Conservation Efforts in the Trump Era

After Donald Trump’s election, many wildlands advocates have become depressed and disheartened and feel that conservation efforts are over. The Trump Administration will no doubt try to eliminate, thwart, or dismantle conservation laws and policies.

It is important to remember this is nothing new. The old phrase “two steps forward and one step back” often characterizes all political issues.

Looking at conservation history, I see successes, like the Migratory Bird Act, the creation of national parks and national forests, the Wilderness Act, the Alaska Lands Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other legislation, like punctuated evolution. Long periods with little forward progress, then suddenly significant changes.

Years often pass without significant conservation success, but the stars almost always line up at some point, and conservation legislation is approved. When and how this will happen can’t be predicted.

For that reason, one must be prepared to move a legislative proposal when the opportunity is presented. This requires doing the background public advocacy for years before one can get a legislative hearing.

In the 1930s Bob Marshall proposed that everything north of the Yukon River in Alaska should be protected as a huge national park. Marshall’s proposal must have seemed incredibly naïve to most Alaskans at that time. The entire 1930s Alaskan economy was based on resource exploitation like mining and commercial salmon fisheries.

Nevertheless, Marshall’s idea simmered for years. The opportunity for protecting much of northern Alaska was a consequence of oil development. When oil companies tried to build the Alaska pipeline, Alaskan natives protested. They argued that they still had legal rights to the land and pipeline construction was delayed.

 Paradoxically it was the oil companies that lobbied on behalf of native groups for some kind of rapid resolution. This obstacle to pipeline construction was settled as part of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

One clause in the Native Claims legislation required the Secretary of Interior to nominate lands for national parks, wildlife refuges, and other protection which ultimately led to the protected landscape we see today. The Alaska National Interests Lands Conservation Act passed Congress in 1980.

If one looks at a map of Alaska today, almost everything north of the Yukon River is in some kind of protected land designation. There are the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Kobuk Valley National Park, Noatak Preserve, Arctic Wildlife Refuge, Selawik Wildlife Refuge, Cape Krusenstein, Koyukuk Wildlife Refuge, Bering Sea Land Bridge Preserve, Yukon Flats Wildlife Refuge, Kanti Wildlife Refuge, and even the portion of the Naval Petroleum Reserve is semi-protected.

It took fifty years, but then the stars lined up, and conservation groups mobilized to garner protection for much of the area north of the Yukon River.

For 25 years, conservationists sought to preserve much of the California desert under the Wilderness Act. The first legislative efforts to preserve the desert wildlands began in 1986 when then Senator Alan Cranston introduced legislation. However, it was not until 1994 that the California Desert Protection Act passed Congress that established more than 69 new wilderness. It also upgraded Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments to national park status and created the Mojave National Preserve.

Subsequent legislation added the 1.6 million acre Mojave Trails National Monument and Snow to Sands National Monument to the protection of the California desert.

One of the interesting historical factors in the California Desert Protection Act has lessons for all such efforts.

Jim Eaton, now deceased, at the time was Executive Director of the California Wilderness Coalition. Jim told me that when they crafted the original legislative proposal, they included every BLM area that they thought qualified for designation under the 1964 Wilderness Act. They expected that in the legislative debate over the bill they would invariably lose some of these areas.

However, opponents of the legislation focused all their energy trying to stop the creation of a Mojave National Park. In the end, the compromise was the creation of a national preserve that allowed hunting and continued livestock grazing. But Eaton said, not one of the proposed wilderness areas was eliminated.

The lesson learned was to put forth the best proposal you can defend—because you never know how the political debate will turn out.

There are visionary proposals that emulate past conservation efforts. For instance, the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) which would designate more than 23 million acres of wilderness across five states has been repeatably introduced into Congress since 1993. Even though it has not yet been enacted, that should not discourage wilderness advocates. One never knows when the stars will line up and NREPA may pass Congress.

In the meantime, NREPA acts like a roadmap showing exactly what is at stake and what could be the future for northern Rockies wildlands. It is an articulation of what we need to defend. It is a constant reminder of the opportunity that exists for wildlands preservation across the region.

Another example is the original 9-million-acre Southern Utah Wilderness Association (SUWA) Red Rock Wilderness Act proposal for Utah’s canyon country. The Act was first introduced in 1989. Since that time SUWA has defended its proposal and successfully shepherded some wilderness legislation through Congress. Still, the remaining 8 million acre proposal remains as a reminder of what is possible and what remains to be preserved in southern Utah.

There are other visionary efforts across the country that I believe will invariably gain Congressional support. For instance, the Unite the Parks effort in California Sierra Nevada seeks to bridge the land between Yosemite and Kings Canyon/Sequoia National Parks with a national monument designation.

The effort to protect more than a million acres of Owyhee Canyonlands in Oregon is another long-term legislative effort that may soon bear fruit.

Efforts to preserve all the wildlands north of Yellowstone National Park including NREPA, as well as expansion of Yellowstone National Park or the proposal by the Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance for designation of all the roadless lands on the Custer Gallatin National Fork.

A similar effort to garner substantial wilderness protection of Central Idaho wildlands by the Friends of the Clearwater in Idaho is ongoing.

And in Maine, RESTORE the North Woods, continues to lobby for a 3.2-million-acre national park in the region.

Restoration of wildlife is also ongoing. The spread of wolves across the West, including wolf packs in California and Colorado, demonstrates that activists can achieve success.

The Montana Wild Bison Restoration Council seeks to establish several wild bison herds outside of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks across Montana and Wyoming.

One of the conclusions I’ve come to from a review of these and other conservation campaigns is that boldness and vision generate public support. And even when one only accomplishes part of that vision, visionary proposals like SUWA’s Canyon Country Act or the Alliance for Wild Rockies NREPA continue to inspire people.

So, while the Trump Administration is unlikely to promote conservation efforts, serendipity plays a large role in what is possible. The lesson I take home is one must create a visionary proposal, and continuously promote it, protect its contours, and be ready when the opportunity to enact protection arises.

One can get disheartened, or one can get to work. I prefer to continue working for the preservation of our wildlands and wildlife.

This essay first appeared in The Wildlife News.