The ESA has long been a target of the Trump administration. Arguing that too many regulations hinder development and stand in the way of “energy domination,” Trump officials have issued executive orders this year instructing federal agencies to rewrite ESA rules in ways that would likely expedite fossil fuel projects, skipping the reviews normally required for the environmental impact they could have on species.

Critics like Burgum and other conservatives present the law as ineffective, with its stringent rules serving little to further recovery. Scientists and conservation lawyers say the issue is not the ESA, but rather chronic underfunding and political flip-flopping.

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

A Record of Prevention, Not Just Recovery

Conservation experts point out that the ESA has a better track record of prevention than some suggest. Although 1,400 species are on the endangered list, only 26 have gone extinct since 1973 while under federal protection, according to federal records. By contrast, at least 47 species are believed to have vanished while waiting to be added to the list.

“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.”

The ESA’s biggest success story may be the bald eagle. As of the 1960s, rampant DDT use and habitat loss left only a few hundred nesting pairs in the lower 48 states. When the chemical was banned, and after the bird was listed on the ESA in 1978, numbers slowly started to increase. In 2007, the bald eagle became the first species ever delisted from the ESA, with nearly 10,000 pairs estimated to be living throughout the country.

Other well-known species, like the American alligator and the Steller sea lion, have also made remarkable recoveries with the help of specific protections.

Challenges on Private Lands

Complicating matters, the ESA’s protections cover both public and private property. And that’s been a point of contention. More than two-thirds of listed species are dependent on private lands, and about 10 percent can only be found on those lands.

“If a species shows up on your property, your ability to use that land is going to be limited and you can be prosecuted,” said Jonathan Adler, an environmental law professor at William & Mary. “That discourages landowners from cooperating.”

Research on some species has shown those rules create “perverse incentives.” One study of the red-cockaded woodpecker, for instance, found that timber was actually harvested at higher rates early on in places where the bird was found, likely to avoid more onerous federal habitat restrictions later.

Over the years, Congress has added incentives including tax breaks and conservation easements, programs that pay landowners to preserve certain habitats. But in recent years, many of those programs have dried up, which worries conservationists.

Long considered a bipartisan success story, the Endangered Species Act has now become one of the most litigated environmental laws in the U.S. In different administrations, efforts have been made to chip away at the ESA, but such attempts were quickly rolled back when the White House changed hands.

Conservation experts say the current administration’s aggressive weakening of protections, coupled with a new, conservative-leaning Supreme Court, could make the ESA’s diminished reach the law of the land for years to come. At the same time, climate change and habitat loss are increasing pressures on already-endangered species.

Andrew Mergen, who until recently was the deputy assistant secretary for wildlife and endangered species at the U.S. Department of the Interior, and who spent more than two decades as an attorney litigating ESA cases at the Environmental Defense Fund and Harvard Law School, said the focus needs to be on committing to the resources it takes to protect species, not on deregulation.

“The law has proven to work in terms of preventing extinctions,” Mergen said. “The real challenge is whether we’re willing to put in the funds and the political will to help the species recover, not in dismantling the protections that keep them from going extinct.”

Despite the political wrangling, there’s some good news to point to. In July, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported that the Roanoke logperch, a freshwater fish, has recovered enough to be taken off the endangered list. Burgum called it “proof” that the ESA is no longer a “Hotel California.”

The conservation community has pounced on the rare positive news. But they note that the recovery took more than three decades of dam removals, wetland restoration and an expensive reintroduction program. The efforts began long before Trump took office.

“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.”