President Trump has gone after the ESA multiple times since January, citing overbearing regulations as obstacles to development that hinder “energy domination.” His executive orders this year, too, call on government agencies to rewrite ESA rules in ways that would fast-track fossil fuel projects and limit environmental reviews.

Burgum and other conservatives make the law sound toothless: its strict rules have little to do with helping animals recover. But scientists and legal experts say that the problem isn’t the ESA, but its perpetual underfunding and wavering political support.

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

A Record of Prevention, Not Just Recovery

Critics of the ESA rarely mention that it’s not just about recovering species. It’s also done a good job of preventing mass extinctions, scientists say. Just 26 species ever listed under the ESA have gone extinct while under federal protection since 1973, according to federal records. By contrast, at least 47 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.”

One of the most famous beneficiaries of that care is the bald eagle. Back in the 1960s, the pesticide DDT and loss of habitat left just a few hundred nesting pairs in the lower 48 states. DDT was later banned, and the bald eagle joined the endangered list in 1978. Federal protections and habitat recovery allowed numbers to climb steadily, and in 2007 the eagle was finally taken off the list, with nearly 10,000 pairs nationwide.

American alligators and Steller sea lions are other success stories that have come back from the brink of extinction thanks to ESA protections.

Challenges on Private Lands

ESA protections cover private property too, which has been another area of controversy. About two-thirds of listed species depend on private land for habitat, and about 10 percent live there exclusively, according to Wilcove.

“You’re telling the landowner, your ability to use that land is going to be limited and you can be prosecuted,” said Jonathan Adler, a professor of environmental law at William & Mary. “That discourages landowners from cooperating.”

In some cases, research has shown this has created “perverse incentives.” One study on red-cockaded woodpeckers, for instance, found timber was harvested earlier in the bird’s habitat, likely to avoid federal habitat restrictions.

Congress has tried to address these concerns over the years by offering incentives such as tax breaks and conservation easements, which are programs that pay landowners to help conserve habitats. But use of these programs has decreased over the last decade, leaving some conservationists concerned they’re no longer enough.

The Future of the ESA

The Endangered Species Act used to have bipartisan support, but in recent decades it’s become one of the most litigated environmental laws in the country. The Trump administration has taken more drastic measures than some of its predecessors, but similar proposals have been issued and then blocked when the political climate shifted.

Today, however, some experts are concerned that the Trump administration’s aggressive approach—coupled with a conservative-leaning Supreme Court—could permanently narrow the ESA’s scope. At the same time, climate change and habitat destruction are only worsening, with more and more species facing the crisis levels the ESA was designed to avoid.

“The most vocal critics of the ESA,” said Andrew Mergen, an adjunct professor at Harvard Law School who worked on ESA cases for nearly two decades at Interior’s Justice Department. “say the problem is the law, and we need to deregulate. But if you look at the facts on the ground, the problem is that we don’t have the resources to do the job. We should be debating how to fund it properly, not undermining it.”

A Glimpse of Hope

The conservation war may be a political one, but that hasn’t stopped a recent bit of good news: in July, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the Roanoke logperch, a freshwater fish, has made a sufficient recovery to no longer be considered endangered. Burgum hailed the removal as “proof” the ESA was no longer “Hotel California.”

But conservationists point out that the recovery took more than three decades, thanks to dam removals, wetland restorations, and a massive, multi-million dollar reintroduction effort—a project that started long before Trump was elected.

“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.”