These rollbacks are just the latest of the Trump administration’s moves to sell out America’s natural resources for profit. In addition to opening up protected areas in the Pacific to industrial fishing fleets, the administration would also allow seabed mineral exploration across the waters of the U.S. territories and Alaska—despite overwhelming opposition from local governments, scientists, and Indigenous communities.
This action shatters the conservation movement’s effort over the past two decades to protect one-third of U.S. oceans. While the courts may yet block the administration’s proclamation and restore the monuments, it is clear that the conservation movement needs a new approach, one that offers more than spatial targets and lines on maps.
Before the president’s proclamations, the United States appeared to be a global leader in marine protection: Nearly one-third of U.S. ocean areas were considered conserved. Yet this progress was largely achieved by protecting the five large marine national monuments designated since 2006. A staggering 99.5 percent of all marine protected areas (MPAs) in the United States were concentrated around islands in the U.S. Pacific territories and Hawaii. The outsize contribution of these MPAs to the national protected area total obscured a critical failing: Vast swaths of America’s coastline and Great Lakes—the waters where 40 percent of Americans actually live, work, and connect with the ocean—remain largely unprotected federally or managed solely to extract as many fish as allowed by government. With the myriad threats facing the ocean today, this approach needed an overhaul even before the Trump administration gutted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s workforce and budget and opened all the marine national monuments to industrial fishing. While the marine national monuments deserve and require robust protection in the courts, ocean conservation in the United States must shift toward conserving nearshore habitats and bringing ecosystem benefits closer to communities.
Moving beyond conservation area targets
The ocean conservation community and political leaders in the United States must go beyond the commitment to protect 30 percent of U.S. lands and ocean by 2030—a campaign known as 30×30—as using a single metric to define success is insufficient. Instead, they should commit to a new, unifying vision: a marquee national pledge to secure the conservation of at least one new beloved ocean habitat in all 35 U.S. coastal and Great Lakes states and territories by 2030, during the next presidential term, bringing the benefits of ocean conservation closer to all U.S. residents who live near the water.
This vision is encapsulated in B.E.A.C.H. 35 (Beloved Ecological Areas and Coastal Habitats), which the America the Beautiful for All Coalition adopted in its 2026 policy agenda. B.E.A.C.H. 35 is not merely another attempt to draw new lines on a map; it is a commitment to protect the special ocean places that people love and strengthen the deep connection between communities and the vital ocean areas that sustain them. This approach requires a necessary and long-overdue paradigm shift, moving beyond the obsession with purely spatial targets and lines on maps and embracing local communities’ needs and the profound wisdom of Indigenous knowledge and values.
Incorporating Indigenous knowledge
Indigenous peoples, from coastal Tribes in Alaska and the continental United States to Pacific Islanders in Hawaii and the U.S. Pacific territories, live in dynamic, reciprocal relationships with marine environments—and have for millennia—and they offer lessons and knowledge of how to improve ocean conservation. Their systems of governance and stewardship define conservation success not by how much is cordoned off, but by the health of the relationship between the people and the place. While all are unique, for many Indigenous communities, the ocean is not a resource to be extracted or a wilderness to be untouched, but a living relative to be cared for. Supporting Indigenous-led conservation—through science, NGO engagement, and governmental policy—is not merely an act of justice, it is a practical imperative for durable conservation.
This paradigm shift necessitates embracing the core Indigenous values that guide durable stewardship. A foundational text by Kirkness and Barnhardt offers the Four R’s to explain the Indigenous approach: respect (including understanding community priorities beyond conservation), relevance (grounded in unique cultural contexts, lived experiences, and community realities) reciprocity (such as gifting and working with people rather than simply supporting them), and responsibility (recognizing the history of colonization and the need to elevate community agency). This approach inverts the conventional Western conservation model, which often starts with an outcome predetermined by outsiders.
Indigenous governance models recommend beginning with the people, agreeing upon a transparent process, and allowing the correct co-designed outcomes to emerge. By grounding efforts in these values, and by centering Indigenous sovereignty and the inherent right to co-manage, conservation becomes an act of cultural restoration that is more legitimate, equitable, and resilient. As Pacific Islanders say, we must “walk backwards into the future,” using the wisdom of the past, such as traditional navigation and knowledge systems, to illuminate the path forward in a reciprocal relationship with the living ocean.
Measuring conservation with people-centered metrics
The next era of ocean conservation must be rooted in more than just acres of area protected—it must prioritize ecological integrity and human-ocean relationships. The conventional metric of success for federal ocean conservation the past few years—a percentage of ocean closed off—is insufficient because a single number does not capture the complexities of these systems. A local, community-driven approach is far more likely to ensure that success is measured through the lens of access, quality, and equity and justice.
The B.E.A.C.H. 35 initiative provides the mechanism to translate these values into a tangible national policy. By protecting or significantly strengthening the conservation of at least one beloved ocean habitat in all 35 coastal and Great Lakes states and territories, the initiative forces a decentralized, local focus. This shift is crucial because, while government decisions are necessarily top-down, the implementation and governance of conservation must grow from the bottom-up. For conservation to be durable, the human dimensions must be addressed in addition to the biological and scientific ones. The conservation initiatives that emerge through this new lens should be as unique and diverse as the United States itself.
For example, the Center for American Progress’ “Nearshore Ocean Progress” framework focuses on conserving six critical nearshore habitats: kelp forests, coastal wetlands, oyster reefs, seagrass meadows, coral reefs, and beaches and dunes. These ecosystems deliver outsize benefits for people and nature. For instance, kelp forests and seagrass meadows are vital for biodiversity and carbon sequestration, while coastal wetlands and oyster beds act as natural infrastructure, buffering against storms and filtering water. Coral reefs, beaches, and dunes provide essential habitat, coastal protection, and support local economies. To measure success in protecting these areas, the framework moves beyond simple acreage to suggest people-centered and ecological metrics. Specifically, the report suggests conservation progress should be measured through the lens of access, quality, and equity and justice, assessing people, processes, and outcomes in terms of ecological integrity, jobs created, and the effective utilization of Indigenous knowledge. These new conservation interventions will combine federal, state, Tribal, and territorial leadership, depending on the circumstance, but the federal government will still need to prioritize dedicated funding pathways to follow through on the B.E.A.C.H. 35 commitment.
Conclusion
The task of safeguarding America’s oceans is vast—stretching from the depths of the Mariana Trench to Puerto Rico’s shallow coral reefs, the towering kelp forests of the West Coast, and the seagrass beds lining the East Coast. The B.E.A.C.H. 35 pledge unites all three continental coastlines and the Great Lakes with U.S. island territories to ensure that every American benefits from improved ocean health.
B.E.A.C.H. 35 is a commitment to quality over quantity, equity over exclusion, and local wisdom over centralized mandate. This approach serves the dual goals of growing an ocean conservation movement along every coast, while identifying new policies that ensure a healthy, accessible, and just ocean future for all. It is an opportunity to pivot from a popular model that advanced conservation in one corner of U.S. oceans to one that finally delivers meaningful protection across the entire breadth of the United States by 2030.
The authors wish to thank Sophie Conroy, Alia Hidayat, Jenny Rowland-Shea, and Jasia Smith for their contributions to this article.