Trump abandons 66 international organizations including the 8-decade-old coalition that identifies and protects endangered species

If our Outlaw Prez was told that injecting pulverized elephant trunks would speed up the extraction of coal, oil, and gas, he’d subsidize poachers to kill every pachyderm in Asia and Africa. 

Elephants are perhaps the most iconic of the world’s 16,000 species the International Union for Conservation and Nature has listed as “endangered” or “critically endangered.” Of those, 1,300 live in the United States. Amid all the other nefarious and murderous activity the Trump regime has engaged in so far in 2026, the White House on Wednesday announced the U.S. would withdraw from 66 international organizations, including the IUCN. (Here’s the White House list of all 66.)

Nobody should be surprised by the withdrawal from the International Panel on Climate Change  or the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Trump and several members of the regime have made clear they think they know more than the overwhelming majority of climate scientists. They are determined to erase data or rewrite it to prove that “climate alarmism,” as they label it, is the “hoax” they assert. Several other international organizations that deal with climate or environmental matters are also being abandoned. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio —taking a breather from fantasizing about doing even more to Cuba than was done to Venezuela — called the organizations “wasteful” and “mismanaged” and, most crucially, not aligned with White House priorities. 

And nobody should be surprised that the IUCN found a place on the White House roster of targets for withdrawal. After all, Trump’s crew have proposed a new interpretation of the U.S. Endangered Species Act that redefines “harm” so that habitat destruction only counts if it directly kills or injures individual animals, rather than as part of a broader ecological harm that leads to species declines. Indeed, habitat loss is the leading cause of harm to endangered species. Trump cries crocodile tears for raptors killed by wind turbine blades, but shows no mercy for wildlife when it comes to setting policy. 

There is a profound injustice embedded in the U.S. withdrawal. Much of the planet’s remaining biodiversity exists in the Global South, often stewarded by Indigenous and local communities facing immense pressure from mining, logging, and agribusiness. Pressure that includes numerous murders of environment defenders. The IUCN has increasingly centered these communities, recognizing that conservation without justice is unsustainable. The U.S. exit abandons not only endangered species but also people — particularly those who protect forests, wetlands, and reefs at enormous personal risk.

There was a moment nearly 80 years ago when humanity took stock of itself and its fellow beings on the planet and decided — however haltingly and imperfectly — to catalog, defend, and cherish the web of life that sustains all of us. In 1948, that recognition birthed the IUCN, a coalition of governments and civil society that functions as the world’s most rigorous ledger of species survival and loss, assembling scientists, governments, and individuals into a shared project of identifying which species are disappearing, why, and what can still be done to save them. It’s the global authority on extinction, and that is precisely why Trump wants nothing to do with it. He’s contemptuous of domestic endangered species law, hostile toward science in general, and brazenly allied with extractive industries that view wildlife protections as obstacles to be bulldozed.

IUCN’s core work is unambiguous. Via its Red List of Threatened Species, the organization provides the scientific foundation for species protections worldwide, assessing extinction risk using standardized criteria applied across borders and political systems. More than 169,000 species have been evaluated — mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, bugs, plants, fungi — making the Red List the single most authoritative measure of biodiversity loss on the planet. Governments use it to design laws. Courts use it to weigh evidence. Conservation funding flows from it. IUCN does not merely document extinction. It assigns responsibility. It identifies drivers — habitat destruction, overexploitation, pollution, invasive species — and, crucially, names the policies that accelerate or slow those forces. For a president allergic to accountability, that function is intolerable. 

The IUCN won’t vanish because the U.S. leaves, but its departure could spur other nations to withdraw as well. It’s also not hyperbole to think Trump might try to intimidate or bribe other nations to withdraw.

We’re in the midst of a biodiversity crisis. That is, we’re wiping out great swaths of the other creatures and plants living with us on Earth. There is an ongoing insect apocalypse and a bird apocalypse. Although neither the IUCN nor the Endangered Species Act have conquered extinction, they’ve had tremendous positive impacts. But at the White House there’s no mercy for species on the precipice.

Consider the Florida panther, a cougar whose survival depends on large, connected habitats in a state relentlessly consumed by sprawl, highways, and speculation. Federal biologists have repeatedly warned that weakening habitat protections could push the panther back toward extinction. Yet the Trump regime systematically rolled back the regulatory tools designed to prevent that outcome, privileging developers and road builders over one of the most endangered mammals in North America. (Full Disclosure: I am a member of the Seminole panther clan.)

Then there ‘s Chinook salmon, a keystone species for ecosystems, fisheries, and Indigenous nations across the Pacific Northwest. Salmon runs have collapsed over the decades under the weight of dams, warming rivers, and habitat destruction. Efforts by Indigenous peoples and environmental activists worked to dismantle some dams to spur a return of the salmon. And some have done so. Trump-era agencies on the other hand repeatedly intervened to undermine protections for salmon in favor of agribusiness water deliveries and hydropower operations, even as scientists warned of irreversible population losses. When salmon disappear, entire river ecosystems unravel. 

IUCN’s budget, roughly $200 million annually, relies heavily on government support. The United States has historically been among the most significant contributors through direct funding, project administrative support, and U.S.-based non-governmental institutional partners. Analysts consistently place U.S.-linked annual contributions in the tens of millions of dollars per year, far from all of it government funding. Those funds support species assessments, conservation planning, and on-the-ground projects — particularly in biodiversity-rich countries that lack domestic resources to do this work alone. The decision to pull that support is not fiscal prudence. It’s ecological slaughter via spreadsheet.

Defenders of the withdrawal argue that the United States should focus on conservation at home. This argument collapses under its own weight. First, as noted, the same administration abandoning IUCN has systematically weakened endangered species protections domestically. Second, biodiversity is transboundary by definition. Migratory birds, marine species, genetic diversity, and disease dynamics do not recognize national sovereignty. Third, the U.S. itself benefits directly from IUCN science, which informs domestic wildlife management, environmental impact assessments, and species recovery plans. 

The deeper motive is ideological. Trumpism rejects the premise that humans owe obligations to nonhuman life unless immediate profit can be extracted. In this worldview, extinction is not a failure — it is merely the collateral damage of success. The market decides. The bulldozer follows.

This posture places the United States in open opposition to the the widely held scientific view that Earth is undergoing a sixth mass extinction, driven overwhelmingly by human activity. IUCN’s Species Survival Commission — a global network of more than 10,000 volunteer experts — exists to counter precisely this kind of willful blindness by translating data into action. Walking away from that is something the Trump regime frames as nationalism. It is instead abdication, sabotage. It strips the United States of moral authority, scientific credibility, and diplomatic leverage all the while it normalizes government shrugs over extinction. 

It’s been argued in some forums that these withdrawals don’t matter in the long run because Trump will be gone and the United States can rejoin all these organizations, the IUCN included. True enough, but the impacts of these withdrawals will cause damage that in some cases will take decades to fix. And no fixes will be coming before the White House has been fumigated in 2029, assuming Trump doesn’t make himself president for life. As with so many other matters, only a House, Senate, and White House run by Democrats with spine can reverse all the damage of backward, counterproductive, and sometimes evil Trumpian and Project 2025 policies. 

So what should be done when there is the political clout to make it happen?

Congress should reclaim its constitutional role by locking in U.S. participation in core international scientific and conservation institutions, including IUCN, and barring unilateral executive withdrawals without legislative approval.

States, universities, tribes, and civil society organizations should deepen direct engagement with IUCN commissions, ensuring that American scientists and conservationists remain embedded in global efforts even when federal leadership collapses.

Americans should understand that attacks on endangered species are not symbolic. They are predictive. A government willing to erase panthers and salmon from the map will not hesitate to sacrifice communities, workers, or futures when they stand in the way.

The IUCN exists to hold humanity accountable, to demand that extinction is not shrugged off as inevitable. Abandoning this institution is declaring war on the living world, shrugging off moral responsibility, and normalizing the wholesale destruction of species for political expediency and good ol’ greed.   

The global conservation community — from scientists and Indigenous stewards to local NGOs — can be expected to mobilize. The IUCN’s network, a 1,400-member union of governments and civil society, will still operate without the United States. Perhaps, if good fortune smiles on us, the next bundle of American leaders will be wiser. Some say I'm a dreamer.