In early July, the Bureau of Land Management quietly announced plans to trade away 2 million acres of public land along Alaska’s Dalton Highway. The immense stretch of boreal forest totters into tundra, an area almost three times the size of Rhode Island. It will be handed over to the state, likely opening the door to mining and development.

The exchange is one of many moves by the Trump administration to privatize public land and roll back climate and environmental protections. In just six months the White House has announced plans to shrink iconic national monuments, reopened oil and gas leasing, rescinded watershed protections to pave the way for mining, and opened millions of acres of national forest to logging. These decisions have been joined by a broader dismantling of climate and environmental regulations, including efforts to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to curb greenhouse gases.

Even as he continued upending how the country’s natural resources are managed, President Trump signed an executive order vowing to “Make America Beautiful Again.” His directive, issued July 3, called for balancing environmental stewardship with economic growth, and established a commission to “advise and assist the President regarding how best to responsibly conserve America’s national treasures and natural resources.” It is unclear what policies this commission might develop or how much authority it will hold.

Benji Backer, a 27-year-old conservative conservationist, hopes to influence some of those details. He has built a national platform around the idea that caring about the environment and climate change is a bipartisan issue. After founding the non-profit American Conservation Coalition, or ACC, eight years ago, Backer launched Nature is Nonpartisan this spring. While ACC was “strictly meant for conservatives, by conservatives,” he sees the new organization transcending partisanship, pursuing environmental action regardless of who holds political power. “If there’s a future for our environment, there has to be a center voice that’s willing to call balls and strikes, and not care about who they could potentially piss off,” he said.

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Courtesy of Benji Backer

The group’s board includes notable conservative figures like David Bernhardt, a lawyer who served as interior secretary during the first Trump administration and was investigated for failing to recuse himself from decisions affecting Halliburton, a former client. He now consults for oil and gas firms. Other advisors include Chris LaCivita Jr., a political consultant and son of the president’s 2024 campaign manager, as well as more centrist figures like Van Jones and David Livingston.

Shortly after the president took office Backer delivered a draft order to the White House containing a list of policy goals he’d developed in consultation with groups like Ducks Unlimited and the National Wildlife Federation. These included goals like restoring forests and combating plastic pollution. Though the final order, announced at the Iowa State Fair, does not explicitly mention climate change, Backer says it helps the EPA administrator and Interior Secretary “move in the right direction.” Based on his conversations with them, Backer says, “They’ve been focused on cutting. It’s my hope that they start building soon.”

Though the Trump administration’s revisions substantially altered the order, Backer was quick to celebrate it. “Working with the White House on this EO for the past six months has been an honor,” he posted on X shortly after Trump signed the document. “This is an incredible step that will leave a positive mark for our environment for generations!”

Backer’s optimistic tone marks a shift from a letter he co-signed with nine other Republican leaders in December, stating that Trump’s win “raises serious questions about both the durability of recent climate gains and the prospects for future progress.” At that time, the coalition statement focused on the election of climate-engaged Republicans like Reps. John Curtis and Marianette Miller-Meeks, both members of the Conservative Climate Caucus. Like many liberal organizations preparing for a Trump administration, the letter also discussed shifting focus to state and local climate action.

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Lobbying efforts by the American Conservation Coalition and its advocacy arm have met mixed success with the Trump administration. They appear to have spent $2.65 million trying to preserve key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, particularly clean energy tax credits. “The tax credits empower the private sector to invest in clean, reliable energy,” Danielle Franz, ACC’s chief executive officer, told Grist, “It’s important to use our resources to reward innovation, and to have those free market or market-based incentives.” She added that the document Grist obtained that outlines the lobbying effort was a “leaked, outdated draft that was never finalized or published,” and “appears to conflate” ACC and its advocacy group’s work.” Those efforts ultimately failed: The reconciliation bill made significant cuts to clean energy policy, effectively halting federal incentives for wind, solar, and other renewable energy projects. The bill did retain some support for nuclear and geothermal power. Franz declined to criticize the decision or discuss specific energy policies, saying “in any bill you’re going to have give and take.”

The budget bill debate also demonstrated how effective conservative voices can be in shaping environmental policy. When Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee proposed requiring the sale of millions of acres of federal land, it sparked swift and broad backlash, including from hunters, anglers, and right-leaning influencers like Joe Rogan. After widespread conservative criticism, Lee scaled back the bill, then withdrew it — underscoring the significant influence GOP conservation groups like ACC can have in determining environmental policy.

It was, Backer says, “a perfect example of what is possible. It basically just allowed us to go out there and show that millions of Americans are willing to stand together for the same environmental outcome.” He hopes to build on that momentum with practical goals: Nature Is Nonpartisan is developing a short list of priorities he believes are politically feasible, including providing more funding for easing water pollution, reforming the Endangered Species Act, and tackling the backlog of maintenance in the nation’s 63 National Parks. (His list made no mention of climate change.) To garner support, Backer recently organized a coalition meeting of conservation groups, including right-leaning organizations like American Forests and Safari Club International, as well as more liberal conservation groups like The Nature Conservancy.

It’s part of a broader effort to tap into what he and others see as a growing awareness among conservatives. As Franz puts it, if you asked most conservatives if “climate change is real, they would say yes.” She points out conservation has deep roots in the Republican party, from Teddy Roosevelt championing the creation of national parks to Ronald Reagan approving the Montreal Protocol to address the ozone hole.

Public opinion has shifted sharply since then, however. According to a 2024 Gallup poll, only 11 percent of Republicans consider climate change a great personal threat, down from 29 percent a decade ago. A Pew Research Center survey reveals that while a majority of Republicans support concrete policies like expanding solar farms and joining international climate agreements, only 12 percent say climate change should be a top national priority — underscoring how political polarization shapes broader attitudes. Though there may be pragmatic support for specific policies, Republicans still consistently prioritize consumer costs, and fossil fuels over renewable energy. “Most conservatives understand the issue,” Franz says. “They’re just tired of the moralism and want solutions aligned with their values.”

In the past, ACC has advocated for streamlining permitting and boosting nuclear energy, promoting an “all‑of‑the‑above” strategy that includes renewables. Franz says ACC is happy with Trump’s “energy abundance” strategy, arguing that traditional energy produced in the United States has “a net reduction for global emissions” because “American-made fossil fuels are cleaner than some other countries.”

The data tell a different story. The International Energy Agency has been unequivocal: To stay within global climate goals, no new fossil fuel development can move forward. Studies show U.S. methane emissions are severely undercounted, especially from shale gas fields, and claims of American fossil fuels being cleaner obscure the urgent need to shift away from them altogether. “Look, I’m not here to defend what Trump’s done on the environment over the last six months,” Backer said. “This is not a black or white thing. This is a four year administration, and we’re trying to shift them in the direction towards conservation as much as we possibly can.”

But hoping for a gradual course correction is at odds with the urgency of the crisis and the need for swift action, said Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who led the EPA under President George W. Bush. She is upset by the Trump administration’s dismantling of that agency, saying the president “has no respect for science.”

In the absence of climate leadership from Washington, Whitman said states will have to step up with their own agreements, like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a coalition of 11 eastern states that aims to limit and reduce emissions from the power sector. Although each of those states is currently led by a Democrat, several of them have had Republican governors since the coalition’s inception in 2005. “There are Republicans that really care about the environment and are doing work,” Whitman said. But while she agrees bipartisan advocacy is essential, she says there’s a clear disconnect between the rhetoric in Make America Beautiful Again and the administration’s policies. “You’ve got to watch what they’re doing, not just what they’re saying,” she added. The gap, she said, “is pretty stark.”

Still, Franz is optimistic about building conservative consensus around a sustainable future. “Our message to conservatives is that this country is worth protecting,” she says.

In its first six months, the Trump administration has aggressively expanded oil and gas leasing, rolled back critical environmental regulations, and weakened methane emissions, reversing previous conservation protections and U.S. progress on global climate commitments. Asked about these policies, Franz said, “I think oftentimes these pieces want to relitigate and relitigate and relitigate the past, instead of talking about the future that conservatives see.”

Franz and Backer see themselves as guardians of a tradition that protects a natural heritage alongside economic freedom. They don’t see a gulf between a livable future and the reality unfolding in Washington — a White House that praises abundance while leasing away the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; an administration that talks about stewardship while gutting the laws that made it possible.

Franz recently became a parent, an experience that’s deepened her commitment to her work. She wants her four-month-old son to grow up seeing the north woods of Minnesota the way she did — deer tracks in the snow, the bite of a November wind, the smell of rifle oil. Franz talks about caring about outcomes, not performative belief tests, how conservatives are tired of virtue signaling, and focusing on solutions. She doesn’t see a tension between supporting oil and gas and promoting conservation at the same time. “It assumes a binary choice between use and between care, and I think that we can do both.”

Whether that’s true is no longer just an ideological debate. It’s a matter of time. As Franz says, “It’s not really a question of, ‘Do you believe in climate change?” anymore. It’s more a question of, ‘What do you want to do about it?’