Keep an eye on how the Trump administration wants to change NEPA and the ESA, as it could affect many landscapes and many species/NPS file

Knowledge, as they say, is power. And if you enjoy visiting national parks around the country, you need to stay aware of efforts to weaken environmental laws that protect the parks and other public lands you enjoy for recreational pursuits.

If you haven't had a chance yet to listen to this week's podcast, John Freemuth, who holds the Cecil D. Andrus  Endowed Chair for Environment and Public Lands at Boise State University, and Nada Culver, the vice president for public lands and senior policy counsel at the National Audubon Society, provided an overview of how the Trump administration wants to weaken two of the country's bedrock environmental laws: the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act.

The short story is that the changes the Trump administration is trying to engineer with these two laws could reduce public input on major projects (think energy exploration, uranium mining, culling wildlife, and running power transmission towers* or pipelines across the Appalachian National Scenic Trail or down the James River near Colonial National Historical Park) have on landscapes, national parks, national forests, and other federal public lands, as well as flora and fauna (such as Joshua trees, wolverines, grizzlies, sea turtles, and many, many, many more).

"The purpose of NEPA has always been kind of two-fold, one is to look at environmental affects, and the other is to make sure that there is public scrutiny, and public input, with the concept being better information gets you to better decisions," said Culver. "And what we've seen in these recent (proposed) regulations is really an attack on both parts of what make NEPA work. These changes would be sweeping, they would affect pretty much every aspect of how NEPA has been working since its issuance (in 1970), and really try to curtail, for instance, what types of analysis would happen, really limiting it, providing a lot of discretion to just determine at the outset that NEPA doesn't apply, so you don't even pass 'go.' You don't even start to do an analysis, you don't even have to tell anyone what you're doing."

As for the Endangered Species Act, which has been in place since 1973, it long has drawn criticism for how it affects both private property and commercial interests that operate on public lands. But the way the Trump administration went about altering how the act is implemented has attracted a lawsuit that contends the administration violated NEPA by failing to disclose and identify how those changes could impact threatened and endangered species and those species that need to be listed to prevent being lost to the world.

The proposed changes, which have been blocked by litigation, include:

* How critical habitat for threatened and endangered species is calculated;

* Reductions in the protections "threatened" species receive under the ESA;

* Opening the door for economic interests to be considered when a species is proposed for listing, and;

* Effectively ignoring climate change by defining the "foreseeable future" as "only so far into the future as the (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service) can reasonably determine that the conditions potentially posing a danger of extinction in the foreseeable future are probable. The Services will describe the foreseeable future on a case-by-case basis, using the best available data and taking into account considerations such as the species' life-history characteristics, threat-projection timeframes, and environmental variability."

Those changes, if implemented, would:

* Very likely reduce the amount of available habitat for listed species, as under the changes critical habitat for threatened and endangered species would begin with areas where those species currently exist "before unoccupied areas are considered;"

* Lessen ESA protections threatened species receive; currently, threatened and endangered species receive the same protections under the act.

“Nothing in these new rules helps wildlife, period. Instead, these regulatory changes seek to make protection and recovery of threatened and endangered species harder and less predictable. We’re going to court to set things right,” Kristen Boyles, an Earthjustice attorney who brought the lawsuit, said when it was filed.

* Economics could be considered in the listing process. Say, for instance, that necessary critical habitat threatens energy development in an area. The potential economic loss could trump the proposed listing or habitat protection.

For years there have been discussions in Congress about the need to rewrite the Endangered Species Act, with some Republicans calling for it to be tossed out entirely or allowing it to be waived in certain instances.

But Congress, as a whole, wasn't interested in adopting extreme changes discussed by its committees and subcommittees, and efforts to revise the ESA have failed.

Recognizing that, the Trump administration has decided to take another path towards accomplishing its industry-friendly goals. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt knows well how to dismantle or work around these laws. He served as Interior's top attorney under President George W. Bush, and after leaving office went to work for a Colorado law firm. During his tenure there he worked on a number of environmentally related issues, including a lawsuit "that sought to undo court-imposed protections for endangered salmon in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta"

What the administration is trying to do isn't a red or blue issue.

These changes would affect all visitors to public lands, include hikers, campers, anglers, and hunters. If these changes to NEPA and the ESA are implemented they could affect wildlife at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, they could affect whether you can enjoy Cumberland Island National Seashore on the Georgia coast without rockets being launched overhead, they could affect how much land is deemed necessary to recover a species such as wolverines, or whether economics could trump the protection of a species, they could affect protection of fisheries.

Among the organizations that have pushed back against some of the public lands regulations Bernhardt or his predecessor, Ryan Zinke, have pushed through, or tried to, is the Backcountry Horsemen of America. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, meanwhile, opposed the administration's move to toss out collaborative conservation efforts that benefited the greater sage grouse in the West. These are not left-wing groups.

It's a new year, with new challenges across the landscape. If you cherish that landscape and its wildlife, stay informed on how they're managed.

* The Obama administration allowed transmission line projects that crossed National Park System units, including the A.T.