The Trump administration wants to take 245 million acres of public land that was previously protected for conservation and use it to “drill, baby drill.”
In 2024, the Biden administration installed a federal rule to “restore habitats, guide strategic and responsible development, and sustain our public lands for generations to come,” particularly in the West. Now Trump is trying to repeal the law to make it easier to drill for oil and keep cattle and other livestock on land that makes up nearly a tenth of the United States.
The business side of this equation is rejoicing.
“The Biden administration unlawfully placed conservation above all else,” National Mining Association President Rich Nolan told The New York Times. “This new rule reinstates the balance of federal land use intended by Congress, ensuring that our vast resources can meet today’s soaring energy needs and become the secure mineral supply chains for American industry.”
Interior Secretary Doug Bergum echoed those sentiments.
“The previous administration’s Public Lands Rule had the potential to block access to hundreds of thousands of acres of multiple-use land—preventing energy and mineral production, timber management, grazing and recreation across the West,” he said in a statement on Wednesday. He also noted that the U.S. was looking to use the land to sell more natural gas to other countries and that artificial intelligence was a more pressing issue than conservation or climate change.
“What’s going to save the planet is winning the A.I. arms race,” he said. “We need power to do that, and we need it now.”
Environmentalist groups, unsurprisingly, see it much differently.
“It’s fitting that Secretary Burgum made this announcement while jet-setting across Europe. If he spent more time with Westerners and less time pretending he’s an international man of mystery, he’d learn that conservation is one of the core uses of our public lands,” Center for Western Priorities executive director Jennifer Rokala said in a statement.
“If Secretary Burgum spent more time in the West, he’d understand how conservation fits into everything the Bureau of Land Management does. Hunters, anglers, hikers and backpackers all praised the public lands rule because it helps ensure access to public lands for future generations” she continued. “Public lands management is a balancing act, and you just tipped the scales back to the 19th century.”
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