Amid Attacks on Endangered Species Act, Trump’s Pick to Lead Wildlife Conservation Faces Confirmation Hearing

Some big changes could be coming soon in the world of U.S. wildlife policy. 

On Tuesday, the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee held a legislative hearing to discuss several proposed bills, including one that could undermine the Endangered Species Act—a bedrock environmental law that ensures federal protections for vulnerable animals and plants in the country. 

The next day, Brian Nesvik, former head of Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department, sat before members of the Senate for a confirmation hearing as President Donald Trump’s pick for director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If confirmed, he would play a key role in carrying out the mandate of the Endangered Species Act—and juggling industry interests and wildlife protection in an administration that’s prioritizing the former over the latter. 

While environmental groups have staunchly opposed the proposed ESA reform bill, they are somewhat split when it comes to Nesvik, who would oversee management of over 2,000 species across more than 850 million acres, if approved. The long-term outcome of both these decisions could have profound impacts on how wildlife is protected—or how conservation will be sidelined amid the Trump administration’s fossil fuel development push.

A Mixed Record: Nesvik’s decades-long career in wildlife management has been firmly rooted in Wyoming, which hosts more than 400 bird species and 100 mammals, including iconic predators like wolves and grizzly bears. He came on as a warden at the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in 1995. More than 20 years later, he rose to director of the entire department, where he was responsible for overseeing the conservation of animal and fish populations, and working with the state’s many anglers and hunters. 

During his tenure, the state agency expanded its non-game wildlife division—which focuses on species that are not typically hunted by people—and implemented measures for protecting a series of migration corridors for ungulates like deer, pronghorn and elk. Wyoming’s wildlife corridor policy has been lauded as “one of the most robust” in existence, WyoFile reports. 

But his tenure was not without controversy. Critics point to the rapid spread of disease among elk herds on feedgrounds in Wyoming under Nesvik’s leadership. They’ve also denounced how Nesvik handled a recent case in which a man ran down a wolf with a snowmobile, muzzled it and showed the struggling animal off at a bar before killing it. The Game and Fish Department issued the man a $250 fine, a fraction of the penalties he could have faced under state law, as my colleague Jake Bolster reported. 

Now that Nesvik is up for the top conservation gig in the country, several environmental organizations have spoken out against him. 

“Nesvik’s lackadaisical response to the tormenting of that young Wyoming wolf speaks volumes about his lack of care for wildlife,” Stephanie Kurose, the Center for Biological Diversity’s deputy director of government affairs, said in a statement. “But his larger record truly underscores how deeply he despises the Fish and Wildlife Service’s fundamental mission. Most Americans want our imperiled wildlife protected, but we can’t count on Nesvik to lift a finger to prevent extinction.”

However, other groups, such as the National Audubon Society, a bird-focused conservation nonprofit, praised the choice. And as far as confirmation hearings go, Nesvik’s was relatively smooth sailing. Republican leaders such as Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon—who appointed Nesvik as state director—and Sen. John Barrasso extolled the nominee’s character and qualifications. 

After the hearing, I spoke with Jess Johnson from the Wyoming Wildlife Federation about her experiences with Nesvik. She is the head of government affairs at the group, which is a wildlife and sportsman advocacy organization. 

“Brian takes the people that came before him and builds on the good things, but he also isn’t afraid to look at things and rebuild it,” she told me. Johnson counts Nesvik as one of her career mentors. “What is unwavering is his end goal,” to care for wildlife and the people living among it. 

When I asked her why she thinks people may be split on Nesvik’s environmental record, she said “it’s a complicated answer.” 

“I think some of it is just a disagreement around large carnivore management and the fact that, in one way or another, Brian was not extreme enough in either direction,” she said. “I would push back—isn’t that a good thing?”

Only time will tell how Nesvik, if approved, will run the Fish and Wildlife Service, though his past record shows support for mining on federal lands, a key goal for the Trump administration. That could include fast-tracking approvals for mining and oil and gas development by bypassing environmental regulations per Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s recent secretarial orders. 

“I share Secretary Burgum’s vision that innovation outperforms regulation,” Nesvik said in his testimony. 

Reform or Reckoning? Since Trump was inaugurated, many Republicans have doubled down on calls for major changes to the Endangered Species Act, as my colleague Arcelia Martin recently reported. A bill proposed by Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas would dismantle many of the protections that law has historically extended to threatened and endangered species. 

The bill, titled “The ESA Amendments Act of 2025” (H.R. 1897), was discussed at a Tuesday legislative hearing held by the Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries. Among other things, the legislation would require an economic impact analysis during the endangered or threatened species listing decisions, and upend the consultation process that determines whether the federal government is taking actions that could hurt protected plants and wildlife.

“After more than 50 years, it’s time that we make changes to bring the ESA into the 21st century,” Westerman said. “It is time that Congress brings the ESA back to its original intent, which is recovering listed species to the point where they no longer need to be protected.”

Democrats at the hearing said that’s not what the bill would do. 

“It is deeply disingenuous, to the point of gaslighting, to suggest that anything about this legislation before us which absolutely weakens the Endangered Species Act … is about making the law work better or bringing it back to its original intent,” said ranking member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). “This bill is part of an extinction agenda.”

Westerman has proposed a version of the bill unsuccessfully before, though Republican control of Congress and Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda could make a difference this time for efforts to weaken the ESA, experts say. The bill still has a long way to go and would have to pass in both the House and the Senate. 

Trump has already issued several executive orders that aim to streamline energy projects, including by shortening certain parts of the ESA regulatory process. Two of his recent orders invoke a rarely used panel that could allow projects to charge forward, even if they may drive the extinction of a species. The Endangered Species Committee is made up of some heavy hitters: the heads of interior, agriculture, the Army, the Council of Economic Advisers, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

If a project was denied in the courts, the committee can convene to override these rulings. The panel is often referred to as the “God Squad” because of its ability to decide the fate of a species if they deem the economic factors of a project outweigh the plant or animal’s protection.

Environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club are vigorously pushing back against Westerman’s bill and other attempts to undermine the ESA. 

Attacks are “coming from all angles. It’s been pretty jarring to see,” Bradley Williams, the deputy legislative director of wildlife and lands protection at the Sierra Club, told me. “I definitely expected, going into this Congress and into this administration, for there to be attacks on the Endangered Species Act. I did not necessarily expect it to all come so quickly and at once from so many different places.” 

More Top Climate 

In February, the Trump administration ordered a freeze on funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to undocumented immigrants and “sanctuary” jurisdictions protecting them. This directive—and confusion that ensued among FEMA staff about how to carry it out—disrupted the distribution of billions of dollars in disaster aid to states, local governments and nonprofits, The New York Times reports. Places across the country are in limbo, including Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, which was hit hard by Hurricane Helene in September but hasn’t heard back about its aid application. 

After the Times submitted a list of questions to FEMA asking about the freeze, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem signed a memo “authorizing agency staff to exempt certain grants from the immigration-related orders, according to a person briefed on the change,” the news outlet says. The disaster relief agency could be facing widespread cuts soon, Politico reports. 

For the past week, wildfires have ripped through South Korea, killing more than 25 people and scorching around 88,000 acres of land in the southeast, Justin McCurry reports for The Guardian. Officials and scientists say that dry conditions fueled by climate change are largely to blame for the blazes, the largest in the country’s history. Ancient Buddhist temples are among the cultural sites and structures destroyed. 

On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released the annual threat assessment of worldwide threats to the national security of the United States, and climate change was left off the list for the first time in more than a decade, Andrew Freedman reports for Axios. In the past, these reports have detailed how climate disasters and droughts can fuel conflict and create humanitarian crises, which could require U.S. troops. Last July, I covered the release of a NATO report that echoed these types of findings, pointing to the many ways climate impacts—from heat waves to ocean acidification—affect security infrastructure, military personnel, NATO adversaries and disaster response.