In Graham Greene’s short story “The Destructors,” a gang of arrogant boys demolishes the home of a stranger. They break into the man’s dwelling and, in an act of arbitrary aggression, dismantle it piece by piece. They rip up the floorboards and saw the support beams. They smash the glass and shred the wiring. They strip it to its plumbing and finally pull down its walls.

“My house,” their victim sobs when he discovers the wreckage. “Where’s my house?”

This is a tale for our times. There are destroyers everywhere, from the White House on down. But there is one particular demolition crew that needs your urgent attention, because its work stands apart for both sheer ambition and lasting harm. The demolition crew is called the House Committee on Natural Resources. Led by the powerful Representative Rob Bishop of Utah, a Republican, it is intent on erasing the great edifice that we call American conservation.

For more than a century, the people of the United States have been at work building this country’s conservation system. Like a family of visionary architects laboring over many generations, citizens here have erected a system of ideas and policies meant to ensure our society’s future by protecting it from ecological devastation. This system is built atop a few foundational laws: the Antiquities Act of 1906, the Wilderness Act of 1964, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973, among others. Destroy this architecture of environmental sanity, and you destroy our conservation heritage.

The destruction is already well underway. Even as I write, Mr. Bishop and the other members of the House Committee on Natural Resources are waging a relentless assault on each and every one of these essential laws. If they succeed, our priceless public lands, water and wildlife will suffer irreversible damage.