The top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee has grave concerns about the Trump administration's approach to the environment and national parks/NPS file
U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, didn't hesitate when asked what he thought the Trump administration's goal was with its approach to the environment and land-management agencies.
"I think it's chaos, in a nutshell," the Californian said while recording the National Parks Traveler's upcoming podcast. "And it's the same thing that we see across the board, from their economic policy to their social policy to their foreign policy. Chaos is the point. Chaos is the feature. And it is, frankly, how authoritarians divide us and overwhelm us and consolidate power.
"That may be a little bit of an academic answer to your question, but I think it's the moment we're in, and no part of government is untouched by that agenda, including our public lands," added Huffman.
Project 2025: The Guiding Force
President Donald Trump's first 100 days have seen the Republican move aggressively to implement his agenda, largely defined by Project 2025, which was written by many individuals closely involved with Trump's first term, including some who were on his staff then. It was envisioned to be a treatise for how a Republican president should govern. While Trump worked throughout the campaign to distance himself from that document, he has enacted many of its goals since returning to office on January 20.
On the environmental front, the administration has moved to weaken the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by proposing to remove "harm" from the act's definition; discussed reducing the size of the Chuckwalla National Monument in California; is working to erase decades of environmental regulations, including provisions tied to the ESA, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and even the Atomic Energy Act, in a bid to reduce regulations tied to energy production; and is working to defang the National Environmental Policy Act that long has been viewed as the "Magna Carta" of the United State's environmental laws.
Project 2025 also calls for:
- Removal of the 10-mile buffer that blocks oil and gas development around Chaco Cultural Historic National Park in New Mexico for 20 years;
- Reinstating Trump's first-term rules pertaining to the ESA definitions for Critical Habitat and Critical Habitat Exclusions;
- Revoking National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rules regarding predator control and bear baiting, "which are matters for state regulation";
- "Recognizing Alaska’s authority to manage fish and game on all federal lands in accordance with the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act as during the Reagan Administration, when each DOI agency in Alaska signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game ceding to the state the lead on fish and wildlife management matters";
- "[S]eeking repeal of the Antiquities Act of 1906, which permitted emergency action by a president long before the statutory authority existed for the protection of special federal lands, such as those with wild and scenic rivers, endangered specials, or other unique places";
- Delisting the grizzly bear in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems;
- Delisting the gray wolf in the lower 48 states;
- Directing the Fish and Wildlife Service to "end its abuse of Section 10( j) of the ESA by re-introducing so-called 'experiment species' populations into areas that no longer qualify as habitat and lie outside the historic ranges of those species"; and,
- Directing the Fish and Wildlife Service to: "(1) 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."
The administration, as part of its efforts to reduce the size of federal government, already has either forced out or enticed retirements/resignations from an estimated 12.5 percent of the National Park Service workforce.
In The Minority
Huffman, from his minority position on the House Natural Resources Committee, so far has had little ability to slow the adminstration's agenda for public lands and their management.
While his conversations with his GOP colleagues have left him convinced that not all are in support of the president's environmental mission, the Democrat thinks that "there are a few, and there always have been a few, extreme ideologues who subscribe to this view. So they're the folks that have the energy and the power right now in this MAGA moment. And I think everyone else is either along for the ride or just sort of afraid to speak up."
Exactly how those in the Republican majority in Congress will craft legislation to meet all of Trump's goals remains to be seen, though Huffman doesn't think they'll be so bold as to simply call for the outright repeal of existing laws such as the ESA.
"What they'll do is just chip away in some very serious ways. Bruce Westerman, my Republican counterpart on the Natural Resource Committee, has a bill that basically takes all of the parts of the ESA that have teeth in them — the listing of species, the ability to go to court and enforce violations, the designations of critical habitat — and it makes it almost impossible to do any of those things. And then it basically throws down obstacles and redefines what 'best available science' means in a way that will please industry and make it so that the ESA is no longer inconvenient for them when they push their polluting projects forward," Huffman said.
For his part, Westerman, who hails from Arkansas, said earlier this year that "[F]or the sake of both the environment and the economy, Congress must advance common sense Endangered Species Act (ESA) reforms that return power to private landowners while simultaneously protecting endangered species in a responsible way. Weaponization of the ESA and its morass of red tape are impeding our ability to move forward on vital land management practices and even building important and necessary infrastructure, all in the name of environmental activism that’s actually doing more environmental harm than good.
"... My bill, the ESA Amendments Act of 2025, will implement necessary measures to take the power away from litigious environmental activist groups who openly profit off weaponizing species management and instead give more responsibilities to state, local, and tribal governments who often times have a much better understanding of the species, their needs, and their habitats."
U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyoming, also has asked Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to remove ESA protections from grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) as well as the North Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE)
"The states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho have dedicated millions of dollars and have been highly successful in recovering grizzly bears, especially in the GYE and NCDE," she and several of her colleagues wrote in a letter to Trump and Burgum earlier this year. "According to the most recent population assessments, grizzly populations in the GYE and NCDE are approximately double their recovery goals and meeting other federal recovery metrics."
Can The National Park Service Manage?
As for the National Park Service and its ability to smoothly manage the National Park System this summer, Huffman said that, "[B]etween the reductions in force that we know they're underway right now, and more coming, the 'Fork in the Road' stuff, the various purges and harassment of certain employees, it's going to be difficult for any national park to make it through this summer with any semblance of the level of service and stewardship that we expect."
"What is their agenda for the national parks? I think for national parks and public lands it's to rethink many of the concepts we've taken for granted for decades, if not hundreds of years. When it comes to the federal role in public lands, they don't like federal public lands," the congressman continued. "They want to spin things off and privatize them and monetize them. They don't subscribe to this idea of an intergenerational trust where we do things that might not immediately give us benefits, but will benefit our children and grandchildren. This is a here and now consumptive, greed-focused worldview that has the reins in Washington right now, and so much of our federal policy with parks and public lands is just at odds with the way they view the world."
The Democrat hinted that he had a strategy for blocking some of the Republican efforts, but demurred when asked what it was.
"I'm not going to lay it out in great detail for you, but look, if I can slow them down and complicate their attempts to completely destroy our bedrock environmental laws, to make irreversibly damaging decisions for our public lands and public resources, I'm going to do that in every way I can," he said. "When you're in the minority and bad things are happening by the majority, that's what you do."
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