A message from WWP’s Executive Director, Erik Molvar
Nov 6, 2024
By now, America has woken up to the reality that we are facing a second Trump presidency.
In a Trump administration, anti-environmental extremists and corporate exploiters of federal public lands have their dream situation. While on the campaign trail, Candidate Trump disavowed Project 2025 and pretended not to endorse it, but these are the policies of his first administration, written by the political appointees from his first administration. We expect the coming administration to push aggressively to implement this agenda.
We have been here before. We know how to do this.
The first Trump presidency made little lasting impact on environmental issues. They slashed Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. His administration delisted wolves nationwide and stripped protections from Yellowstone grizzlies. Sage grouse protections were gutted, millions of acres of public lands were auctioned to the oil industry, and Dwight and Steve Hammond – the poster children of the Bundy insurrection – were awarded the public land grazing permit that had been revoked for violation of federal law.
Legal victories by Western Watersheds Project and our allies were essential in reversing each of these setbacks, and more.
And during those dark years, wolves reoccupied much of their historic range, and grizzly populations increased.
It wasn’t without setbacks. Sage grouse populations have continued their downward spiral, fueled by inadequate habitat protections. Flammable cheatgrass has expanded its invasion of the West, and land health remains dismally poor, both driven by chronic overgrazing by livestock. While WWP and allies scored one legal victory over a massive Trump drilling project in eastern Wyoming, another in western Wyoming overcame our best legal defenses, and now the fate of the Path of the Pronghorn migration is at the mercy of market forces.
The Biden administration has been no picnic from an environmental perspective. Despite significant gains on National Monuments, many opportunities to advance conservation have been squandered. The complicated narrative and confused policy priorities have cloaked opportunities for our opponents to advance their priorities.
For the next few years, the narrative gets a lot simpler: The sworn enemies of environmental conservation expect to be handed the keys to the agencies that manage public lands and wildlife. The battle between conservationists and our traditional foes will be thrown into stark relief. The darkest hidden agendas of anti-environmentalists will be paraded in public. That makes them easier to defeat.
The coming Trump administration is assured a Republican Senate, for its first two years anyway, allowing them to push through ideologically extreme political appointees to head federal agencies. Throughout the long arc of history, ideologues have tended to overreach, offering opportunity for reversals.
Despite election outcomes, the overwhelming majority of Americans support healthy lands and abundant wildlife. Vast numbers of us don’t want to see western public lands despoiled by industrial destruction or turned into a livestock-blighted cesspool.
Westerners, the time has come to steel ourselves for the expected onslaught. To embrace the beauty of the West. To love the place we live. And to fight for what we love.
At Western Watersheds Project, we’re ready.
Are you with us?
Erik Molvar
Executive Director
Western Watersheds Project
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Western Watersheds Project
P.O. Box 1770 Hailey, ID
83333 United States
