The past four years saw anything but happy trails for wildlife in the United States. On top of specific rollbacks of wildlife protections, the Trump administration’s negligence on climate change policy has further imperiled already fragile species and the ecosystems they depend on. In his first year in office alone, president Donald Trump’s activities prompted the League of Conservation Voters to determine that Trump deserved “worse than an F” on his environmental protection report card. Defenders of Wildlife earlier this year called the Trump administration “the worst ever for wildlife.”

During his time in office, Trump reversed or weakened more than 80 rules and regulations protecting the environment—including 11 directly addressing wildlife protections. States and environmental groups have challenged many in court, resulting in a handful of reinstatements, and some legal challenges are in progress. All told, these actions form a sort of wish list for wildlife advocates as they look to lobby a new administration, one that will ideally usher in more progressive conservation policies. 

“Some of those rollbacks are in litigation,” says Noah Greenwald, director of the endangered species program at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Others are things we’re going to lobby the Biden administration to restore. In general, we’re hopeful that we'll at least get back to where we were. We'll undo the damage that the Trump administration did and hopefully get a little bit past that.”

Among Trump’s most egregious transgressions against wildlife was the gutting of the Endangered Species Act in 2019. The Trump administration changed the way the ESA is applied, issuing new rules that make it easier to remove a species from the list, that weaken protections for animals listed as threatened, that make it more difficult for regulators to factor in future climate change effects on struggling species, and that allow regulators to consider the economic impact of listing a species for protection. The Trump administration also removed ESA protections for gray wolves, claiming that their numbers have recovered adequately—to the dismay of wildlife advocacy groups that argue the move is premature. 

Beyond the ESA, Trump also eased protections for fragile salmon runs in California’s Central Valley; overturned a prohibition of lead ammunition and fishing tackle on federal land; opened Alaskan wildlife refuges for predator hunting; reversed restrictions on extreme trophy hunting practices across broad swaths of protected wilderness in Alaska; changed fishing regulations to allow increased harvests; lifted commercial fishing restrictions in an East Coast marine preserve home to several endangered animals; and eased restrictions protecting Atlantic bluefin tuna; and weakened enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. 

The Trump administration reversed a pile of other conservation rules, too, but they were reinstated after legal challenges from environmental groups. But Trump isn’t done yet. In the waning days of his presidency, he's pushing forward drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, weakening offshore drilling safety rules, cutting protections for the sage grouse, and more. 

That’s the bad news. The good news is that a new administration—one much more friendly to level-headed climate policy and progressive protections for wildlife—takes office in two months. 

In stark contrast to Donald Trump, President-Elect Joe Biden has earned a lifetime score of 83 percent on his National Environmental Scorecard from the League of Conservation Voters. Biden’s campaign promises include pledging not to make any new fossil fuel permits on public lands; developing a comprehensive, $2 trillion plan to address climate change; and proposing protections for 30 percent of the country’s land and water by 2030—a plan called 30 by 30.

Biden’s policy history may hint of what else is coming after Inauguration Day. As a senator, Biden cosponsored bills to ban sludge and sewage dumping in the ocean, to increase funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, to protect dolphins from harmful fishing practices, and to oppose commercial whaling. And his vice president elect, Kamala Harris, was a cosponsor of the Green New Deal. 

The Biden administration will likely see experts as trusted voices, making science once again the foundation of environmental policymaking. “One of the things Biden has often said is that he is going to follow the science,” says Greenwald, who hopes that when scientists warn of coming catastrophes—like the United Nations report on the accelerating extinction rate of species around the world—the Biden administration will take meaningful action.

As for the Endangered Species Act, Greenwald has high expectations there too: “We hope the Biden administration will enact something that actually strengthens implementation of the act because the law itself is really quite strong and well-written, but implementation has always been problematic.” 

If his tweets are any indication, Biden may very well live up to those expectations. “For decades, the Endangered Species Act has protected our most vulnerable wildlife from extinction. Now, President Trump wants to throw it all away. At a time when climate change is pushing our planet to the brink, we should strengthen protections—not weaken them,” the president-elect recently said via Twitter. Biden voted for the passage of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, when he was a senator. 

Advocates caution these rollbacks and revisions aren’t going to happen right after Inauguration Day. Any changes made through executive order can be reversed through another executive order, but the federal rulemaking process—which many of Trump’s actions fall under—is fairly cumbersome and lengthy, involving a minimum 30-day public comment period sandwiched between Office of Management and Budget reviews. Rules can also be reversed by Congress under the Congressional Review Act or through a court decision—again, time-consuming processes that depend on outside factors.

And it’s likely the new administration would not rush into rule changes without careful consideration and methodical revisions. “We wouldn't want to suggest that they're going to go in without analysis and just say, ‘we're undoing this.’ That would create problems,” says Jacob Malcom, the director of the Center for Conservation Innovation at Defenders of Wildlife. “They have to at least pretend that they're reading the comments from the public. In the case of the Biden administration, we would actually expect them to take that job seriously.”

What’s more, Biden may face challenges from Congress in passing key legislation; while Democrats hold a majority in the House of Representatives, we won’t know the balance of the Senate until Georgia’s runoff election wraps up in January. 

Still, the incoming administration has given wildlife advocates many reasons to hope.

“We know very well that the biodiversity crisis is here, and we're hopeful that this incoming administration will do something about it,” Malcom says. “We’re hopeful that they will pursue policies and support laws from Congress that are real steps forward for conserving biodiversity, for helping protect habitat, and protecting wildlife.”