January, in brief
Key news from January:
- A federal judge invalidated the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in the nation’s history, ruling an environmental assessment completed for the sale under the Trump administration was deeply flawed and inadequate. The decision invalidates 1.7 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico that were leased to oil and gas producers. The Biden administration offered up more than 80 million acres in the lease sale, which occurred in November 2021. At the time, the administration said its hands were tied by a federal court ruling that the administration’s pause on new oil and gas leasing was illegal.
- The Biden administration announced that it has canceled two mining leases near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a 1.1 million-acre wilderness area in northeastern Minnesota. The leases to extract copper, nickel and other hardrock minerals threatened to pollute the area, which is one of the nation’s most popular wilderness destinations. The decision follows a political tug-of-war in which the Obama administration refused to renew mining leases near the Boundary Waters due to ecological concerns, and then the Trump administration eased the way for Twin Metals Minnesota to mine there by fast-tracking an environmental review. The federal government is also mulling a 20-year mineral leasing withdrawal near the wilderness.
- The Biden administration announced it will tap $3 billion in funding from the recently passed infrastructure bill to support wildfire mitigation efforts over the next ten years. The funding will allow the U.S. Forest Service to treat up to an additional 20 million acres of national forest land through thinning, prescribed fire, and other practices meant to reduce wildfire risk, and support the treatment of as much as 30 million additional acres of federal, state, tribal, or privately held land.
- 30 local business owners who operate in and around Yellowstone National Park sent a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland urging her to once again list the gray wolf as an endangered species after numerous wolves were killed just outside the border of the park. Recently passed laws in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho have authorized more methods to hunt and trap wolves. According to Yellowstone officials, 23 wolves from park packs have been killed so far this winter, 18 in Montana, 3 in Wyoming, and 2 in Idaho — the most in a season since wolves were restored to the region more than 25 years ago. Following the outcry over the recent killings, Montana recently moved to shut down gray wolf hunting in a portion of the state around Yellowstone National Park.
- Steward Rhodes, leader and founder of the extremist Oath Keepers militia, was arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy over the plot to storm the Capitol last year. Rhodes and the Oath Keepers have been tied to public lands extremism since 2014, when they joined the infamous Bundy family standoff against the Bureau of Land Management. Since January of last year, it has become more and more apparent that there was significant overlap between backstage anti-public land insurgents and the Capitol insurrectionists, ranging from far-right politicians to well-known extremists such as the Bundys.
- The Biden administration announced steps to bolster the deployment of renewable energy on public lands and waters and clean up the electric grid. Central to the new effort is an interagency memorandum of understanding to prioritize reviews of renewable energy proposals on public lands, with the goal of permitting 25 gigawatts of renewable projects on public lands by 2025. The new collaboration includes the Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, and the EPA. As part of the new initiative, the Interior Department is developing plans for new Renewable Energy Coordination Offices (RECOs) that will work with the Bureau of Land Management on clean energy.
- New data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that 2021 was the deadliest weather year in the United States since 2011, with 688 people dying in 20 different weather and climate disasters, which cost at least a combined $145 billion. In the West, 2021 brought extreme climate events in the form of flooding in California from an atmospheric river event, widespread drought, a destructive December wildfire in a suburban area, and a heat wave in the Pacific Northwest that scientists say would have been virtually impossible without climate change.
- The Bureau of Land Management announced that it will revert to Obama-era plans for management of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A), throwing out an eleventh-hour Trump administration plan that would have opened up 82 percent of the reserve to oil and gas drilling. By returning to the 2013 plan, the Biden administration effectively takes 7 million acres off the table for future oil and gas leasing.
- The Interior Department held a series of public listening sessions on the forthcoming American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas, which will track protected lands in the U.S. The public can also submit comments through March 4th.
What to watch for in February:
- The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will consider Laura Daniel-Davis’ nomination to serve as Interior’s Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management for the second time on February 3rd. Committee Chair Joe Manchin granted the request for a second confirmation hearing from ranking member, Senator John Barrasso. The committee voted in November to advance Daniel-Davis’ nomination to the full senate.
- Funding for the federal government expires on February 18, setting up a budgetary show-down just weeks before the President’s State of the Union address on March 1. Lawmakers are looking to revive the stalled budget reconciliation legislation, and clinch a fiscal 2022 spending package in the coming weeks.
- President Biden is expected to announce his nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer by the end of February.
- The Center for Western Priorities is planning release more stories as part of our Postcards campaign to feature the people behind efforts to protect special places across the country, so stay tuned!
Best Reads of the Month
Opinion: Biden must pick up the mantle after the loss of three conservation giants
More than 40% of Americans live in counties hit by climate disasters in 2021
Indigenous feminism flows through the fight for water rights on the Rio Grande
BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning has a big to-do list
500 acres of California redwoods returned to tribal management
Everything you need to know about the environment in 2022, and what to watch for this year
Could a 500-year-old, 17-story Sitka spruce be sold for $17,500?
How to identify animal tracks in the snow
Progress report: President Biden’s first year on public lands
The good, the bad, and the incomplete
The Center for Western Priorities released a progress report that takes stock of more than 90 policy changes impacting public lands that have been undertaken by the administration so far during President Biden’s first year in office.
CWP identified five broad areas of focus on public lands for the Biden administration: Renewable energy, fossil fuels, the 30×30 effort to protect lands and waters, wildlife protections, and organizational changes. In those areas, we tracked 80 separate administrative actions, along with 13 other actions that did not fit neatly into the five categories. The full data set is available here.
The progress report takes a nuanced look at the positive and negative impacts of the Biden administration’s actions so far, as well as the potential for the president’s conservation legacy if he follows through on policy changes that are currently underway.
On climate change, the president’s bold action to increase renewable energy was tainted by his decision to unleash a “carbon bomb” by holding a massive oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico.
When it comes to conservation, the president’s “America the Beautiful” initiative could become President Biden’s signature achievement if he and his administration move quickly to reach the 30×30 goal of protecting 30 percent of America’s lands and waters by the end of the decade.
Katie Worth on how Big Oil is influencing public education
From buying off experts to luring in underpaid teachers with promises of classroom supplies, Big Oil and Big Coal are waging a successful war on accurate science education and setting the U.S. up to fail in its fight against climate change. Award-winning investigative journalist Katie Worth joins Aaron and Kate on The Landscape to talk about the issue, which is the topic of her new book, Miseducation: How Climate Change is Taught in America. The book, which came out in November 2021, pulls the curtain back on the many ways the fossil fuel industry is sowing doubt about climate change in America’s classrooms, despite the global scientific consensus that human-causing climate change is real and getting worse.
Quote of the month
“When we look at conservation, we’re always trying to save one thing. We’re trying to save a tree, and then we’re missing the whole forest. In reality, conservation should be more holistic. Often the reason why we have endangered species, and continue to see ecosystem loss, is that there’s so many driving factors that are destroying those landscapes. Conservation should start focusing on seeing the bigger picture, which is healing.”
— Jessica Hernandez, a Maya Ch’orti and Binnizá-Zapotec Indigenous environmental scientist and author
Picture this
A golden sun over the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. Photo by Robert Hallam, www.SharetheExperience.org
For more information, visit WesternPriorities.org or RoadTo30.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.
