Map: Wildlife habitat, migration routes under threat

Since taking office, President Trump’s White House and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have indicated on numerous occasions that they intend to roll back national monument designations and leasing withdrawals. It’s all part of Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda, which seizes on a sham “emergency” to hand public lands over to private interests for destructive drilling and mining.

While an unambiguous order rescinding such protections has yet to materialize, false start announcements, administrative orders and leaked internal documents have made it clear that land protections are in jeopardy. Though the human impacts of such rollbacks—including air and water quality degradation, cultural site destruction and outdoor access restriction—would be devastating, protection rollbacks would also be disastrous to the wildlife that call public lands home.

To illustrate this threat, we compared select existing land protection boundaries with identified critical habitat and migration corridors of imperiled North American wildlife. The results are clear: national monuments and other land protections across the country are helping preserve vital wildlife habitat.

Especially in the southwestern United States, which the Trump administration is reportedly targeting for rollbacks, monuments and mineral withdrawals—which prohibit leasing for drilling or mining—create a network of protected habitat for sensitive desert wildlife.

The desert tortoise, for example, has critical habitat in a range that spans Chuckwalla, Mojave Trails, Avi Kwa Ame, Gold Butte and Grand Canyon-Parashant. Nearby, the Mexican spotted owl roams across Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears.

The threats extend far beyond the Southwest. Polar bears, lynx, salmon, wolves, sage-grouse, sea turtles—all these species and more have critical habitat that will be fragmented or destroyed if the Trump administration rescinds national monuments and mineral withdrawals.

In 2023, 21 species were removed from the Endangered Species Act due to extinction. At the time, Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams said it should serve as a “wake-up call.” Just a year later, a study illustrated that wildlife populations have plunged globally by an average of 73% since 1970 and are continuing to decline.  

President Trump's short-sighted “energy dominance” agenda is fundamentally incompatible with efforts to conserve or recover imperiled species. That's exactly why the administration and its allies in Congress are actively attacking the Endangered Species Act. If these efforts are allowed to succeed, there is no telling how much damage will be done—and how many species will be lost.