The Roadless Area Conservation Rule has protected more than 58m acres of national forests from development since 2001. Almost 2 million people submitted comments on it. Brooke L Rollins, the US secretary of agriculture, is working to rescind the rule. This is just one prong in the Trump administrationās campaign to remake public lands.
The Department of the Interior is cutting 43 partnerships with outside groups it says no longer align with the Trump administration's priorities. The department terminated more than $4 million in planned funding for programs tied to DEI, environmental justice and support services for illegal immigrants. The Hispanic Access Foundation, which offers scholarships for illegal immigrant Latino students, and Latino Outdoors, which provided instructions on avoiding detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were among the groups targeted.
$425 million will be spent to extend the life of 12 coal plants in several states. $75 million will go toward a new coal export terminal in Oakland, California. Environmental Protection Agency rollbacks of regulations meant to protect people from toxic coal ash have been implemented recently.
There are more than 100 parcels included in a June 16 June 16 lease sale by the Bureau of Land Management encompass elk, mule, and mule. Many sit in Moffat County, which bills itself as the āElk Hunting of the Worldā and relies on the pastime for its economic stability.
35,000 public comments were submitted to the National Park Service in response to a government request. The vast majority of visitors objected to what they saw as an attempt to downplay difficult chapters of American history. The Sierra Club is pursuing a lawsuit against the Interior Department to access records related to the review.
The Trump administration is opening sealed bids for nearly 690,000 acres of oil and gas drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge starting at 10 a.m. Alaska time on Friday. It's the first of four lease sales required under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which mandates at least four auctions in the area by 2035. The protected area occupies a section of northeastern Alaska roughly the size of South Carolina.
It's been 120 years since Teddy Roosevelt signed into law the Antiquities Act. The Act allows the President to set aside certain public natural areas as park and conservation land. It has been used more than 100 times since its passage, starting with Devilās Tower in Wyoming and including a dig site in Utah containing thousands of dinosaur skeletons and dozens of native American sites.
A federal judge blocks the U.S. Forest Service from using Trump's "national energy emergency" to expedite the review process for construction of a transmission line across the Nebraska Sandhills. The R-Project includes construction of an $835 million transmission line that stretches 226 miles. Environmental groups say the line will destroy many iconic tribal, historic and cultural landscapes, artifacts and resources.
The Center for Biological Diversity sued the federal government over its attempts to undercut Endangered Species Act protections for the sake of coal mining. The court ruled that the government's process wasn't consistent with the law. Coal mines will be required to follow the law and ensure their activities don't harm protected plants and animals.
The U.S. government is preparing to auction off slices of the seabed in federal waters. The first one is slated for August in American Samoa, with subsequent lease sales planned for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and Alaska. If these go forward, they could mark the first commercial lease processes for deep-sea mining anywhere in the world. Critics say the regulations that would govern this industry are outdated and lack important oversight provisions.