"A War On Nature Is A War On All Of Us": Trump Admin Slashing Environmental Protections At Record Pace

While most headlines regarding the assaults of the Trump administration on everyday life center around attacks on constitutional protections, civil liberties, and human rights, behind these prominent headlines lies a quieter but just as pervasive onslaught.

From his very first day back in office in January of 2025, President Donald Trump has made rescinding environmental protections a key part of his administration. From the very outset, this corporate kleptocracy has served in the interests of oligarchs, whether they be the Silicon Valley technocrats, or Trump's deep ties with Big Oil unleashing the fossil fuel industry at their behest, the maximized profits of modern day robber barons has taken precedent over people and the planet.

First reported by TFTP colleague Derrick Broze, under Trump's second term biotech and pesticide corporations are experiencing a major boon as the Trump administration promoted the excessive production of the carcinogenic herbicide glyphosate. As Broze reports:

Bayer, the parent company of major glyphosate producer Monsanto, has significant ties to the Trump White House, having lobbied extensively to protect its pesticide empire and leverage its influence in Washington DC to wreak havoc with its hazardous chemicals.

As reported by US Right to Know,

Furthermore, the administration has carried out notable betrayals of the Make America Healthy Again movement by withdrawing proposed limits on the use of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) chemicals which cause significant damage to ecosystems as well as the people exposed to them.

One of the most devastating assaults on the American wilderness comes in the form of the administration's targeting of national forests, once considered to be protected but now in the crosshairs of opportunists seeking to extract resources at the expense of destabilizing some of the United States' most pristine ecosystems.

Along the US-Mexico border in Texas, bulldozers and excavators arrived in early August to begin clearing sections of Big Bend National Park to make way for the construction of a portion of Trump's border wall following the Department of Homeland Security waiving several key environmental protection laws in June, despite a statistically insignificant (0.045%) percentage of unauthorized crossings in the region. The project, which has been characterized as "inflicting an irreversible scar on the national park", is anticipated to also utilize heavy dynamite blasting in areas such as Mariscal Mountain.

Due to recent backlash, the construction of the section of the border wall in Texas has been paused, although a similar project in Arizona which also decimates sections of Big Bend National Park as well as sacred indigenous sites is still ongoing.

Elsewhere, the administration is rolling back protections of national forests for logging operations. The Associated Press has reported on the recent roll back of a 25 year old U.S. Forest Service regulation, the roadless rule, which prohibited road construction and large scale timber harvesting in over 58 million acres of the national forest system, approximately 30% of national forest lands nationwide.

Politicians that support rescinding the rule, such as Utah Governor Spencer Cox, have attempted to capitalize on the latest wildfire fearmongering craze to justify the move, despite data consistently indicating wildfire activity has continued to decrease over the years. 

"The roadless rule protects some of the most valuable public lands that belong to all Americans," said Drew Caputo, a senior attorney with the environmental group, Earthjustice. "It is the most important land protection measure of the last 60 years."

The Trump administration's attacks against environmental protections have also expanded to affecting the oceans off the coasts of America's shores. 

A recent order signed by Trump has opened nearly 500,000 square miles of previously protected federal waters to commercial fishing, removing conservation measures across three marine national monuments in the Pacific.

According to Oceanographic, "the move revokes protections in the Mau and Ho’omalu Zones of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, the Islands Unit of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, and the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument – areas established to safeguard some of the most ecologically sensitive and culturally significant ocean habitats under US jurisdiction."

The recent proclamation is the third such action in Trump's second term. In February, President Trump issued an order which opened the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument, the only US Marine National Monument in the Atlantic, to commercial fishing operations.

In April of 2025, a similar executive order removed protections for the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, which covers 490,000 square miles of ocean southwest of Hawaii.

“The Trump administration is dismantling our marine national monuments without public debate,” ... “These marine monuments are the ocean’s equivalent of our national parks – places that benefit marine life and cultural heritage and are too important to risk for short-term gain. When we treat protected areas as just another place for industrial activity, we risk undermining those benefits for future generations.” said Dr Miriam Goldstein, Executive Director of the National Ocean Protection Coalition.

Ocean conservationists have characterized the move as selling out America's natural resources for industry profit.

Among the most critical consequences of the removal of these fundamental environmental protections is the risk posed to threatened, endangered, and critically endangered species who call these habitats home.

The administration has directly targeted the Endangered Species Act multiple times, rescinding and reinterpreting long standing crucial provisions meant to protect vulnerable wildlife to instead benefit corporate interests at their expense.

In July, the Interior Department and the Commerce Department announced that they were narrowing the law’s definition of what constitutes harming endangered species in a move that critics called “a death knell for America’s wildlife.”

“Habitat destruction is the number one threat to endangered species,” said Tara Zuardo, a senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity.

“If animals don’t have a place to live, they can’t live,” Zuardo said. “Spotted owls, Atlantic salmon, Florida panthers, and thousands of other species need protections for the wild places where they make their homes.”

A week after the initial announcement, environmental protection provisions would be weakened further as the US Fish and Wildlife Service rescinded a 1975 rule which protected threatened species from illegal killing, trapping, harassment, and other forms of “take” under the Endangered Species Act, while also applying to species that have been newly declared as threatened.

Other endangered species, such as the imperiled continental grizzly bear, have also been directly targeted by the administration's Department of Interior as it seeks to transfer management responsibilities to hostile states that have sought to strip federal protections from grizzly bears and further reduce the bears population. Fewer than 2,000 individual grizzly bears remain in isolated populations in the continental United States.

The Trump administration's second term in office has been characterized by a callous disregard for the very sanctity of life, whether that be the lives of people, animals, or plant life. Trump himself has brazenly described environmentalists as "terrorists" for simply having the desire to protect the planet that we live on.

Meanwhile this administration is the epitome of a terroristic regime, from imperialism abroad to despotism domestically. Stripping away protections for the very environment we all need to survive is unsettlingly apropos.

Human beings are not the masters of nature, we simply exist within it. When our very existence as a species depends on our ability to live in harmony with our ecosystem, a war on nature is a war on all of us.

Water is sacred, it is one of the fundamental building blocks of life. The very air that we breathe would not be possible if not for the photosynthesis of the plant life around us. Our existence on this giant blue rock hurtling through space is not guaranteed, our very civilization is a delicate balancing act, the outcome of which will be determined by how we choose to respect the essence of life around us.  It is up to us to protect our environment. Because if it dies, we die.

“When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.” ~ Alanis Obomsawin