The ESA has been in the Trump administration’s crosshairs since January. They claim that strict protections hamper development and impede the president’s calls for “energy domination.” This year’s executive orders on the ESA tell federal agencies to rewrite the law in ways that could clear the way for fossil fuel projects without usual environmental reviews.

But while Burgum and other conservatives say the law is ineffective, scientists and legal experts say the opposite. In their view, the problem is that the ESA has been consistently underfunded and treated with political flip-flopping, not that its rules are too strict.

“The biggest problem is that we wait until species are already 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.”

The ESA’s supporters acknowledge that reversing extinctions is its toughest challenge. Since the law’s inception in 1973, only 26 species on the list have gone extinct under federal protections. At least 47 more, meanwhile, have disappeared while waiting for the government to add them 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.”

A classic example is the bald eagle. The loss of habitat and the pesticide DDT had left only 417 nesting pairs in the lower 48 states by the mid-1960s. After DDT was banned and the bird given ESA protections in 1978, nesting numbers slowly climbed. In 2007, it was removed from the list, with an estimated 9,789 pairs in the lower 48.

Other big success stories include the American alligator and Steller sea lion, both of which received targeted protections after severe population declines.

The ESA has long rankled many private landowners. The law protects species on both public and private property, and the Supreme Court has ruled that the government can order the land to be set aside for conservation if necessary.

More than two-thirds of listed species live on private lands, and about 10 percent live only there. “Your ability to use that land is going to be limited, and you can be prosecuted,” said Jonathan Adler, an environmental law professor at the University of William & Mary. “That discourages landowners from cooperating.”

Research has suggested this regulatory uncertainty creates “perverse incentives.” One study found that forests were logged early in places where the red-cockaded woodpecker was living, most likely to get ahead of federal habitat designations.

Congress has tried various incentives over the years, including tax breaks and conservation easements that pay landowners to keep species alive on their property. Such programs have shrunk in recent years, worrying conservationists.

The Endangered Species Act used to be a bipartisan darling. But today, the law is one of the most litigated environmental laws in U.S. history. Previous administrations have come close to gutting the law, only to reverse course when a new one came to power.

Today, experts worry that Trump’s aggressive weakening of the ESA, combined with a conservative Supreme Court, could make those changes permanent. Meanwhile, extinctions and extinction threats are rising due to climate change and habitat loss.

Harvard Law School’s Andrew Mergen, who recently retired after 24 years litigating ESA cases, said the law’s focus should be on resources instead of deregulation. “The law has averted extinctions,” he said. “The real challenge is having the political will to invest enough to help species recover, rather than dismantling the safety net that keeps them from going extinct.”

Amid the political wrangling, there are signs of hope. In July, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the Roanoke logperch had enough hatchlings to be safely removed from the endangered list. Burgum and other lawmakers marked it as “proof” the ESA is no longer a “Hotel California.”

Conservationists note that it took more than three decades of dam removals, wetland restoration, and even paid reintroductions of the fish to get there—initiatives started 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.”