May 6, 2026
Owl in America is a series of letters tracing the actions of the current U.S. administration from the perspective of an environmental lawyer. These notes follow how, in a time of rapid political and ecological change, governmental decisions are felt in the living world.
Hello all~
The American news brims with conflict abroad, but beneath the headlines, D.C. policymakers are pummeling our lands and wildlife here at home. Many of these stories are buried in agency notices, court filings, specialized news feeds, and the procedural churn of Washington—they're easy to miss, which is part of the point. One purpose of these letters is to keep looking and pull them into view.
This administration is doing measurable damage to the living world, some of which can be stopped or delayed if Democrats flip the House and Senate in the midterm elections. It won't be nearly enough, but it would be a start.
Until then, we bear witness and remember. We speak clearly to our representatives and our neighbors. We write letters and learn something new. We stake out a piece of land, or a wild species, and we defend it. We vote. We protest. We stand up, now. The Trump administration's assault on the living world continues on several fronts, and our victories are too few. So if not now, when?
Gulf waters: the Rice’s whale and Kaskida
Two weeks ago, I wrote that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invoked a national-security clause in the Endangered Species Act to trigger a God Squad meeting, at which the committee overrode protections for Rice's whales, sea turtles, and other listed species affected by oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico. (Background here.)
To make matters worse, the administration has since launched a "status review" of the endangered Rice's whale. Critically imperiled, only about 51 individuals survive. The Endangered Species Act requires the government to periodically review and incorporate new scientific findings about listed species, so in itself, the review is not unusual. Ten years have passed since the last one. The statute requires one every five years, although in practice, that timeline is rarely met for any species.
Its timing, however, just one month after the God Squad exempted oil and gas drilling activities in the whale's habitat from ESA requirements, should raise the hackles. The status review will recommend, based on the "best scientific and commercial data available," whether the agency should keep the species on the endangered species list.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick will make the final decision. In a Senate hearing this week, he questioned whether the Rice's whale is truly a distinct species and suggested it be removed from the list.
The status review could become the first step toward keeping the whale listed as endangered, downlisting it to threatened, or removing it from the endangered species list altogether. Any delisting or downlisting would require a separate rulemaking, but Lutnick’s public skepticism is alarming.
For more on the biological wonder that is the Rice's whale and the ethical considerations behind sacrificing its existence for oil, please read this fine essay at Chasing Nature, written just before the God Squad convened in March.
Meanwhile, the administration has approved BP's application to develop a new "ultra-deepwater" oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico. Called the Kaskida Project, it would drill at greater depths than BP's Deepwater Horizon, which ruptured in 2010 causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Spill risk increases exponentially with depth.
In opposing the approval, Earthjustice notes that BP's application failed to show it possesses the expertise to operate safely under the crushing pressures at those extreme depths. I hope this is the last time I'll ever have to write the word "Kaskida," but I fear it won't be.
Public lands: conservation as “no use”
Back on land, the administration finished its review of the BLM's public lands rule. Finalized late in Biden's term, the rule clarified that conservation is a "use" on par with extractive uses like logging, mining, and drilling. The Bureau of Land Management oversees more public land than any other federal agency here in the U.S.
For decades, BLM leadership—often overruling its on-the-ground staff—has favored industry and extraction over preservation. Biden's rule acknowledged and adjusted that imbalance while also providing for "conservation leases" through which nonprofits, tribes, and adjacent landowners could lease land for ecological restoration.
The Trump administration, riding the wave of sustained industry opposition to the rule, announced in September 2025 that it intended to repeal it. Characterizing conservation as "no use"—in contrast to mining, grazing, and energy development, which he called "legitimate uses"—Interior Secretary Doug Burgum stated he would "eliminate unnecessary barriers to energy development."
The White House budget office has completed its required review. It now falls to the Interior Department to finalize the rollback. I expect that will happen soon.
National parks: leadership and memory
A couple of developments for the National Park Service this week: first, Trump has withdrawn hospitality executive Scott Socha from consideration to head the service; second, Interior leadership has cracked down on national parks' supposedly "woke" website material.
First, Scott Socha. He's an executive at Delaware North, the worldwide hospitality company that runs concessions and lodging at many of the United States' (and Australia's) national parks. It famously sued Yosemite National Park after losing its contract there in 2015.
Delaware North attempted to bar the park from using historical names for its structures including the Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite Lodge, and Curry Village. It had even trademarked the name "Yosemite National Park" and tried to prevent the park from using it on its own merchandise. (The first Trump administration settled the suit and paid $12 million to recover the trademarks.) So, no permanent leader yet helms the Park Service, rudderless without a confirmed director since the end of Biden's term.
The effort to redefine public lands also extends to how they are allowed to speak about history. The administration now requires direct review of new material posted on national parks' websites. According to a former park head, these decisions rested with park staffers for most, or all, of the agency's history. This new top-down review requirement is intended to further Trump's mandate to provide a positive view of American history at its parks and historic sites. His executive order "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" forbids government communications that "inappropriately disparage Americans past or living."
In place since this February, the review board has, for example, bumped from Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail's website a reference to Thomas Jefferson fathering children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved teenager in his household. Consent was impossible for a young girl in a condition of enslavement; according to Monticello’s historical analysis, Jefferson almost certainly fathered Hemings’s six documented children.
In another case, a video showing information about the forced relocation of Native families was flagged for removal from the site for Sitka National Historical Park. One anonymous employee characterized these removals to E&E News as "part of a larger effort at Interior to restrict who can communicate with the public and what gets said."
Hunting, trapping, and the Fix Our Forests Act
Regarding public lands more broadly, the New York Times reported that an internal memo from the desk of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum will direct some 76 federal parks, wildlife refuges, and recreation sites to immediately lift restrictions on trapping and hunting. Restrictions like these typically represent years of research and compromise to protect ecosystems and human visitors.
The article states: "Curecanti National Recreation Area in Colorado had prohibited firing weapons from, toward or across trails. At Lake Meredith National Recreation Area in Texas, hunters had been barred from cleaning and processing game animals in restrooms. And at the Ozark National Scenic Riverways in Missouri, hunting dogs were required to have tags for safety." These restrictions, and many others, are being deleted or lifted.
A final note: room exists for Americans to be heard—even now—in Congress. One piece of legislation called the Fix Our Forests Act, which I intend to spend more time on in a future letter, may be called to a Senate vote in the near future. It's billed as a bipartisan effort to reduce wildfire risk, but a close reading reveals it's a Trojan horse for accelerated extraction from the public trust. It allows agencies to log up to 10,000 acres of forest with little public review, shortens the timeframe for public-interest groups to sue, and nearly releases the Forest Service from its current obligation to update logging plans to protect newly listed endangered species.
In the forest defense trenches during Trump's first term, I saw firsthand how federal agencies under bad leadership abused the rules to rush destructive logging projects, even in our few remaining old-growth forests. This would be much worse.
Some Democratic senators, perhaps eager for any win, support this bill. They may still be persuadable, so seize the moment to speak up against this one. For more information, Field Guide to the Anthropocene published a clear explainer last week, with links to dive deeper.
I'll close with the words of Britain's King Charles, speaking to the U.S. Congress last week:
A joke about rejoining the U.K. after 250 years apart (if they'd have us) springs to mind—at least to this mind, jarred by the stark contrast with our own leader—but I'll refrain.
Talk to you soon,
Owl
Sources:
https://www.eenews.net/articles/feds-will-review-rices-whale-endangered-species-status/
https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-08663.pdf
https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202504&RIN=1004-AF03
https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/delaware-north-national-park-service-21349960.php
https://mountainjournal.org/scott-sochas-nomination-national-park-service-withdrawn/
https://www.eenews.net/articles/the-trump-administration-cracks-down-on-national-park-websites/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/climate/hunting-federal-lands-burgum.html
*Inspired by historian Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American
Owl in America will remain free to all readers. Paid subscriptions help make possible the time it takes to track agency notices, court filings, specialized reporting, and environmental stories that can be easy to miss. If you can support this work with a paid subscription, thank you; if you can’t, thank you for being here. Please share these letters, speak up where you can, and keep paying attention to the living world. 🦉
Member discussion