Why the Trump Administration Couldn’t Kill the Nature Record

Science has a way of refusing to stay buried

By Jeff Nesbit

In the early weeks of 2025, as the new Trump administration settled into the West Wing, a quiet execution took place. The National Nature Assessment — a first-of-its-kind federal effort to catalog the health of the American landscape — was unceremoniously disbanded.

The official line from the Trump White House was that the project was a relic of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” an “ideological pet project” funded by taxpayers to advance a specific social agenda.

But science has a way of refusing to stay buried.

An endangered whooping crane. (Jeffrey Hamilton/Unsplash)

This week’s independent release of the Nature Record — an 868-page “shadow report” compiled by more than 170 researchers who continued the work without a dime of federal funding — is more than just an environmental update. It’s a testament to scientific resilience and a sharp rebuke to the idea that data can be deleted by executive order.

The release of this report also offers a second chance to ask an important and challenging question: Why was this report considered so dangerous to begin with by President Donald Trump and his corporate allies, and what does it actually tell us about the state of our union’s natural assets?

To understand why Trump killed the report in 2025, you first have to look at what it was designed to measure. Unlike previous federal government assessments that focused narrowly on climate, the Nature Record was tasked with a holistic view of how nature supports the American life — from the economy to national security.

However, it also leaned heavily into themes of equity and environmental justice — concepts that the current Trump administration has treated as “woke” incursions into objective science. By framing the assessment as an ideological exercise, the Trump White House found a convenient pretext to pull the plug on a project that would have provided a roadmap for federal efforts.

But the “waste” argument falls apart under the weight of the Nature Record’s findings. If the administration’s goal is “American Dominance,” as White House spokesman Kush Desai suggested in responding to the report, ignoring the data in this comprehensive, detailed report is a strange way to achieve it.

The findings are, in many places, grim.

For instance, our freshwater ecosystems are “overdrawn, polluted, and fragmented.” For a nation that relies on these waters for everything from semiconductor manufacturing to the breadbasket of the Midwest, this isn’t just a concern for birdwatchers; it’s a fundamental threat to our industrial and agricultural stability.

The report estimates that 34 percent of our plant species and 40 percent of our animal species are at risk of extinction. In the cold language of economics, that is a massive loss of “natural capital” — the biological diversity that provides us with pharmaceuticals, pollination, and pest control.

However, the Nature Record avoids the trap of many environmental reports that settle for being essentially a eulogy for the planet.

One of its most significant contributions is its focus on “Bright Spots” (Chapter 4). This section highlights success stories where conservation and restoration have worked, strengthening community resilience, and proving that the trajectory of nature is not fixed.

This is where the report is at its most contrarian: It rejects the nihilism of the far-left and the denialism of the far-right, offering instead a pragmatic, science-backed framework for recovery.

The story of how this report reached the public is as important as the data it contains. When the federal funding vanished, the researchers — led by Dr. Phillip Levin — didn’t go home. They went to the private sector.

They raised $3 million from foundations, secured technical support, and maintained the rigorous oversight of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. They essentially privatized a public good because they believed the information was too vital to lose. It’s unfortunate that the public must rely on non-federal funding to pay for such essential work, but there was little choice for this report.

The Trump administration may deride this as an ideological pet project, but the reality is that the Nature Record is a national health check-up.

Ignoring it won’t make the freshwater crisis go away, nor will it stop the erosion of our coastal protections from increasingly frequent storms. To manage our relationship with nature effectively, we need a clear picture of its condition and trajectory. The Nature Record does that.

The draft remains open for public comment through May 30. Now, the question for policymakers — and for the American public — is whether we want a government that manages our resources based on science, evidence, facts, and data or one that manages them based on the selective editing of reality.

The Nature Record exists because the scientific community chose the former. We’d be wise to read what they have to say.

Jeff Nesbit was the public affairs chief for five Cabinet departments or agencies under four presidents.

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