From January, the Trump administration has repeatedly gone after the ESA. They argue the strict rules protect land at the expense of development and prevent “energy domination.” Orders this year have directed agencies to rewrite ESA rules in ways that would prioritize fossil fuel projects and eliminate environmental reviews.

Critics like Burgum say the law is a failure and argue its rigid rules do little to foster recovery. Scientists and legal experts disagree, saying the problem is not the ESA but chronic underfunding and political flip-flopping.

“We continue to wait until species are in dire straits before we protect them,” said David Wilcove, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University. “That makes recovery far more difficult and expensive.”

Experts note that despite the criticism, the ESA has been effective at keeping the United States from losing large numbers of species. Since the law passed in 1973, just 26 listed species have gone extinct while under federal protection. By contrast, at least 47 species are believed to have disappeared while on the waiting list for protections, according to the United Nations Biodiversity Lab.

“The ESA works more like a critical care unit than a hotel,” Wilcove said. “It’s as though we built a great hospital but never funded enough doctors or equipment.”

One of the ESA’s biggest success stories is the American bald eagle. Habitat loss and the use of the pesticide DDT in the 1960s left just a few hundred nesting pairs in the lower 48 states. After DDT was banned and the eagle was listed in 1978, the birds made a slow comeback. By 2007, the eagle was delisted, with more than 10,000 nesting pairs found throughout the U.S.

Other iconic species like the American alligator and Steller sea lion have made similar comebacks under the ESA.

Challenges on Private Lands

The ESA’s reach over private as well as public property is one of the most persistent political points of contention. More than two-thirds of listed species live on private land, and nearly 10 percent are found exclusively there.

“Your ability to use that land is going to be limited, and you can be prosecuted,” said Jonathan Adler, a professor of environmental law at William & Mary University. “That discourages landowners from cooperating.”

Research on the ground has sometimes suggested those rules create “perverse incentives.” A study looking at habitat destruction in red-cockaded woodpecker populations found logging was moved up to avoid federal restrictions on cutting trees in places where the bird lived.

Congress added incentives like tax breaks and conservation easements to encourage private landowners to help, Adler said, but those programs have steadily shrunk in recent years.

The Endangered Species Act once had bipartisan support, but it is now one of the most litigated environmental laws in U.S. history. Efforts to undermine it have popped up under both Republican and Democratic administrations, only to be reversed when the White House changed.

But today’s experts are particularly worried that the Trump administration’s aggressive rollbacks of protections, combined with a conservative-leaning Supreme Court, could permanently scale back the ESA’s power. All the while, the threats of climate change and habitat destruction continue to push species into more peril.

Harvard Law School professor Andrew Mergen, who worked for 21 years litigating ESA cases, argues the focus should be on providing more resources, not deregulation. “The law has done a lot to prevent extinctions,” he said. “The real challenge is committing enough funding and political will to help these species recover, not dismantling the protections that keep them alive.”

A Glimpse of Hope

Despite the politics, there are some signs of hope. In July, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the Roanoke logperch, an endangered freshwater fish, has improved enough to be delisted from the endangered species. Burgum called it “proof” the ESA is not the “Hotel California.”

Conservationists note the comeback took more than three decades of dam removals, wetland restoration, and expensive reintroduction efforts—projects that began long before Trump. But they add that it’s a sign of what’s possible.

“The optimistic part,” Wilcove said, “is that we know how to save species when we invest in them. The question is whether we’ll make that commitment.”