Yellowstone National Park was among the first conservation success stories in the United States; its first protections were secured in 1872.

On the eve of the 250th anniversary of American independence, our country can be proud of many things. One of the most important and enduring of these — two centuries of land and water conservation — is now under unprecedented attack from President Donald Trump and his administration.

In South Carolina, explorers, artists and scientists extolled the beauty and abundance of the “New World.” John Lawson in the late 1600s asserted, “The inhabitants of Carolina, through the richness of the soil, lead an easy and pleasant life.”

It wasn’t long, however, before signs of environmental degradation began to appear. In his 1833 Labrador Journal, John James Audubon observed: “Nature herself seems perishing. …. When no more fish, no more game, no more birds exist on her hills, along her coasts, and in her rivers, then she will be abandoned and deserted like a worn-out field.” George Perkins Marsh’s 1864 masterpiece, "Man and Nature," warned that America’s abundant land and water resources were beginning to suffer the same fate as those of the degraded landscapes of the Middle East.

Dana and Virginia Beach both have written books, his about a shorebird rookery near Edisto and hers about rice culture and conservation.

Inspired by "Man and Nature," New York lawyer Verplanck Colvin campaigned for protection of the Adirondack Mountains to reverse decades of rapacious logging. Colvin wrote, “Unless the region be preserved essentially in its present wilderness condition, the ruthless burning and destruction of the forest will slowly, year after year, creep onward … and vast areas of naked rock, arid sand and gravel will alone remain to receive the bounty of the clouds, unable to retain it.” The Adirondack Park was created in 1892. Over the years, the park grew to 6.1 million acres — the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States.

In the West, protections for Yellowstone and Yosemite were secured in 1872 and 1890. The conservation movement quickly spread across the continent. For roughly a century South Carolina has been a prime beneficiary of, and a leader in, American conservation.

In 1932, President Herbert Hoover established the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge to protect essential habitat for migratory birds. In 1936, the Francis Marion National Forest was established by President Franklin Roosevelt. A few decades later, Sens. Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings introduced legislation to create the Congaree Swamp National Monument, which was approved by President Gerald Ford in 1976, then designated a national park by President George W. Bush in 2003.

The ACE Basin initiative — widely regarded as one of the most successful conservation efforts in modern history — was embraced and advanced from its inception by Hollings and Thurmond. Today, Gov. Henry McMaster has steadfastly supported land conservation through his commitment to permanently protect half of our state’s land and waters.

In South Carolina and throughout America, conservation has been largely nonpartisan. Local, state and national leaders — Democrats and Republicans — have advanced this fundamental principle of American life. Today, the conservation movement in the United States is a model worldwide representing, in the words of author Wallace Stegner, “America’s best idea.”

On Jan. 20, the national commitment to the environment radically changed. President Trump and his administration have relentlessly undermined the progress that has made America a global environmental leader, dismantling and destroying conservation programs and policies that took centuries to establish.

The ever-lengthening list of attacks on the environment includes rolling back protections for migratory birds, weakening the Endangered Species Act and wetland regulations, removing restrictions on mercury pollution, opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, promoting oil drilling off the Southeastern coast and freezing hundreds of millions of dollars for land conservation, including money for South Carolina.

The administration’s attacks on the environment, if allowed to stand, will cause long-lasting — and in some cases, permanent — damage, at a moment when we can least afford it. On the cusp of our country’s quarter millennium, it is time to unite in defense of America the beautiful. As we support conservation efforts in our communities and statewide, we must demand that our senators and representatives halt this reckless carnage at the federal level, and work to secure a world for our children and grandchildren that is as bountiful as the one that has been passed down to us by previous generations.

Virginia Beach and Dana Beach are longtime conservationists, Charleston residents and coauthors of "A Wholly Admirable Thing: Defending Nature and Community on the South Carolina Coast."