Since January, the Trump administration has issued numerous threats to the ESA, claiming it puts too many hurdles in the way of development and is standing in the way of “energy domination.” This year’s executive orders tell federal agencies to roll back ESA rules, paving the way for a quicker fossil fuel approvals process and bypassing the usual environmental reviews.

Some advocates and policymakers, like Burgum, say the law itself is broken and its inflexible rules do little to further recovery. But many scientists and legal experts argue the ESA’s problems are not from overregulation but rather persistent underfunding and political whiplash.

“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.”

It’s true that the ESA has a spotty track record on species recovery. But experts note that the law is just as good, if not better, at preventing extinctions.

Since 1973, only 26 species have gone extinct while on the federal endangered list. (In at least 47 other cases, species have gone extinct before they could be listed, most likely because protections came too late to help.) The real danger of delisting, say experts, is that the ESA’s blanket protections would vanish with it.

“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 law’s shining success stories is the bald eagle. By the 1960s, rampant use of the pesticide DDT and the loss of nesting habitats had driven down populations to just a few hundred pairs in the lower 48 states. In 1978, the bald eagle was given ESA protections and DDT was banned. Since then, numbers have slowly but steadily increased, with the bird finally taken off the list in 2007 after breeding pairs hit nearly 10,000 nationwide.

American alligators, Steller sea lions and other animals have also thrived once given specific protections.

In addition to federal and state lands, the ESA also applies to private property—a longstanding source of controversy. More than two-thirds of listed species depend on private lands at some point in their life cycle, and around 10 percent can be found nowhere else.

“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.”

Other studies show these rules can have “perverse incentives.” One analysis on red-cockaded woodpeckers found timber was actually more likely to be harvested early on in places where the bird was present, likely to skirt future federal habitat restrictions.

Congress has in the past created some incentives like tax breaks and conservation easements that pay landowners to protect habitats. Such programs have declined in recent years, however, leaving many worried.

The Future of the ESA

The Endangered Species Act used to have broad bipartisan support, but is now one of the most litigated environmental laws in U.S. history. Attacks on the law have come under several presidents, only to be reversed with a change in leadership.

Today, many are concerned that the Trump administration’s aggressive push to weaken protections—coupled with a conservative-leaning Supreme Court—could have long-term effects on the ESA’s authority. Climate change and other forms of habitat loss are also pushing more species toward dire situations.

Andrew Mergen, who spent more than two decades litigating ESA cases for the U.S. Department of Justice and is now an environmental law professor at Harvard Law School, argues that the focus should be on funding, not deregulation.

“The law has prevented extinctions,” he said. “The real challenge is committing enough funding and political will to help species recover, not dismantling the protections that keep them alive.”

A Glimpse of Hope

Despite the current political battles, recent developments have also provided a glimmer of what’s possible. In July, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the Roanoke logperch, a freshwater fish, has made a recovery significant enough to be removed from the endangered species list. Burgum celebrated the delisting as “proof” the ESA no longer needed to be “Hotel California.”

Conservationists point out, however, that the recovery took more than three decades of dam removals, wetland restoration and expensive reintroduction efforts. These initiatives began long before Trump took office.

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