The Conservation Column
By Pepper Trail

As I look toward 2025, I have no doubt that we conservationists are in for the fight of our lives. With the election of Donald Trump, we must expect a massive, across-the-board assault on the laws, regulations, and policies that protect wildlife, public lands, clean air, and water, and that tried – however inadequately – to address climate change. All indications are that the second Trump administration will be even more extreme and unconstrained than the first.
The nominee for Secretary of the Interior is Doug Burgum, the Governor of North Dakota. He is not as wildly unqualified as many other Trump nominees, but is a vocal proponent of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” approach to fossil fuels. He can be expected to attempt an aggressive expansion of oil and gas leases on public lands, including on the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and offshore on both coasts.
As far as the Endangered Species Act, we can expect the new Trump administration to follow the anti-conservation vision laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. The following are direct quotes from that document’s recommendations:
• Delist the grizzly bear in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide Ecosystems.
• Delist the gray wolf in the lower 48 states.
• Cede to western states jurisdiction over the Greater Sage-grouse, recognizing the on-the-ground expertise of states and preventing use of the Sage-grouse to interfere with public access to public land and economic activity.
• Abolish the Biological Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey and obtain necessary scientific research about species of concern from universities via competitive requests for proposals.
• Direct the Fish and Wildlife Service to design and implement an Endangered Species Act program that ensures independent decision making by ending reliance on so-called species specialists who have obvious self-interest, ideological bias, and land-use agendas.
Project 2025 also singles out the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument for attack, specifically calling for the BLM to “manage the O&C lands [within the monument] for permanent forest production to ensure that the timber is sold, cut, and removed.” More broadly, Project 2025 calls for the abolition of the Antiquities Act, which provides the authority for Presidential designation of national monuments, and for the reversal of many monument designations.
In the area of climate change, Trump is famously on the record calling it “a hoax,” and there is no doubt that he will withdraw the U.S. from international efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, and will roll back President Biden’s initiative to promote electric vehicles and energy efficiency. His nominee to head the EPA is former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin, who voted against clean water legislation at least a dozen times, and against clean air legislation at least half a dozen times, during his tenure in the House. The nominee for Energy Secretary is Chris Wright, who has no government experience and runs a major fracking company. In an interview last year, he stated “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”
I could go on and on, but the point is made. So, what can we do? Here are my recommendations:
• Work locally. We are fortunate to live in Oregon, with its strong environmental protections. We must defend our state from federal attempts to weaken those protections.
• Support our U.S. senators and other conservation champions in Washington, D.C.
• Donate as generously as you can to environmental organizations, both those working at the local and national levels. One group I personally support is Earthjustice, which has a great record of defending environmental protections in court – which is where many of these battles will end up.
• Stay informed, and inform others. It is very tempting to turn away from the news when it is so discouraging. And we all need to take a break some-times. But after those breaks, come back to the fight. We turned back many of Trump’s worst proposals in his first term, and we can do so again.
• Finally, give yourself plenty of time in nature. This is where we gain our strength to defend what we love. And to find peace and joy in a world that sometimes seems to have gone mad.
Good luck to us all!