Executive Order No. 14156 directs federal agencies to treat certain energy development projects subject to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as emergencies; Executive Order No. 14181 will likely eliminate the safety net for species in the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem. These policies are the culmination of decades of erosion of protection that the ESA provided, which is especially apparent on private lands. This Article focuses on factors behind the Act’s waning power on private lands: lack of enforcement and the high bar to prove “take” caused by habitat modification, the inconsistent use and uncertain impact of habitat conservation plans, and successful efforts by industry to defeat decisions to list certain rare species. It describes the cases of the lesser prairie-chicken and dunes sagebrush lizard, two species that illustrate the political, legal, and practical challenges of protecting species whose habitats overlap with powerful economic interests.