“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

It’s the ominous slogan for “Hotel California,” an iconic fictional lodging dreamed up by the Eagles in 1976. One of the rock band’s lead singers, Don Henley, said in an interview that the song and place “can have a million interpretations.”

For US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, what comes to mind is a key part of one of the country’s most central conservation laws.

“The Endangered Species List has become like the Hotel California: once a species enters, they never leave,” Burgum wrote in an April post on X . He’s referring to the roster of more than 1,600 species of imperiled plants and animals that receive protections from the federal government under the Endangered Species Act to prevent their extinctions. “In fact, 9

See Full Page