Oh Well! Day 1 - Shitstain's Billionaire Interior Secy. Orders Weakening Of National Monuments, Wildlife Protections

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On Monday, Burgum directed his assistant secretaries to ease the way for energy development on federal lands, including by reinstating all energy leases that had been canceled under the Biden administration and offering more parcels of public land for oil and gas drilling, among other pro-fossil fuel actions. “I’m just kind of confused,” said Jamie Pleune, an associate professor and research fellow at the University of Utah’s Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment law and policy program. “They say that there’s an energy crisis, but oil production is higher than it’s ever been,” with the U.S. producing over 13 million barrels of oil a day in recent months, and millions of acres of federal land remaining available for oil and gas companies.

Alan Zibel, research director at Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, said the Interior Department under Burgum “appears inclined to shrink or sell off public lands to fossil fuel interests and mining companies, while making expansion of renewable energy more difficult. This isn’t technology-neutral ‘energy abundance,’ it’s a blatant giveaway to the fossil fuel interests who were generous benefactors to Trump’s campaign.”

At risk under Burgum’s order are public lands that have been withdrawn from mining, oil and gas development—including the nation’s national monuments, which, despite being extremely popular with the American public, have elicited scrutiny from Republicans in recent years for their protection of wide open spaces and culturally significant sites from development. The order calls on the Interior’s assistant secretaries to identify in their action plans how to accomplish “actions to review and, as appropriate, revise all withdrawn public lands” under the Antiquities Act of 1906, the law that allows presidents to create national monuments, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, which outlines how federal lands can be used and allows for the establishment of national wildlife refuges and more.

During his last administration, President Trump shrank the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah, created during the Obama and Clinton administrations, respectively, to fractions of their original expanses. President Joe Biden quickly restored them to their initial sizes after he took office. Trump and Burgum have both signaled those monuments—which supporters cite as culturally important to local tribes who advocated for their creation and vital for local wildlife—could be shrunk again, and Utah Republicans have attacked Bears Ears and Escalante for curtailing mining and drilling in the areas they protect.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05022025/new-interior-secretary-weakens-public-land-protections-fossil-fuels/