The White House Killed This One of a Kind Report. The Scientists Behind It Aren’t Giving Up

Written by

Libby Denkmann and Alec Cowan · KUOW · April 22, 2025

Featuring Phil Levin, member of the Center’s Research Collaborative

Phil Levin is a Professor of Practice at UW, the Lead Scientist for the Nature Conservancy of Washington, and a member of the UW Center for Nature and Health’s Research Collaborative.

“Our world is changing. It’s changing rapidly. Like, we can see climate changing our world as we speak, but also, we’re losing nature at unprecedented rates, and there’s an equity crisis as well.”

That was University of Washington professor Phil Levin two years ago. At the time, he’d just been tapped by the Biden Administration for a one of a kind mission: writing the most all encompassing review ever of nature throughout the entirety of the United States.

“The National Nature Assessment,” as it was called, was to be a wide ranging report on the state of and potential threats to the U.S.’s varied ecosystems.

Trump Tried to Derail Our Work. We Banded Together, and Moved Forward.

Written by

Phillip Levin, PhD · NY Times · April 22, 2025

Levin is a member of the Center’s Research Collaborative

Phil wears black glasses and smiles widely.
Phil Levin is a Professor of Practice at UW, the Lead Scientist for the Nature Conservancy of Washington, and a member of the UW Center for Nature and Health’s Research Collaborative.

It started with a text in late January: “Call me.”

I was in the Sonoran Desert, fleeing the Pacific Northwest’s winter gloom, and I pulled into a gas station to make the call.

“All work on the National Nature Assessment is to stop,” a Trump White House representative on the other end said. “Immediately.”

For over two years, nearly 200 other scientists and I had been working on the first full accounting of nature in America: an extensive report on its role in our health, economy and well-being. Now, with the revoking of a Biden executive order that called for the assessment, it was seemingly over.

Like thousands of scientists who have landed in the cross hairs of politics since President Trump took office again, my colleagues and I felt the deep pain of this sudden cancellation. I don’t believe we were singled out. We were just collateral damage in a broader political battle that reversed a dozen Biden executive orders.

WA Scientists Plan to Publish Report on Nature That Trump Canceled

Written by

Lynda V. Mapes · Seattle Times · February 17, 2025

Featuring multiple members of the Nature and Health Steering Committee and Research Collaborative

From left, Tessa Francis, Howard Frumkin, Josh Lawler, Anne Guerry, and Phil Levin, part of a group of scientists that worked on the country’s first National Nature Assessment, pose together for a portrait in Seattle on Friday. Scientists across the country are going forward with the publication after it was cancelled by the Trump administration. (Ivy Ceballo / The Seattle Times)

After President Donald Trump canceled a report on the state of nature in the United States, the scientists working on it — many from the Seattle area — say they’ll continue their work and build on it.

The report, announced by President Joe Biden during a visit to Seattle’s Seward Park on Earth Day in 2022, was intended to be the country’s first nationwide assessment of the state of nature.

In all, more than 150 scientists were at work on the assessment across the country — and they had nearly completed the first draft of their work. Then Phil Levin, professor of practice in the University of Washington College of the Environment, and the national director for the report, was informed shortly after Trump took office that the assessment was being terminated.