President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday seeking to “Make America Beautiful Again,” establishing a council tasked with conserving public lands, protecting wildlife populations and ensuring clean drinking water while remaining silent on climate change . For an administration that has largely focused on rolling back climate regulations and boosting the oil industry , the order is a first nod at outlining a cohesive environmental policy. The move is the culmination of a months-long campaign by Benji Backer, a 27-year-old self-described conservative environmentalist, who brought a draft of the order to the White House in February. But many environmental groups questioned the administration’s commitment to environmental protection. “Given the all-out assault on clean water, public lands and wildlife protection from the Trump administration, it’s hard not to be skeptical of anything it announces,” said Andrew Wetzler, senior vice president for nature at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group, in a statement. On his way to the Iowa State Fair on Thursday, Trump signed a modified version of the order that Backer, who heads a group called Nature Is Nonpartisan, first drafted. The document does not mention climate change, which many leading scientists consider the biggest threat to the environment, or identify measures to curb planet-warming pollution. Still, the order represents a rare instance of Trump elevating environmental priorities. The president spent his first term weakening or wiping out more than 125 environmental rules and policies , and in his second term, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed dismantling dozens of regulations finalized under President Joe Biden. Several people familiar with the matter described how Nature Is Nonpartisan, a relatively new and little-known group in Washington, persuaded the president to embrace the order. Some of the individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. The Make America Beautiful Again Commission will include the heads of the EPA, the Interior Department and other relevant agencies. It will make policy recommendations to the president to recover wildlife “through collaboration rather than regulation,” improve aquatic ecosystems and access to clean drinking water, and expand access to public lands and promote recreation. The order did not keep the original list of priorities drafted by Nature Is Nonpartisan, which had included restoring forests and natural habitats, as well as curbing food waste and plastic pollution. Trump’s directive instructs all federal land management agencies to responsibly manage natural resources while promoting economic growth, encourage voluntary conservation and cut red tape that holds back effective environmental management. The approach is modeled after the Make America Healthy Again Commission led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. That commission recently released a report on the decline in U.S. life expectancy that featured garbled scientific references . Trump signed a related order Thursday titled Making America Beautiful Again by Improving Our National Parks to increase park entrance fees for foreigners and use the revenue to improve park infrastructure. Backer said in an interview that he had expected some mainstream environmental groups to criticize the executive order creating the commission as “greenwashing” — environmental claims with little or no substance behind them. “They might be skeptical that this is just a greenwashing thing … but our goal is for the EO to inform the most impactful environmental policy package since Teddy Roosevelt,” he said, referring to the Republican president who established 230 million acres of public lands between 1901 and 1909. Nearly eight years ago, Backer founded the American Conservation Coalition, a nonprofit that works to mobilize conservative young people around climate change. He stepped down as president of that organization in 2023, saying he wanted to focus full time on making the environment a less politically polarizing topic. On March 20, Backer launched Nature Is Nonpartisan to do exactly that. He announced the new group at an event in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, featuring local politicians such as Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden and social media influencers such as Kristy Drutman, who posts about sustainability under the Instagram handle @browngirl_green. Backer chose the town of Belle Fourche (population 5,900) because it’s the geographic center of the United States, and, at the risk of being too literal, he wanted to emphasize his goal of uniting the country around the environment. “This issue needs to get out of the culture wars,” Backer said. “People just are so divided over President Trump, right? But if he could do one thing that brings people together, and it’s protecting the environment, it would change the course of the issue forever.” Nature Is Nonpartisan’s strategic advisers include Chris LaCivita Jr., a Republican lobbyist and the son of one of Trump’s campaign managers, as well as Collin O’Mara, the CEO of the National Wildlife Federation and a self-described liberal Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Delaware last year. Even before the group officially launched, Backer had a phone call with Lee Zeldin, who at the time was awaiting Senate confirmation to lead the EPA. Zeldin said on the call that if confirmed by the Senate, “I want my legacy to be someone who cares about the environment,” Backer recalled. The EPA did not respond to a request for comment. Then came the White House meeting in February. It was the early days of the new administration, and as Nature Is Nonpartisan members arrived at the West Wing, newly appointed Cabinet secretaries and Vice President JD Vance were entering and leaving the Navy Mess. The session with staff on the White House Domestic Policy Council was supposed to last 15 minutes. Instead, it stretched over an hour. Aides listened with interest as Backer explained that forest fires and degraded ecosystems are eating into the billions of dollars in revenue generated by public lands through hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation. “I remember leaving the White House thinking, ‘No one in the world is going to believe the meeting we just had,’” Backer said. “They completely bought in.” Over the following months, Nature Is Nonpartisan kept in touch with the Domestic Policy Council, which made almost no substantive changes to the draft executive order. Backer convened a meeting last week near Scottsdale, Arizona, with leaders of more than 20 nature nonprofits on the center-right or center-left of the political spectrum — including groups such as Ducks Unlimited and Conservation International — to build consensus on how to steer the administration toward common goals. More liberal groups, such as the Sierra Club and NRDC, were not invited. However, Wetzler said he supported Nature Is Nonpartisan’s goals of uniting nature groups to advance conservation. Following the three-day event, which included a hike up Camelback Mountain, the meeting’s attendees plan to issue a policy road map in the coming weeks that Trump’s newly created commission can use. The meeting came amid a bipartisan outcry that ultimately derailed a proposal by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to sell millions of acres of public land , which showed how much conservative and liberal conservationists have in common, Backer said. “It honestly couldn’t have been timed any better,” Backer said. “It’s almost like the gods wanted us to have this all come to fruition.”