SSN Commentary

The Trump Administration is Squandering Our Natural Heritage

Policy field

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University of California-Los Angeles

Originally published in Legal Planet on January 26, 2026. 

The world’s ecosystems have been subject to an increasingly dangerous cocktail of stressors from land and ocean over-development, invasive species, and pollution. But rather than stem the tide of these harms, the Trump administration has resurrected several regulatory changes to the Endangered Species Act designed to stifle species’ protections and provide land developers even more power to destroy invaluable ecosystems.