When a change in federal administration priority closed the door on the inaugural National Nature Assessment, the report’s crew of volunteer authors could have stopped. Instead, they opened a window.

The team, drawn from academia, nonprofits and industry, chose to continue the work independently to put together a comprehensive report, originally directed by an April 2022 Executive Order, that would explain the ways nature supports life and livelihoods across the United States. 

Thanks to this tireless team, the National Nature Assessment became The Nature Record, and the draft is now available online for the public to read and comment on.

“The overall intent of the effort is unchanged,” said the University of Georgia’s Todd Bridges, lead author of Chapter 14: Risk, Resilience, and Security. “The goal is still to identify and assess the ways in which nature supports our society.”

In some ways, the shift has expanded the project’s reach: “Engagement and communication  has become a larger part of the overall effort,” Bridges said. “There’s a lot of planning underway to share this across all of society, which is really positive.”

The draft assessment is currently open for public comment online and the focus of a collection of public events across the country. A public comment period in the fall of 2024 allowed the public time to review the “zero-order draft,” a detailed outline of the full report. The version available today goes further, offering 15 full-length chapters on the role of nature in the United States. 

After the public comment period closes on May 30, 2026, the authors will use feedback from the public and National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to finalize each chapter.

This summer, more than a hundred contributing authors will convene in-person in Washington, D.C. to meet with leadership and work in collaboration on finalizing the assessment. 

“Everybody in this team effort is committed to highlighting the importance of nature to human society,” said Bridges. “We believed in the need for the assessment and for sharing its results.”

The final draft of the assessment will be published online in the fall of 2026, and published as a book by MIT Press in 2027. The original mission of the assessment remains: bringing together knowledge, storytelling, and public participation to explore how nature shapes every aspect of our lives.

If you’d like to read the draft report (or leave comments!), check out NatureRecord.org.