In an executive order signed on Earth Day 2022, former President Joe Biden charged federal agencies to work with researchers to measure the health of natural spaces across the county, from city parks to pristine wilderness areas.
The report’s sobering aspect, though, would be to catalog how benefits offered by the natural world might quickly falter due to global climate change.
“We don’t fully understand how nature matters in our lives today, and how that’s changing, and how it’s changing in the future for our children and our children’s children,” said Phil Levin, the report’s director, during a 2023 webinar.
“And that’s really the genesis for the first ever National Nature Assessment.”
The assessment’s progress ground to a halt on Inauguration Day this year, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order revoking the Biden directive establishing the report. President Trump’s order sought to “unleash American energy” by removing barriers to using fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.
Several Colorado-affiliated scientists spent months working on the assessment and were in the process of revising drafts. Now, the report’s official future remains murky, even if Colorado scientists still hope a version is released.
“When it happened, you know, it was very disappointing,” said James Rattling Leaf, Sr, a tribal engagement adviser to several CU-Boulder centers and a technical contributor to the report.
“ The work that we've done to this point was very valuable. And so something will come from that, I believe that, even if it's not going to come in the sort of way it was originally intended.”
A New Type of Assessment
The federal government already publishes environmental assessments like the National Climate Assessment, which studies how climate change is affecting the country.
The National Nature Assessment was meant to take a broader view. By combing through existing research, the report aimed to present a definitive look at the nation’s lands, waters and wildlife, and the benefits each provide to the country. The report would establish national trends and baselines, according to Bradley Allf, an incoming postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University who worked on the report.
“The goal of the nature assessment was to take stock of all those benefits at a national scale, and that had just never been done before.”
The U.S. Global Change Research Program, a federal umbrella group for 15 agencies, coordinated the report. For months, around 150 authors worked as volunteers on chapters exploring what’s driving natural changes to how it’s intertwined with human health and wellbeing. The eventual result was meant to be a digestible document for the general public.
CSU ecosystem science Professor Gillian Bowser led research on the longest chapter, about future changes to nature. Bowser said her team — which included several other Colorado authors — studied how people actually perceived and defined “nature.” Coloradans might think of nature as miles of backcountry in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, while a New Yorker might perceive an acre or two of manicured lawns in Central Park as their own slice of the environment.
“Having us define nature in that way is very different,” Bowser said. “It’s not about the coyotes and wolves and grizzly bears and so forth. It’s what do people perceive and what do we value?”
Meena Balgopal, a CSU professor who also worked on the chapter, added that people’s distinct perceptions of nature varied greatly throughout the country.
“For me, it’s really about being inclusive and getting the perspective of our farmers, our folks involved in the fishing industry along the coast, our ranchers in the Mountain West, getting our urban communities that are diverse in their own right,” Balgopal said.
Rattling Leaf, Sr., who’s based in South Dakota, advised chapter authors on integrating indigenous knowledge during the writing process. He said he witnessed tremendous progress from the first national climate assessment in the ‘90s to the nature assessment today.
“ We've been working slowly through the years to make the case, if you will, why traditional knowledge is needed, why traditional knowledge is important, and how we can include that in these national assessments,” he said.
The report’s cancellation follows a concerted effort by the Trump administration to stall climate funding, remove climate data from federal websites and expand fossil fuel production. The executive order Biden signed to authorize the report also sought to boost the country’s wildfire resilience.
“We don’t have time to waste. We need to invest in science to enhance our decision making, not play politics with it,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper in a statement sent to CPR News.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program did not respond to a request for comment.
Bowser said she felt “determined” to publish the report in some way, even if the federal government is no longer involved. She said there was a concerted, behind-the-scenes push to get the information out in some form, in part because the report could help communities meet their climate goals.
“It doesn’t matter that the NNA has been cancelled by the government,” Bowser said. “ The purpose of the NNA is that we want every local community to say, ‘Okay, this is how we can get there.’”
Rattling Leaf, Sr. said not publishing the full report would be a missed opportunity to include indigenous knowledge in a peer-reviewed scientific document. He was confident something would be published, like stand-alone journal articles. But the setback of the cancellation reminded him of the resilience of tribal communities.
“We’ve been going through this stuff for 500 years plus,” he said. “When those things happen, it reminds us again about how far we’ve come, but also how far we need to go.”
