations.

Some of Trump’s main first term actions and policies included:

• Reducing the size of National Monuments;
• Opening up huge areas of protected land to mining, drilling, and grazing and promoting oil, gas, and coal leasing on federal lands, including formerly protected areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge;
• Making it harder to designate species as threatened, for example by considering economic costs when deciding about listing protected areas;
• Repealing critical habitat protections, thus limiting areas where endangered species could recover;
• Lifting bans on certain hunting practices in Alaska, including killing predators such as bears and wolves in previously protected refuges;
• Reversing bans on importing hunting trophies of elephants and lions from some African countries (which he presented as supporting conservation through hunting revenue);
• Repealing Clean Water Act protections for streams and wetlands, reducing safeguards for aquatic ecosystems;
• Reducing protections for migratory birds by narrowing the interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, thereby making companies less liable for accidental bird deaths caused by industrial activities.

In Trump’s current administration, new or modified stances and policies on wildlife, conservation, climate, and environmental protection are also evident. Many of these go even further than his first term, particularly toward deregulation and reducing protections. Some of what has changed so far include[1]:

• Reduction of habitat protections under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), proposing rules that would rescind nearly all habitat protections for endangered species nationwide. One proposal would change how “harm” is defined under the ESA – the regulatory definition that covers habitat modification or degradation that kills or injures wildlife. The new proposal would weaken that definition, meaning certain habitat damages might no longer count as violations. The EPA has initiated what it calls its “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” with dozens of rules under review or scheduled for repeal. Some of these involve air pollution, emissions from power plants and vehicles, water regulations and toxic chemicals;
• Reversal of conservation as a “use” of public lands. A recent proposal aims to cancel a Biden-era rule that treated conservation (restoring lands, preserving ecosystems) as an equal use alongside development activities on public land management. Under this, conservation leases would have been a formal tool: scrapping it shifts the balance strongly toward uses such as mining, drilling, grazing, etc.;
• Regulatory changes to project approvals whereby the Trump administration has used executive orders to ease restrictions on permitting fossil fuel, energy, and industrial projects, for example, initiatives to open several national forests to logging by reducing environmental reviews;
• Climate-related cutbacks such as withdrawal from the Paris Agreement again, proposals to remove or weaken greenhouse gas reporting requirements for major industrial emitters, and reversal of rules limiting emissions from power plants, weakening regulatory authority under clean air/water laws;
• Symbolic or policy statements such as “Make America Beautiful Again,” which claim to promote responsible conservation, restore lands and waters, etc. but which are often paired with policy changes that lean more towards development.

In Trump’s current term, changes relating to wildlife and nature conservation are tending to be more sweeping and structural; changing definitions, removing obligations, weakening statutes. Environmental protections are more consistently being weakened rather than selectively tweaked. There is an increase in speed and number of deregulatory moves.

Some of this, though on a lesser scale,  does seem to be echoed by the current UK government’s poor attitude towards wildlife and nature protection (viz. the Planning and Infrastructure Bill presently working its way through parliament). Our wildlife and green spaces are being sacrificed on the alter of the great god of development. Like so much else from the USA, antiliberal attitudes and values are constantly being flaunted in the right wing British media and in danger of being imported to the UK.

Betts Ecology stands up for the wildlife protection, biodiversity and nature conservation of the UK and we will resist the inappropriate development of greenspace as well as erosion of the laws conservationists and nature lovers have fought so hard for and established here.

[1] References for the research for these  statements come from Center for Biological Diversity, Rhode Island Current, US EPA, Reuters, AP News, Brookings, The Washington Post, Wikipedia, The White House.