“In Western states, we are detecting a shift in people's attitudes in what has been pretty much thought of as a solid bloc in favor of resource extraction,” said Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters. “Majorities were speaking out in favor of conservation, renewable energy, mass transit, pro-environment. I think we're going to be moving in that direction.”

It is an assertion scoffed at by William Perry Pendley, director of the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation, based in Denver.

"The environmental movement, more than any other election I've watched since 1964, went all-out to defeat George Bush. I've never seen the spending and they wrapped themselves around John Kerry and went down to stunning defeat," he said.

Environmentalists spent millions on television ads in battleground states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Mexico, and thousands of volunteers swarmed through neighborhoods.

In the end, Bush's environmental record was almost a non-issue, as he won again in Florida and took New Mexico from the Democrats and environmental-backed Senate candidates lost in Florida and North Carolina.

There were bright spots for conservationists.

Environmental groups helped elect Ken Salazar to the Senate from Colorado and his brother, John Salazar, to a House seat in the state. They poured resources into Republican Joe Schwarz's House win in Michigan, and helped senator-elect Barack Obama get the Democratic nomination in Illinois.

Despite that optimism, environmentalists expect to be trying to play goalie on the Bush administration's policies for the next four years.

Rather than quietly enacting regulatory changes as the Bush administration did in the first term, Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said he anticipates a front-door approach, including wholesale rewrites of key environmental legislation.

On the block could be the administration's push for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, passage of the industry-backed Clear Skies program, rewriting the Endangered Species Act, and amending the National Environmental Policy Act.

Manuel Lujan Jr., who was Interior secretary under Bush's father, expects the president to support a growing environmental trend in the West as he works for cleaner air and water. He said there could be some revision of the Endangered Species Act to take into account human and economic costs of preservation, but he does not anticipate major rewrites of core environmental laws.