This November, Americans will elect a new Congress. Inevitably, much of the campaign will revolve around taxes, immigration, health care, inflation, and other issues that dominate our politics.
But voters who care about national parks, wildlife, clean water, forests, and public lands should be asking congressional candidates another question:
What will you do to make sure one president cannot dismantle decades of conservation policy with the stroke of a pen?
That question has become increasingly urgent during President Donald Trump’s second administration.
Over the past two years, the administration has pursued significant changes to federal environmental and public-land policy. The administration argues that these actions reduce regulatory burdens, increase domestic energy and mineral production, restore local control, and bring environmental laws closer to their original statutory meaning.
Conservation organizations, tribes, environmental attorneys, and other critics see something very different: an unprecedented effort to weaken protections that Americans spent generations building.
Whatever happens in the courts and whatever happens in the next presidential election, the experience of the past two years has exposed weaknesses in America's conservation laws that Congress has the constitutional power to address.
The next Congress should consider doing exactly that.
Bears Ears: How Permanent Is a National Monument?
Few places illustrate the vulnerability of federal conservation policy better than Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.
President Barack Obama created Bears Ears in 2016, protecting approximately 1.35 million acres containing extraordinary archaeological, cultural, geological, and natural resources.
President Trump dramatically reduced the monument during his first administration. President Joe Biden subsequently restored it.
Then Trump returned to office.
On July 13, 2026, Trump issued another proclamation reducing Bears Ears to approximately 121,096 acres, excluding roughly 1.24 million acres from the monument.
The administration argues that the smaller monument complies with the Antiquities Act's requirement that monuments encompass the "smallest area compatible" with protecting the objects for which they were designated.
The proclamation also provides that excluded lands may, subject to existing protections and applicable law, become available for mineral leasing, mining claims, and other uses.
It is important to note that removing land from the monument does not automatically eliminate every protection covering it. Some excluded areas retain protections under wilderness designations, Wilderness Study Areas, Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, the Endangered Species Act, and other federal laws.
Nevertheless, Bears Ears presents a fundamental conservation question:
Should a national monument be capable of expanding, shrinking, expanding again, and shrinking again depending upon who occupies the White House?
Congress can answer that question.
Reform #1: Amend the Antiquities Act
Congress should clarify the Antiquities Act so that a president may create national monuments but cannot abolish one or substantially reduce its boundaries without congressional approval.
That distinction matters.
Congress delegated monument-designation authority to the president. Congress can explicitly determine what authority accompanies, or does not accompany, that delegation.
Congress could also legislatively designate important existing monuments, including Bears Ears, thereby providing protections based on statute rather than presidential proclamation.
There are competing proposals over presidential monument authority. Some would move in the opposite direction and reserve monument establishment or expansion to Congress.
That debate makes the underlying issue particularly appropriate for congressional consideration: Congress should decide the limits of presidential authority rather than leave the future of major landscapes perpetually dependent upon changing interpretations of executive power.
The Endangered Species Act Without Habitat?
Another major change involves one of America's most important wildlife laws.
For decades, regulations implementing the Endangered Species Act interpreted prohibited "harm" to protected wildlife to include certain significant habitat modifications that actually kill or injure wildlife by interfering with essential behavior such as breeding, feeding, or sheltering.
The Trump administration rescinded that regulatory definition in July.
The administration argues that the old interpretation expanded federal authority beyond the language Congress enacted and unnecessarily burdened landowners and businesses.
Conservation organizations strongly disagree and have sued to overturn the change. They argue that protecting an endangered animal while allowing destruction of habitat necessary for its survival makes little biological sense.
The administration has made additional ESA regulatory changes, including eliminating future use of the general "blanket rule" approach for newly listed threatened species and changing regulations governing critical-habitat decisions.
Again, Congress does not have to leave such fundamental questions to regulatory interpretation.
Reform #2: Put Habitat Protection Directly Into the ESA
Congress should amend the Endangered Species Act to explicitly state when significant habitat modification constitutes prohibited harm to a listed species.
That would accomplish something larger than simply reversing a Trump regulation.
It would settle the issue legislatively.
Congress could define "harm" with enough specificity to protect habitat genuinely necessary for species survival and recovery while establishing clearer standards for landowners and regulated industries.
Congress could similarly clarify that critical-habitat designations should principally rest on biological and conservation requirements and explicitly address how agencies should consider climate-driven changes to future habitat.
The principle should be simple:
You cannot save wildlife without saving the places wildlife needs to survive.
America's Roadless Forests Are Vulnerable Too
The administration's actions extend well beyond monuments and endangered species.
The Trump administration has moved to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which restricts road construction, logging, and certain other development across tens of millions of acres of national forest.
The administration says returning greater authority to local forest managers would improve forest management, reduce regulatory barriers, and help address wildfire risks.
Opponents argue that the rule protects some of America's most intact forests, wildlife habitat, watersheds, and backcountry recreation areas and that eliminating it could open previously protected landscapes to greater development.
Once again, the controversy exposes the vulnerability of conservation policies based primarily upon administrative rules.
Reform #3: Turn the Roadless Rule Into Law
Congress should codify core protections of the Roadless Rule.
Legislation could permanently protect inventoried roadless areas from new commercial road construction and large-scale development while providing carefully written exceptions for wildfire response, ecological restoration, tribal access, public safety, existing rights, and other legitimate needs.
Doing so would transform a regulatory policy vulnerable to changing administrations into a statutory national conservation standard.
Restore Congress's Voice Over Selling America's Public Estate
Congress should also address another recurring threat: disposal of federal land.
Public lands certainly require occasional boundary adjustments, exchanges, and disposals. Some small parcels make little sense for the federal government to retain.
But large-scale disposal of America's public estate is something entirely different.
Reform #4: Establish Stronger Protections Against Large-Scale Public-Land Disposal
Congress should establish a presumption that major federal public lands remain in public ownership unless Congress specifically authorizes their disposal.
Any major disposal proposal could be required to undergo public review and analysis of recreational access, wildlife habitat, water resources, tribal interests, cultural resources, local economic effects, and conservation values.
Protecting public ownership also has the potential for bipartisan support. Proposals such as the Public Lands in Public Hands Act demonstrate that concern over disposal of federal lands does not necessarily fit neatly within traditional partisan boundaries.
Keeping public lands public can be common ground.
Put Environmental Review Back in Statute
The Trump administration has also substantially rewritten the Department of the Interior's procedures for complying with the National Environmental Policy Act.
Interior describes its changes as reforms intended to reduce bureaucracy and accelerate permitting while maintaining NEPA's procedural requirements. Critics worry that important environmental-review requirements can consequently become increasingly dependent upon executive interpretation.
Reform #5: Establish a Clear Statutory Floor for Environmental Review
Congress should specify minimum requirements for major federal actions.
Those requirements could include analysis of reasonable alternatives, significant environmental consequences, effects on nearby communities and tribes, opportunities for meaningful public participation, and disclosure of important scientific information.
Congress could simultaneously establish reasonable deadlines and page limits for routine reviews.
Environmental review does not have to mean endless review.
The objective should be better decisions made within predictable timelines, rather than choosing between environmental protection and administrative efficiency.
Protect the Lands Surrounding National Parks
A national park boundary does not create an ecological force field.
Oil wells, mines, roads, industrial development, and other activities immediately outside a park can affect its water, wildlife, viewsheds, night skies, cultural resources, and visitor experience.
That concern has played out around places such as Chaco Culture National Historical Park, where mineral development on surrounding federal lands has generated years of controversy.
Reform #6: Require a "National Park Neighbor" Review
Congress should require federal agencies proposing major extractive or industrial projects within a specified distance of a National Park System unit to formally evaluate impacts upon park resources.
This would not automatically prohibit development.
It would require decision-makers to acknowledge that actions immediately outside Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Glacier, Chaco, or another protected area can damage resources inside it.
For particularly important landscapes, Congress could go further by establishing permanent mineral withdrawals or conservation areas.
Give Wildlife Room to Move
America's conservation laws were largely created when wildlife management focused on protecting individual parks, refuges, forests, and wilderness areas.
Wildlife does not recognize those boundaries.
Elk migrate between national parks and national forests. Salmon move between federal, state, tribal, and private lands. Grizzly bears roam across enormous landscapes. Climate change is shifting habitats northward and upward.
Twenty-first-century conservation therefore requires protecting connections between protected places.
Reform #7: Establish a National Wildlife Corridor Program
Congress should create a permanent wildlife-corridor program directing federal agencies to identify major migration routes and habitat connections.
Federal transportation projects could incorporate wildlife crossings where scientifically justified. Land-management agencies could prioritize habitat connectivity when revising management plans, while voluntary conservation programs could help private landowners maintain migration corridors.
Congress could also expand grants to states, tribes, local governments, and private landowners for wildlife crossings and habitat restoration.
The goal would not be another enormous federal land designation.
It would be ensuring that America's existing protected lands do not become ecological islands.
A Law Is Meaningless If Nobody Is Left to Enforce It
There is another, less visible way to weaken America's conservation system.
You don't necessarily have to repeal the Endangered Species Act, sell a national park, or abolish a wildlife refuge.
You can simply make the agencies responsible for protecting them incapable of doing their jobs.
The National Park Service needs rangers, maintenance workers, biologists, archaeologists, historians, firefighters, engineers, and law-enforcement officers.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service needs scientists capable of reviewing endangered-species listings, developing recovery plans, restoring habitat, and managing wildlife refuges.
The Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service need professionals capable of monitoring millions of acres, fighting wildfires, restoring watersheds, administering recreation, conducting environmental reviews, enforcing permits, and managing competing demands upon public lands.
When staffing disappears, those responsibilities don't disappear with it.
Trails deteriorate.
Visitor centers close.
Scientific studies are delayed.
Endangered-species recovery plans fall behind.
Invasive species spread.
Cultural resources receive less protection.
Maintenance backlogs grow.
And agencies increasingly find themselves managing America's natural heritage in permanent crisis mode.
This creates another vulnerability that Congress should address.
Reform #8: Give Conservation Agencies Stable Funding and Staffing
Congress should establish more durable funding and staffing safeguards for America's major conservation agencies.
That does not mean Congress should guarantee every agency an ever-increasing budget or prevent legitimate efforts to make government more efficient.
Agencies should be accountable for how they spend taxpayer dollars.
But there is an enormous difference between improving government efficiency and systematically reducing an agency's ability to carry out responsibilities Congress has assigned to it.
Congress could establish minimum operational-capacity requirements for the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management.
It could require agencies to publicly report how proposed staffing reductions would affect visitor services, law enforcement, wildfire response, endangered-species recovery, scientific monitoring, maintenance, and resource protection.
Congress could also place restrictions on an administration's ability to effectively dismantle congressionally created programs through mass layoffs, hiring freezes, office closures, or wholesale reorganizations without congressional approval.
And Congress could expand the use of dedicated conservation funding that cannot easily be redirected by whichever administration happens to occupy the White House.
There is already a successful model.
The Great American Outdoors Act, signed by President Trump in 2020 with strong bipartisan congressional support, permanently funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund and provided billions of dollars to address deferred maintenance on federal lands.
Congress should build upon that approach.
Because protecting public lands requires more than drawing lines on a map.
Congress can create the strongest conservation laws in the world. But those laws mean little if there aren't enough people, scientists, rangers, and resources to carry them out.
Make Conservation Harder to Politicize
There is a larger lesson behind all eight proposals.
Environmental policy has increasingly become a pendulum.
One administration writes regulations.
The next rescinds them.
The following administration restores them.
Then another administration removes them again.
Bears Ears may be the most visible example, but the same pattern increasingly affects endangered species, climate policy, environmental review, drilling, logging, agency staffing, and other public-land decisions.
That instability isn't particularly good for conservation.
It isn't particularly good for industry either.
Businesses, communities, tribes, landowners, recreationists, and conservation organizations all benefit from knowing what the rules will be five, ten, or twenty years from now.
Congress exists in part to make those rules.
Congress Should Legislate Again
For decades, Congress passed some of America's greatest conservation laws.
The Antiquities Act.
The National Park Service Organic Act.
The Wilderness Act.
The National Environmental Policy Act.
The Clean Air Act.
The Clean Water Act.
The Endangered Species Act.
Republican and Democratic presidents alike signed landmark conservation laws, and conservation legislation historically attracted coalitions that crossed ideological and geographic lines.
Today's Congress too often leaves enormous policy questions unresolved. Presidents consequently push the boundaries of executive authority, agencies reinterpret old statutes, environmental organizations and industries sue, judges decide what Congress meant, and the rules change again after the next election.
There is another way.
Congress can legislate.
The next Congress could:
- Clarify the Antiquities Act so presidents cannot unilaterally dismantle national monuments.
- Put habitat protection explicitly into the Endangered Species Act.
- Codify protections for America's roadless national forests.
- Strengthen safeguards against large-scale disposal of public lands.
- Establish a statutory floor for meaningful environmental review.
- Require consideration of threats to national parks from nearby federal development.
- Create a national wildlife-corridor program.
- Provide conservation agencies with stable funding, staffing, and operational capacity.
These policies would outlast a Trump administration.
They would also outlast the administration that follows it.
And that is precisely the point.
The Question to Ask This Election
Americans shouldn't have to wonder every four years whether a national monument will still exist after the next inauguration.
A species shouldn't gain or lose fundamental habitat protections simply because control of the executive branch changes.
A national park shouldn't deteriorate because the federal government no longer employs enough people to maintain or protect it.
And lands preserved for generations shouldn't suddenly become disposable because one administration has a different interpretation of a decades-old statute.
Presidents need authority to govern.
But presidents also need guardrails.
Our Constitution provides a branch of government capable of creating them: Congress.
So as candidates ask for our votes this fall, Americans who care about national parks, wildlife, wilderness, and public lands should ask them something in return:
What laws will you support to ensure these places are still protected long after the next president is gone?
Because America's public lands belong to generations yet to come.
Their future should never depend upon the signature, or whims, of one person.
###
Meet Sean Smith, a master of conservation, adventure, and storytelling! This award-winning
conservationist and former National Park and Forest Ranger has trekked through the wilderness of Yellowstone, Glacier, Mount St. Helens, and the North Cascades, keeping nature safe with his trusty ranger hat and boots. But Sean's talents don't stop there. He's a TEDx speaker and even a private pilot.
But amidst all these adventures, Sean's heart beats for storytelling. He's been spinning tales since childhood, and now he writes thrilling national park novels that'll have you hooked from the first page. Imagine the drama and mystery of the mountains combined with the adrenaline of a rollercoaster ride. That's what you'll find in Sean's books, set against the majestic backdrop of Yellowstone, Gettysburg, and Mount Rainier. His most recent thriller is set in Glacier and will drop later this year.
So, if you're craving an escape into the wild, look no further. Grab a copy of Sean's novels and prepare for an unforgettable adventure. These stories will transport you to the heart of the national parks, where danger lurks and heroes rise. Don't miss out! Find all his captivating novels right here and in the QR code included.
