Washington, DC — The National Wildlife Federation challenged the Trump Administration to change course on its lack of environmental leadership, ahead of reported planned remarks.

“Actions speak louder than words—and for the past 900 days this administration has repeatedly acted to allow more mercury, smog and carbon pollution into our air, more nutrient and sediment pollution into our waterways, and more destruction of essential wildlife habitat in our treasured natural places,” said Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. “They’ve proposed slashing EPA and Interior budgets, including defunding the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the Chesapeake Bay Program, and the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Most irresponsibly, they’ve muzzled climate science and abandoned efforts to confront the climate crisis at home and abroad. With the exception of signing a few bipartisan conservation bills and encouraging the conservation of migration corridors, the hard truth is that after nearly 2.5 years in office, the President has failed to live up to the words of his promises. Now he needs to show us, not tell us, that he supports conservation.”

A few examples of the lack of leadership at Trump Administration agencies responsible for protecting America’s natural resources include:

• Rolling back pollution controls on power plants, ignoring science and exacerbating the climate crisis. 
• Weakening mercury pollution standards, ignoring the health hazards to people and wildlife.
• Removing critical protections for many of the nation's streams and wetlands, the most significant attempt to remove protections since the Clean Water Act passed in 1972.
• Rolling back commonsense limits on methane pollution from oil and gas drilling on public lands.
• Opening up millions of acres of public lands to unfettered industrial development, including natural and cultural wonders like Chaco Canyon, New Mexico and Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Minnesota—risking Americans’ wildlife heritage and access to treasured landscapes.
• Implementing a renewable fuel standard that is destroying monarch butterfly habitat and forage, draining western aquifers and accelerating climate change, including through last week’s “reset rule” which will irresponsibly increase pollution to our rivers, lakes and coastal waters.
• Needlessly weakening mileage standards agreed to by the auto industry, which would have saved 6 billion tons of emissions by 2025. 
• Ordering the largest removal of land protections in the country's history, opening up more than 2 million acres of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments to damaging industrial development.

Any claims of environmental stewardship aim to obscure the Trump Administration’s attacks on science and a policy approach that forfeits American’s rights to clean air, water and access to public lands.