President Donald Trump frequently cites former President William McKinley as the inspiration for his trade and industrial policies. On July 3, just as abruptly as McKinley’s assassination made Theodore Roosevelt president, Trump shifted from cutting environmental regulations to creating a new conservation agenda.
The same day the Department of Agriculture removed large portions of the National Environmental Policy Act from its manual, Trump issued an executive order creating the Make America Beautiful Again Commission. Its job is to “advise and assist the President regarding how best to responsibly conserve America’s national treasures and natural resources.”
That includes recovering fish and wildlife populations, expanding access to clean drinking water, restoring aquatic ecosystems, expanding access to public lands and promoting outdoor recreation. Trump also issued an executive order calling for new fees on foreign visitors to federal public lands as a way of increasing revenue for recreation services and maintenance.
The coincidence of Congress passing Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill on federal tax cuts and the impending three-day Independence Day weekend may have left the pivot to conservation in the dust. Mountain Journal reached out to numerous conservation and public lands organizations, only to learn few were aware of the executive orders or their import.
Bozeman-based Property and Environment Research Center fellow Tate Watkins published a white paper on June 26 showing how surcharges paid by international tourists would help Yellowstone National Park address its $1.5 billion maintenance backlog. He said while PERC staff had known the Trump administration was interested in the idea, they’d not received any hint such formal action was coming.
“We had heard there was something potentially in the works several weeks ago, but we didn’t know about the timing,” Watkins told Mountain Journal on Monday. “We’d been working on this for five years.”
The National Park Service has lost nearly a quarter of its employees since the start of Trump’s second term in January, according to The New York Times. Trump has also recommended cutting the NPS budget by one-third.
At the National Parks Conservation Association, Yellowstone Senior Program Manager Michelle Uberuaga said Trump’s announcement didn’t appear to change much.
“The Trump administration has been working to decimate the national park workforce, who are the people who protect these places and the visitors who enjoy them,” Uberuaga told Mountain Journal. “They’re defunding and disinvesting in the national parks, and we need to turn that ship around. [The MABA Commission] seems to be about ‘Where do we make money from the parks?’ rather than, ‘Where do we invest to make sure parks continue for future generations.’”
The National Park Service has lost nearly a quarter of its employees since the start of Trump’s second term in January, according to The New York Times. Trump has also recommended cutting the NPS budget by one-third, from just under $3 billion in 2025 to $2 billion in 2026. That budget has not been finalized.
Another group that commented on the MABA Commission’s debut gave it a split decision. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a legal advocacy group dedicated to property rights and limited government, said the plan for the commission “gets quite a bit right” in its goals for expanded access to public lands and reduction of red tape.
“But we are also ambivalent about any “good government” plan that includes a new commission,” PLF Director of Environmental and Natural Resources Litigation Mark Miller wrote on July 7. “Good intentions go off course when they create more bureaucracy or invite Washington to dictate how Americans use their land.”
American Rivers President Tom Kiernan took a more wait-and-see approach.
“The details of how this new policy is enacted will matter, and we want to see meaningful results,” Kiernan posted on July 3, “but any day we are talking about ensuring clean water and putting conservation back on the agenda is a good day.”
Mountain Journal reached out to both PLF and American Rivers for further comment but did not receive a response.
LOOKING TO LEGACY?
When he was renaming North America’s tallest mountain for McKinley on the first day of his second term, Trump praised the former president for championing tariffs, winning the Spanish-American War, adding territory to the nation and protecting U.S. manufacturing.
“[McKinley] was tragically assassinated in an attack on our Nation’s values and our success,” notes the White House fact sheet on “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.” The July 3 fact sheet states “The MABA Commission will build on the legacy of conservative conservationists like President Teddy Roosevelt and protect our Nation’s natural treasures.”
Under the “Conserving American Treasures” heading, the fact sheet gives Trump credit for recovering “more endangered or threatened species than any other administration in its first term,” signing the Great American Outdoors Act, calling it the “most significant development in conservation policy since Teddy Roosevelt”; and designating 1.3 million acres of federal wilderness, adding 1,645 miles of new trails, and expanding hunting and fishing access on more than 2.3 million acres.
[The MABA Commission] seems to be about ‘Where do we make money from the parks?’ rather than, ‘Where do we invest to make sure parks continue for future generations.’”
michelle uberuaga, National Parks Conservation Association
But while it commits Trump’s administration to protecting endangered species and maintaining the “cleanest air and water in the world,” most of the declaration focuses on expanding access to public lands for recreation. It blames the Biden administration for restricting “outdoorsmen’s access to public lands and [depriving] them of the ability to responsibly hunt and fish in certain areas.” It also says “years of mismanagement” have hurt Americans’ access and enjoyment of outdoor recreation areas.
The Make America Beautiful Again Commission will have at least 10 members at or near cabinet status, including the secretaries of Defense and Agriculture, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has been named the chairman, and presidential Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley will be the commission’s executive director.
MOVING THE OTHER DIRECTION
Many of the MABA goals appear at odds with parts of Trump’s “Energy Dominance” agenda already set in motion. Decisions on federal agency spending and regulatory reform announced in the past few weeks specifically deprioritized environmental concerns.
On July 3, the Interior Department published its new NEPA updates in the Federal Register. Its guidance calls for allowing emergency responses with limited review, greater use of categorical exclusions, and “applicant and contractor preparation of environmental documents.”
Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” executive order directed federal agencies to “prioritize efficiency and certainty over any other objectives.” That led Interior to skip creating NEPA regulations altogether.
“DOI has decided that the flexibility to respond to new developments in this fast-evolving area of law, afforded by using non-codified procedures, outweighs the appeal of maintaining its NEPA procedures as regulations going forward,” the Federal Register notice states. “Notably, in this digitized age, while DOI codified its procedures as regulations, in part, to provide “greater visibility” to the public, DOI can — and will — ensure such visibility simply by posting these procedures online.”
NEPA changes rippled through several other federal agencies as well. On June 30, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins issued revisions to NEPA regulations to “correct the harms caused by decades of unnecessarily lengthy, cumbersome NEPA reviews.” The new set of departmentwide guidance rescinds seven agency-specific regulations, “resulting in a 66% reduction in regulations,” Rollins’ statement claimed.
“The MABA Commission will build on the legacy of conservative conservationists like President Teddy Roosevelt and protect our Nation’s natural treasures.”
fact sheet, make america beautiful again, the white house
The Department of Energy also published an interim final rule “rescinding all NEPA regulations” and published new guidance procedures. One goal of the change was to “ensure environmental reviews can no longer be used to stall American energy production and infrastructure development.” It also would allow project sponsors to participate in their own NEPA reviews, and maximize the use of categorical exclusions in project approvals. Categorical exclusions allow projects similar to past activity to be OK’d with limited or no public review.
Trump’s MABA fact sheet quotes Yellowstone Park’s Roosevelt Arch proclamation that America’s public lands are “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” The Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University notes that the 26th president “played a key role in the creation or enlargement of 150 national forests, the creation of 51 federal bird refuges, four national game preserves, six national parks, and 18 national monuments.”
The center also recalls Roosevelt’s campaign for “The Square Deal,” which it defined as the “three C’s” of consumer protection, corporate regulation, and conservationism, as shorthand for the most important domestic goals of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency.” He also fought to create the federal income tax, which was added to the Constitution shortly after he left office.
