The Trump Administration’s Unfinished Business on Public Lands
Tracking the Interior Department’s remaining policy changes impacting lands, water, and wildlife — Updated 12.21.2020
Note: This analysis was last updated on December 21, 2020.
With just one month left in the Trump administration, the Interior Department has a long list of policy changes it is seeking to enact, with major ramifications for our public lands. These proposals would add to a destructive record of rolling back protections for wildlife, suppressing public input, and dramatically expanding drilling and mining throughout the country.
Launched in January, 2020, an ongoing analysis by the Center for Western Priorities has identified 92 policies the Interior Department is seeking to implement, further weakening protections for wildlife and expanding fossil fuel development on public lands. Since then, the department has completed 23 policies, including finalizing land use plans to allow increased development on land cut from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah, weakening air quality standards for offshore drilling, and developing a plan to offer oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. An additional 32 policy changes are in the process of being finalized, 10 of which would benefit the oil and gas industry.
Additionally, the analysis finds the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has completed or is proposing at least 48 actions to reduce or deny protections for plants and animals under the Endangered Species Act.
Over the past four years, the Interior Department has finalized sweeping policy changes, eliminating rules to reduce methane emissions from drilling on public lands, rolling back regulations to increase the safety and transparency of hydraulic fracturing, watering down offshore drilling safety rules enacted after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, dramatically shrinking national monuments in Utah, and weakening enforcement of the Endangered Species Act. The following are some of the major policies the department hopes to accomplish in the remaining month of the Trump administration:
Across the Interior Department, at least 67 policy changes remain.
Removing protections from threatened and endangered species
Under the Trump administration, the Interior Department has moved to weaken enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, allowing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to ignore future impacts of climate change, removing protections from threatened species, and protect less critical habitat. Additionally, the department is seeking to remove and downgrade protections from species on the Endangered Species List. Publicly available information shows the Fish and Wildlife Service has completed, or is proposing, at least 48 actions to remove, downgrade, or deny protections for plants and animals under the Endangered Species Act — more than the completed or proposed actions to list new species. The Office of Management and Budget’s regulatory agenda also suggests the agency will move to reduce protections for dozens of additional species going forward.
While some efforts involve household names, such as removing the Gray Wolf from the Endangered Species List, others mark key efforts by extractive industries. For example, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a former client of Interior Secretary Bernhardt, has long sought to reduce protections for the American Burying Beetle. The Fish and Wildlife Service did just that, downgrading the beetle from endangered to threatened. In sum, the agency has completed, proposed, or identified 157 actions under the Endangered Species Act.
Methodology
The Center for Western Priorities identified remaining policy changes sought by the Interior Department drawing from the Office of Management and Budget’s Agency Rule List from Fall of 2019, the Office of Management and Budget’s Agency Rule List from Spring of 2020, the Office of Management and Budget’s Regulatory Review Dashboard, proposed rules by Interior Department agencies on Regulations.gov, action items in Secretarial Orders, and active land management plan revisions on the Bureau of Land Management’s E-Planning website. Minor, perfunctory policy changes, such as increasing fees for inflation and revising Duck Stamp contest regulations, were eliminated. Additionally, policy changes that had been finalized were not considered. Policy changes in the Bureau of Indian Affairs were not considered.
Identified Endangered Species Act listing actions were analyzed, with new species listings considered increased protections. Removing a species from the Endangered Species List, downgrading a species from endangered to threatened, and establishing a more permissive 4(d) rule were all considered decreased protections. For ESA actions without a proposed rule, “reclassification” was considered to likely mean de-listing or downlisting.
This analysis will be updated monthly until the end of the Trump administration’s term, noting policy changes that have been finalized and others that have been identified for action. Are there remaining Interior Department policy changes we missed? Email info@westernpriorities.org or tweet @WstrnPriorities.
For more information, visit westernpriorities.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.
