Latest news with #NewMexicoWildlifeFederation
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
As states rethink wildlife management, New Mexico offers a new model
Black-footed ferrets are among the species in New Mexico that need conservation help. A new law expands the authority of the state's wildlife agency to include non-game species, provides additional funding and overhauls the commission that governs wildlife management. (Photo by Kimberly Fraser/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Flickr) For years, outdoors enthusiasts in New Mexico have pushed to overhaul the state Department of Game & Fish — an agency plagued by leadership turnover, funding woes and the scorn of hunters and tree-huggers alike. Now, state lawmakers have given the agency a new name, a new mission, new leadership and a boost in funding to expand its role. The sweeping law enacted in March puts New Mexico at the forefront of a growing movement to rethink states' traditional model of wildlife management. 'We came from a place of extreme dysfunction,' said Jesse Deubel, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, an environmental nonprofit that advocated for the new law. 'Now, I truly do believe that we're going to be a gold standard for wildlife management. Over the next few years. you're going to see an unbelievable shift.' New Mexico's new approach expands the agency's focus beyond hunting and fishing to protect more species and brings in new funding to reduce its reliance on license sales. Other states are watching closely. Lawmakers across the country have introduced bills to change their wildlife agencies, and many have cited the New Mexico measure as an example of what's possible. 'That's the biggest game changer,' said Michelle Lute, executive director of Wildlife for All, a national nonprofit focused on overhauling states' wildlife governance. 'That's the legislation we'll be pointing to as a model in future years.' From Oregon to Utah to Florida, legislators have introduced bills that would overhaul their wildlife agencies' funding, mission and governance. While the proposals have had varying levels of success, New Mexico leaders say it took years of coalition-building to get their bill across the finish line. Wildlife advocates expect the issue to earn more legislative attention nationwide in the years to come. State wildlife agencies focus on 'hook and bullet' work. Some see a new path. Under the traditional model, state wildlife agencies have largely been funded by the license fees paid by hunters and anglers, plus federal excise taxes on equipment such as guns and fishing tackle. The agencies have focused most of their work on species like deer and trout, prized by the sporting groups that provide their revenue. In New Mexico, as in most states, the commissions that govern these departments have been appointed by governors. They're often filled by hunting and fishing guides, ranchers and political donors. Critics say this model results in panels that set policy to protect their economic interests. Today, many wildlife agencies are struggling to stay afloat as fewer and fewer residents hunt and fish. At the same time, plummeting wildlife populations are compelling agencies to expand their work beyond traditional 'game' species. And some wildlife advocates are demanding a new governance model that puts more scientists in charge. This year, state lawmakers across the country have passed or considered a host of major wildlife management overhauls. Some would expand their agencies' mission to focus on non-game species. Others would provide new funding streams to take on that additional work. And some would change the makeup of the commissions that dictate wildlife policy. In New Mexico, lawmakers did all three at once. The state's agency had faced numerous problems over the years. Hunters and bird-watchers alike were frustrated with the agency's leadership. In recent years, several commissioners have resigned or been forced out by Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. At times, the panel has lacked enough members to form a quorum. The agency's budget was in trouble as well. The state had not raised license fees in nearly 20 years, keeping revenue flat even as inflation made the cost of its work more and more expensive. 'We were having to repurpose money from on-the-ground conservation just to make salary adjustments,' said Stewart Liley, wildlife division chief with the New Mexico Department of Game & Fish. 'We were getting to a precarious spot.' In 2023, lawmakers passed a bill to restructure the agency's commission, which would have taken some power away from the governor. Lujan Grisham declined to sign the bill, killing the effort with a pocket veto. We wanted to make it clear that this is our state wildlife agency, and it's the only one we've got. – Jesse Deubel, New Mexico Wildlife Federation executive director This year, lawmakers took a bigger swing. The package passed this session renames the Department of Game & Fish to the Department of Wildlife. It expands the agency's authority to protect non-game species in need of conservation help. 'We wanted to make it clear that this is our state wildlife agency, and it's the only one we've got,' said Deubel, of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation. 'They've got a responsibility to work on any species in the state that has conservation need.' Agency leaders say they were already conducting research and conservation work for non-game species. They viewed that aspect of the bill as a largely symbolic measure that 'shined a light' on the need for more restoration work, Liley said. However, the law did provide more explicit authority for the agency to manage insects and regulate the direct 'take,' or killing, of certain animals. The measure raises license fees — a provision supported by many hunting and fishing groups — and allows for inflation-based adjustments in future years. Meanwhile, lawmakers included another $10.5 million from the state budget, spread over three years, to help the agency take on more non-game conservation. 'It seemed only fair that if we were going to ask the department to take on a broader role that they not finance that just through hunting and fishing,' said Democratic state Rep. Matthew McQueen, who was among the key sponsors. Liley, the agency official, said the new money, along with a separate conservation fund established in 2023, will more than double the state's investment in helping threatened species. The agency expects to hire up to eight new biologists who will conduct research, determine which species need aid and lead restoration efforts. 'This will help us get a better grasp of where we are with different species across the state,' he said. 'There are absolutely projects we have not undertaken because of lack of capacity. This will allow us to do more surveys, to radio-mark birds, to [use that research] and say, 'Let's do forest restoration this way for pinyon jays.'' The package will also change the agency's governance. The current commission has seven seats, all appointed by the governor. Lujan Grisham's appointees have included a car dealer, an Exxon Mobil lobbyist and a former lawmaker who owns an oil and gas business. Under the new model, a bipartisan legislative committee will nominate three candidates for every seat, each of whom must be vetted to demonstrate their knowledge of wildlife. The governor must choose from among those three. One of the seats will be reserved for a wildlife scientist, one for a conservationist, one for a hunter and angler and one for a rancher or farmer. 'These changes add expertise and really important perspectives to the commission,' said Chris Smith, wildlife program director with WildEarth Guardians, an environmental nonprofit. 'Our [current] commission was having structural problems and light scandal almost consistently.' Backers' one disappointment is that Lujan Grisham used a partial veto to strike a provision that would have protected commission members from dismissal by the governor. She argued that the proposed change relied too heavily on the slow-moving court system to remove commissioners, making it difficult to hold problematic members accountable. Political appointees set state wildlife policy. Critics say that's a problem. Lawmakers say they're still intent on protecting agency leaders from the governor's whims, but pleased the rest of the package has gone into effect. While the measure passed with bipartisan majorities, some lawmakers objected to the idea of expanding the agency's mission to protect species beyond those that can be hunted. 'With all due respect, I don't want to pay for a butterfly,' said Republican state Rep. Harlan Vincent, according to KUNM. 'I'm just being honest with you.' And some groups are skeptical that the extra funding from the state budget will be enough to cover the agency's growing conservation role. 'If New Mexico wants to expand the mission of the department, New Mexico needs to pay for it,' Tom Paterson, president-elect of the New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association, said during a Senate committee hearing. 'The necessary funds should not come on the back of the license fees that hunters and anglers pay.' While the agency's new funding and mission are now in place, its name change to the Department of Wildlife won't take effect until next year. And its current commission will remain in office until Jan. 1, 2027. Lujan Grisham's successor will then appoint new commissioners under the revised model. The advocates who backed the New Mexico overhaul say it will take time and investment to make the new model work. They know other states will be watching closely. Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@ SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Vox
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Trump wants to sell off land that all Americans own. It should make you furious.
is an award-winning journalist who has covered climate change and environmental issues for more than a decade. This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. America's federal public lands are truly unique, part of our birthright as citizens. No other country in the world has such a system. More than 640 million acres, including national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges, as well as lands open to drilling, mining, logging, and a variety of other uses, are managed by the federal government — but owned collectively by all American citizens. Together, these parcels make up more than a quarter of all land in the nation. Rep. John Garamendi, a Democrat representing California, has called them 'one of the greatest benefits of being an American.' 'Even if you don't own a house or the latest computer on the market, you own Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and many other natural treasures,' he wrote in 2011. Despite broad, bipartisan public support for protecting public lands, these shared landscapes have come under relentless attack during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump's second term. The administration and its allies in Congress are working feverishly to tilt the scale away from natural resource protection and toward extraction, threatening a pillar of the nation's identity and tradition of democratic governance. 'There's no larger concentration of unappropriated wealth on this globe than exists in this country on our public lands,' said Jesse Deubel, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, a conservation nonprofit. 'The fact that there are interests that would like to monetize that, they'd like to liquidate it and turn it into cash money, is no surprise.' Landscape protections and bedrock conservation laws are on the chopping block, as Trump and his team look to boost and fast-track drilling, mining, and logging across the federal estate. The administration and the GOP-controlled Congress are eyeing selling off federal lands, both for housing development and to help offset Trump's tax and spending cuts. And the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, is wreaking havoc within federal land management agencies, pushing out thousands of civil servants. That purge will leave America's natural heritage more vulnerable to the myriad threats these lands already face, including growing visitor numbers, climate change, wildfires, and invasive species. Canoers paddle out to fish on Broken Bridge Pond in the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire in 2021. Brianna Soukup, Portland Press Herald via Getty Images/Grist The Republican campaign to undermine land management agencies and wrest control of public lands from the federal government is nothing new, dating back to the Sagebrush Rebellion movement of the 1970s and '80s, when support for privatizing or transferring federal lands to state control exploded across the West. But the speed and scope of the current attack, along with its disregard for the public's support for safeguarding public lands, makes it more worrisome than previous iterations, several public land advocates and legal experts told Grist. This is 'probably the most significant moment since the Reagan administration in terms of privatization,' said Steven Davis, a political science professor at Edgewood College and the author of the 2018 book In Defense of Public Lands: The Case Against Privatization and Transfer. President Ronald Reagan was a self-proclaimed sagebrush rebel. Deubel said the conservation community knew Trump's return would trigger another drawn-out fight for the future of public lands, but nothing could have prepared him for this level of chaos, particularly the effort to rid agencies of thousands of staffers. The country is 'in a much more pro-public lands position than we've been before,' Deubel said. 'But I think we're at greater risk than we've ever been before — not because the time is right in the eyes of the American people, but because we have an administration who could give two shits about what the American people want. That's what's got me scared.' The Interior Department and the White House did not respond to Grist's requests for comment. A National Park Service ranger wears a patch as she conducts a walking tour in Everglades National Park, Florida on April 17. The Trump administration's DOGE program has fired hundreds of park rangers across the United Grist In an article posted to the White House website on Earth Day, the Trump administration touted several 'key actions' it has taken on the environment, including 'protecting public lands' by opening more acres to energy development, 'protecting wildlife' by pausing wind energy projects, and safeguarding forests by expanding logging. The accomplishments list received widespread condemnation from environmental, climate, and public land advocacy groups. That same day, a leaked draft strategic plan revealed the Interior Department's four-year vision for opening new federal lands to drilling and other extractive development, reducing the amount of federal land it manages by selling some for housing development and transferring other acres to state control, rolling back the boundaries of protected national monuments, and weakening bedrock environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act. Meanwhile, Trump's DOGE is in the process of cutting thousands of scientists and other staff from the various agencies that manage and protect public lands, including the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM. Nearly every Republican senator went on the record this month in support of selling off federal lands to reduce the federal deficit, voting down a measure that would have blocked such sales. And Utah has promised to continue its legal fight aimed at stripping more than 18 million acres of BLM lands within the state's border from the federal government. Utah's lawsuit, which the Supreme Court declined to hear in January, had the support of numerous Republican-led states, including North Dakota while current Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was still governor. To advance its agenda, the Trump administration is citing a series of 'emergencies' that close observers say are at best exaggerated, and at worst manufactured. The Logoff The email you need to stay informed about Trump — without letting the news take over your life, from senior editor Patrick Reis. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. A purported 'energy emergency,' which Trump declared in an executive order just hours after being inaugurated, has been the impetus for the administration attempting to throw longstanding federal permitting processes, public comment periods, and environmental safeguards to the wind. The action aims to boost fossil fuel extraction across federal lands and waters — despite domestic oil and gas production being at record highs — while simultaneously working to thwart renewable energy projects. Trump relied on that same 'emergency' earlier this month when he ordered federal agencies to prop up America's dwindling, polluting coal industry, which the president and his Cabinet have insisted is 'beautiful' and 'clean.' In reality, coal is among the most polluting forms of energy. 'This whole idea of an emergency is ridiculous,' said Mark Squillace, a professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado, Boulder. 'And now this push to reinvigorate the coal industry seems absolutely crazy to me. Why would you try to reinvigorate a moribund industry that has been declining for the last decade or more? Makes no sense, it's not going to happen.' Coal consumption in the US has declined more than 50 percent since peaking in 2005, according to the US Energy Information Administration, largely due to market forces, including the availability of cheaper natural gas and America's growing renewable energy sector. Meanwhile, Trump's tariff war threatens to undermine his own push to expand mining and fossil fuel drilling. The threat of extreme wildfire — an actual crisis driven by a complex set of factors, including climate change, its role in intensifying droughts and pest outbreaks, and decades of fire suppression — is being cited to justify slashing environmental reviews to ramp up logging on public lands. Following up on a Trump executive order to increase domestic timber production, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins signed a memo declaring a forest health 'emergency' that would open nearly 60 percent of national forest lands, more than 110 million acres, to aggressive logging. Then there's America's 'housing affordability crisis,' which the Trump administration, dozens of Republicans, and even a handful of Democrats are pointing to in a growing push to open federal lands to housing development, either by selling land to private interests or by transferring control to states. The Trump administration recently established a task force to identify what it calls 'underutilized lands.' In an op-ed announcing that effort, Burgum and Scott Turner, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, wrote that 'much of' the 500 million acres Interior oversees is 'suitable for residential use.' Some of the most high-profile members of the anti-public lands movement, including William Perry Pendley, who served as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management during Trump's first term, are championing the idea. An aerial view of gas and oil drilling pads in the Plateau Creek Drainage, near DeBeque, Colorado, where the Bureau of Land Management sold leases in 2016 and 2017. Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post via Getty Images/Grist Without guardrails, critics argue the sale of public lands to build housing will lead to sprawl in remote, sensitive landscapes and do little, if anything, to address home affordability, as the issue is driven by several factors, including migration trends, stagnant wages, and higher construction costs. Notably, Trump's tariff policies are expected to raise the average price of a new home by nearly $11,000. Chris Hill, CEO of the Conservation Lands Foundation, a Colorado-based nonprofit working to protect BLM-managed lands, said the lack of affordable housing is a serious issue, but 'we shouldn't be fooled that the idea to sell off public lands is a solution.' 'The vast majority of public lands are just not suitable for any sort of housing development due to their remote locations, lack of access, and necessary infrastructure,' she said. David Hayes, who served as deputy Interior secretary during the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and as a senior climate adviser to President Joe Biden, told Grist that Trump's broad use of executive power sets the current privatization push apart from previous efforts. 'Not only do you have the rhetoric and the intentionality around managing public lands in an aggressive way, but you have to couple that with what you're seeing,' he said. 'This administration is going farther than any other ever has to push the limits of executive power.' Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a Colorado-based conservation group, said Trump and his team are doing everything they can to circumvent normal environmental rules and safeguards in order to advance their agenda, with no regard for the law or public opinion. 'Everything is an imagined crisis,' Weiss said. Oil, gas, and coal jobs. Mining jobs. Timber jobs. Farming and ranching. Gas-powered cars and kitchen appliances. Even the water pressure in your shower. Ask the White House and the Republican Party and they'll tell you Biden waged a war against all of it, and that voters gave Trump a mandate to reverse course. A slot canyon cuts through the western portion of one of the country's newest national monuments, Chuckwalla Mountains, near Chiriaco Summit, California. President Trump rescinded the area's monument status on March 15. David McNew, Getty Images via Grist During Trump's first term in office, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke repeatedly boasted that the administration's conservation legacy would rival that of his personal hero and America's conservationist president, Theodore Roosevelt — only to have the late president's great-grandson, Theodore Roosevelt IV, and the conservation community bemoan his record at the helm of the massive federal agency. Like Zinke, Burgum invoked Roosevelt in pitching himself for the job. 'In our time, President Donald Trump's energy dominance agenda can be America's big stick that will be leveraged to achieve historic prosperity and world peace,' Burgum said during his confirmation hearing in January, referencing a 1990 letter in which the 26th president said to 'speak softly and carry a big stick.' The Senate confirmed him to the post in January on a bipartisan 79-18 vote. Some public land advocates initially viewed Burgum, now the chief steward of the federal lands, waters, and wildlife we all own, as a palatable nominee in a sea of problematic potential picks. A billionaire software entrepreneur and former North Dakota governor, Burgum has talked at length about his fondness for Roosevelt's conservation legacy and the outdoors. Whatever honeymoon there was didn't last long. One hundred days in, Burgum and the rest of Trump's team have taken not a stick, but a wrecking ball to America's public lands, waters, and wildlife. Earlier this month, the new CEO of REI said the outdoor retailer made 'a mistake' in endorsing Burgum for the job and that the administration's actions on public lands 'are completely at odds with the longstanding values of REI.' At an April 9 all-hands meeting of Interior employees, Burgum showed off pictures of himself touring oil and gas facilities, celebrated 'clean coal,' and condemned burdensome government regulation. Burgum has repeatedly described federal lands as 'America's balance sheet' — 'assets' that he estimates could be worth $100 trillion but that he argues Americans are getting a 'low return' on. 'On the world's largest balance sheet last year, the revenue that we pulled in was about $18 billion,' he said at the staffwide meeting, referring to money the government brings from lease fees and royalties from grazing, drilling, and logging on federal lands, as well as national park entrance fees. 'Eighteen billion might seem like a big number. It's not a big number if we're managing $100 trillion in assets.' In focusing solely on revenues generated from energy and other resource extraction, Burgum disregards that public lands are the foundation of a $1 trillion outdoor recreation economy, never mind the numerous climate, environmental, cultural, and public health benefits. Davis, the author of In Defense of Public Lands: The Case Against Privatization and Transfer, dismissed Burgum's 'balance sheet' argument as 'shriveled' and 'wrong.' Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, second from left, looks on as President Donald Trump signs executive orders about boosting coal production on April 8. Jabin Botsford/Washington Post via Getty Images Demonstrators protest federal workforce layoffs at Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, California, on March 1. Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images 'You have to willfully be ignorant and ignore everything of value about those lands except their marketable commodity value to come up with that conclusion,' he said. When you add all their myriad values together, public lands 'are the biggest bargain you can possibly imagine.' Davis likes to compare public lands to libraries, schools, or the Department of Defense. 'There are certain things we as a society decide are important and we pay for it,' he said. 'We call that public goods.' The last time conservatives ventured down the public land privatization path, it didn't go well. Shortly after Trump's first inauguration in 2017, then-Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican representing Utah, introduced legislation to sell off 3.3 million acres of public land in 10 Western states that he said had 'been deemed to serve no purpose for taxpayers.' Public backlash was fierce. Chaffetz pulled the bill just two weeks later, citing concerns from his constituents. The episode, while brief, largely forced the anti-federal land movement back into the shadows. The first Trump administration continued to weaken safeguards for 35 million acres of federal lands — more than any other administration in history — and offered up millions more for oil and gas development, but stopped short of trying sell off or transfer large areas of the public domain. Yet as the last few months have shown, the anti-public lands movement is alive and well. Public land advocates are hopeful that the current push will flounder. They expect courts to strike down many of Trump's environmental rollbacks, as they did during his first term. In recent weeks, crowds have rallied at numerous national parks and state capitol buildings to support keeping public lands in public hands. Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, who voted to confirm Burgum to his post and serves as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has used social media to warn about the growing Republican effort to undermine, transfer, and sell off public lands. 'I continue to be encouraged that people are going to be loud. They already are,' said Deubel, the executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation. 'We're mobilizing. We've got business and industries. We've got Republicans, we've got Democrats. We've got hunters and we've got non-hunters. We've got everybody speaking out about this.' In a time of extreme polarization on seemingly every issue, public lands enjoy broad bipartisan support. The 2025 'Conservation in the West' poll found that 72 percent of voters in eight Western states support public lands conservation over increased energy development — the highest level of support in the poll's history; 65 percent oppose giving states control over federal public lands, up from 56 percent in 2017; and 89 percent oppose shrinking or removing protections for national monuments, up from 80 percent in 2017. Even in Utah, where leaders have spent millions of taxpayer dollars promoting the state's anti-federal lands lawsuit, support for protecting public lands remains high. 'Even in all these made-up crises, the American public doesn't want this,' Hill said. 'The American people want and love their public lands.' Boats dock at Antelope Point Marina on Lake Powell near Page, Arizona in 2022. Public lands are the foundation of a $1 trillion outdoor recreation economy in the U.S. David McNew, Getty Images via Grist At his recent staffwide meeting, Burgum said Roosevelt's legacy should guide Interior staff in the mission to manage and protect federal public lands. Those two things, management and protection, 'must be held in balance,' Burgum stressed.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Trump administration's push to privatize US public lands
America's federal public lands are truly unique, part of our birthright as citizens. No other country in the world has such a system. More than 640 million acres, including national parks, forests and wildlife refuges, as well as lands open to drilling, mining, logging and a variety of other uses, are managed by the federal government — but owned collectively by all American citizens. Together, these parcels make up more than a quarter of all land in the nation. Congressman John Garamendi, a Democrat representing California, has called them 'one of the greatest benefits of being an American.' 'Even if you don't own a house or the latest computer on the market, you own Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and many other natural treasures,' he wrote in 2011. Despite broad, bipartisan public support for protecting public lands, these shared landscapes have come under relentless attack during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump's second term. The administration and its allies in Congress are working feverishly to tilt the scale away from natural resource protection and toward extraction, threatening a pillar of the nation's identity and tradition of democratic governance. 'There's no larger concentration of unappropriated wealth on this globe than exists in this country on our public lands,' said Jesse Duebel, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, a conservation nonprofit. 'The fact that there are interests that would like to monetize that, they'd like to liquidate it and turn it into cash money, is no surprise.' Landscape protections and bedrock conservation laws are on the chopping block, as Trump and his team look to boost and fast-track drilling, mining, and logging across the federal estate. The administration and the GOP-controlled Congress are eyeing selling off federal lands, both for housing development and to help offset Trump's tax and spending cuts. And the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, is wreaking havoc within federal land management agencies, pushing out thousands of civil servants. That purge will leave America's natural heritage more vulnerable to the myriad threats they already face, including growing visitor numbers, climate change, wildfires, and invasive species. The Republican campaign to undermine land management agencies and wrest control of public lands from the federal government is nothing new, dating back to the Sagebrush Rebellion movement of the 1970s and 80s, when support for privatizing or transferring federal lands to state control exploded across the West. But the speed and scope of the current attack, along with its disregard for the public's support for safeguarding public lands, makes it more worrisome than previous iterations, several public land advocates and legal experts told Grist. This is 'probably the most significant moment since the Reagan administration in terms of privatization,' said Steven Davis, a political science professor at Edgewood College and the author of the 2018 book In Defense of Public Lands: The Case Against Privatization and Transfer. President Ronald Reagan was a self-proclaimed sagebrush rebel. Duebel said the conservation community knew Trump's return would trigger another drawn out fight for the future of public lands, but nothing could have prepared him for this level of chaos, particularly the effort to rid agencies of thousands of staffers. The country is 'in a much more pro-public lands position than we've been before,' Duebel said. 'But I think we're at greater risk than we've ever been before — not because the time is right in the eyes of the American people, but because we have an administration who could give two shits about what the American people want. That's what's got me scared.' The Interior Department and the White House did not respond to Grist's requests for comment. In an article posted to the White House website on Earth Day, the Trump administration touted several 'key actions' it has taken on the environment, including 'protecting public lands' by opening more acres to energy development, 'protecting wildlife' by pausing wind energy projects, and safeguarding forests by expanding logging. The accomplishment list received widespread condemnation from environmental, climate, and public land advocacy groups. That same day, a leaked draft strategic plan revealed the Interior Department's four-year vision for opening new federal lands to drilling and other extractive development, reducing the amount of federal land it manages by selling some for housing development and transferring other acres to state control, rolling back the boundaries of protected national monuments, and weakening bedrock environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act. Meanwhile, Trump's DOGE is in the process of cutting thousands of scientists and other staff from the various agencies that manage and protect public lands, including the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM. Nearly every Republican senator recently went on the record this month in support of selling off federal lands to reduce the federal deficit, voting down a measure that would have blocked such sales. And Utah has promised to continue its legal fight aimed at stripping more than 18 million acres of BLM lands within the state's border from the federal government. Utah's lawsuit, which the Supreme Court declined to hear in January, had the support of numerous Republican-led states, including North Dakota while current Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was still governor. To advance its agenda, the Trump administration is citing a series of 'emergencies' that close observers say are at best exaggerated, and at worst manufactured. A purported 'energy emergency,' which Trump declared in an executive order just hours after being inaugurated, has been the impetus for the administration attempting to throw longstanding federal permitting processes, public comment periods, and environmental safeguards to the wind. The action aims to boost fossil fuel extraction across federal lands and waters — despite domestic oil and gas production being at record highs — while simultaneously working to thwart renewable energy projects. Trump relied on that same 'emergency' earlier this month when he ordered federal agencies to prop up America's dwindling, polluting coal industry, which the president and his cabinet have insisted is 'beautiful' and 'clean.' In reality, coal is among the most polluting forms of energy. 'This whole idea of an emergency is ridiculous,' said Mark Squillace, a professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado, Boulder. 'And now this push to reinvigorate the coal industry seems absolutely crazy to me. Why would you try to reinvigorate a moribund industry that has been declining for the last decade or more? Makes no sense, it's not going to happen.' Coal consumption in the U.S. has declined more than 50 percent since peaking in 2005, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, largely due market forces, including the availability of cheaper natural gas and America's growing renewable energy sector. Meanwhile, Trump's tariff war threatens to undermine his own push to expand mining and fossil fuel drilling. The threat of extreme wildfire — an actual crisis driven by a complex set of factors, including climate change, its role in intensifying droughts and pest outbreaks, and decades of fire suppression — is being cited to justify slashing environmental reviews to ramp up logging on public lands. Following up on a Trump executive order to increase domestic timber production, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins signed a memo declaring a forest health 'emergency' that would open nearly 60 percent of national forest lands, more than 110 million acres, to aggressive logging. Then there's America's 'housing affordability crisis,' which the Trump administration, dozens of Republicans, and even a handful of Democrats are pointing to in a growing push to open federal lands to housing development, either by selling land to private interests or transferring control to states. The Trump administration recently established a task force to identify what it calls 'underutilized lands.' In an op-ed announcing that effort, Burgum and Scott Turner, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, wrote that 'much of' the 500 million acres Interior oversees is 'suitable for residential use.' Some of the most high-profile members of the anti-public lands movement, including William Perry Pendley, who served as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management during Trump's first term, are championing the idea. Read Next Public lands, private profits: Inside the Trump plan to offload federal land Lois Parshley Without guardrails, critics argue the sale of public lands to build housing will lead to sprawl in remote, sensitive landscapes and do little, if anything, to address home affordability, as the issue is driven by several factors, including migration trends, stagnant wages, and higher construction costs. Notably, Trump's tariff policies are expected to raise the average price of a new home by nearly $11,000. Chris Hill, CEO of the Conservation Lands Foundation, a Colorado-based nonprofit working to protect BLM-managed lands, said the lack of affordable housing is a serious issue, but 'we shouldn't be fooled that the idea to sell off public lands is a solution.' 'The vast majority of public lands are just not suitable for any sort of housing development due to their remote locations, lack of access, and necessary infrastructure,' she said. David Hayes, who served as deputy Interior secretary during the administrations of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and as a senior climate adviser to President Joe Biden, told Grist that Trump's broad use of executive power sets the current privatization push apart from previous efforts. 'Not only do you have the rhetoric and the intentionality around managing public lands in an aggressive way, but you have to couple that with what you're seeing,' he said. 'This administration is going farther than any other ever has to push the limits of executive power.' Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a Colorado-based conservation group, said Trump and his team are doing everything they can to circumvent normal environmental rules and safeguards in order to advance their agenda, with no regard for the law or public opinion. 'Everything is an imagined crisis,' Weiss said. Oil, gas, and coal jobs. Mining jobs. Timber jobs. Farming and ranching. Gas-powered cars and kitchen appliances. Even the water pressure in your shower. Ask the White House and the Republican Party and they'll tell you Biden waged a war against all of it, and that voters gave Trump a mandate to reverse course. During Trump's first term in office, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke repeatedly boasted that the administration's conservation legacy would rival that of his personal hero and America's conservationist president, Theodore Roosevelt — only to have the late president's great-grandson, Theodore Roosevelt IV, and the conservation community bemoan his record at the helm of the massive federal agency. Like Zinke, Burgum invoked Roosevelt in pitching himself for the job. 'In our time, President Donald Trump's energy dominance agenda can be America's big stick that will be leveraged to achieve historic prosperity and world peace,' Burgum said during his confirmation hearing in January, referencing a 1990 letter in which the 26th president said to 'speak softly and carry a big stick.' The Senate confirmed him to the post in January on a bipartisan 79-18 vote. Some public land advocates initially viewed Burgum, now the chief steward of the federal lands, waters, and wildlife we all own, as a palatable nominee in a sea of problematic potential picks. A billionaire software entrepreneur and former North Dakota governor, Burgum has talked at length about his fondness for Roosevelt's conservation legacy and the outdoors. Get in touch with Grist Have you lost your federal job or funding? Grist wants to hear about how cuts are impacting the environment, health, and safety of communities around the country. Share your story with us here. Whatever honeymoon there was didn't last long. One-hundred days in, Burgum and the rest of Trump's team have taken not a stick, but a wrecking ball to America's public lands, waters, and wildlife. Earlier this month, the new CEO of REI said the outdoor retailer made 'a mistake' in endorsing Burgum for the job and that the administration's actions on public lands 'are completely at odds with the longstanding values of REI.' At an April 9 all-hands meeting of Interior employees, Burgum showed off pictures of himself touring oil and gas facilities, celebrated 'clean coal,' and condemned burdensome government regulation. Burgum has repeatedly described federal lands as 'America's balance sheet' — 'assets' that he estimates could be worth $100 trillion but that he argues Americans are getting a 'low return' on. 'On the world's largest balance sheet last year, the revenue that we pulled in was about $18 billion,' he said at the staffwide meeting, referring to money the government brings from lease fees and royalties from grazing, drilling, and logging on federal lands, as well as national park entrance fees. 'Eighteen billion might seem like a big number. It's not a big number if we're managing $100 trillion in assets.' In focusing solely on revenues generated from energy and other resource extraction, Burgum disregards that public lands are the foundation of a $1 trillion outdoor recreation economy, nevermind the numerous climate, environmental, cultural, and public health benefits. Davis, the author of In Defense of Public Lands: The Case Against Privatization and Transfer, dismissed Burgum's 'balance sheet' argument as 'shriveled' and 'wrong.' 'You have to willfully be ignorant and ignore everything of value about those lands except their marketable commodity value to come up with that conclusion,' he said. When you add all their myriad values together, public lands 'are the biggest bargain you can possibly imagine.' Davis likes to compare public lands to libraries, schools, or the Department of Defense. 'There are certain things we as a society decide are important and we pay for it,' he said. 'We call that public goods.' The last time conservatives ventured down the public land privatization path, it didn't go well. Shortly after Trump's first inauguration in 2017, then-Congressman Jason Chaffetz, a Republican representing Utah, introduced legislation to sell off 3.3 million acres of public land in 10 Western states that he said had 'been deemed to serve no purpose for taxpayers.' Public backlash was fierce. Chaffetz pulled the bill just two weeks later, citing concerns from his constituents. The episode, while brief, largely forced the anti-federal land movement back into the shadows. The first Trump administration continued to weaken safeguards for 35 million acres of federal lands — more than any other administration in history — and offered up millions more for oil and gas development, but stopped short of trying sell off or transfer large areas of the public domain. Yet as the last few months have shown, the anti-public lands movement is alive and well. Public land advocates are hopeful that the current push will flounder. They expect courts to strike down many of Trump's environmental rollbacks, as they did during his first term. In recent weeks, crowds have rallied at numerous national parks and state capitol buildings to support keeping public lands in public hands. Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, who voted to confirm Burgum to his post and serves as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has taken to social media to warn about the growing Republican effort to undermine, transfer and sell off public lands. 'I continue to be encouraged that people are going to be loud. They already are,' Deubel said. 'We're mobilizing. We've got business and industries. We've got Republicans, we've got Democrats. We've got hunters and we've got non-hunters. We've got everybody speaking out about this.' In a time of extreme polarization on seemingly every issue, public lands enjoy broad bipartisan support. The 15th annual 'Conservation in the West' poll found that 72 percent of voters in eight Western states support public lands conservation over increased energy development — the highest level of support in the poll's history; 65 percent oppose giving states control over federal public lands, up from 56 percent in 2017; and 89 percent oppose shrinking or removing protections for national monuments, up from 80 percent in 2017. Even in Utah, where leaders have spent millions of taxpayer dollars promoting the state's anti-federal lands lawsuit, support for protecting public lands remains high. 'Even in all these made up crises, the American public doesn't want this,' Hill said. 'The American people want and love their public lands.' At his recent staffwide meeting, Burgum said Roosevelt's legacy should guide Interior staff in its mission to manage and protect federal public lands. Those two things, management and protection, 'must be held in balance,' Burgum stressed. Yet in social media posts and friendly interviews with conservative media, Burgum has left little doubt about where his priorities lie, repeatedly rolling out what Breitbart dubbed the 'four babies' of Trump's energy dominance agenda: 'Drill, Baby, Drill! Map, Baby, Map! Mine, Baby, Mine! Build, Baby, Build!' 'Protect, baby, protect,' 'conserve, baby, conserve,' and 'steward, baby, steward' have yet to make it into Burgum's lexicon. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Trump administration's push to privatize US public lands on Apr 29, 2025.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Gov. Lujan Grisham strikes game commissioner removal process from bill
Jesse Duebel, the executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, and Judy Calman, the director of policy for Audubon Southwest said they were disappointed with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's partial veto of a bill overhauling the New Mexico Game and Fish Department, when she signed the majority of the reforms into law on Thursday. (Danielle Prokop / Source NM) A legislative proposal to reform how members of Game and Fish commission can be removed 'unnecessarily complicates and lengthens the removal process,' Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wrote in a message to the State Senate Thursday explaining her partial veto of Senate Bill 5, which reforms both the commission and the Game and Fish Department. Currently, the governor can remove members of the commission. The proposed change would require the State Ethics Commission to file an action in district court to remove a board member and created the potential for appeal at the New Mexico Supreme Court. 'Given the many pressing matters addressed by district courts and the Supreme Court, it would take years to remove even the most blatantly incompetent or corrupt individuals — allowing those individuals to continue to hinder or corrupt the Commission in the interim,' the governor wrote. She tied her approval for the rest of the bill to acceptance of her partial veto, and cited a 2011 advisory letter from the state Attorney General's Office regarding what types of bills are subject to line-item vetoes. 'As SB 5 appropriates money, it is subject to line-item veto pursuant,' she wrote. While lawmakers and advocates expressed skepticism about the governor's legal reasoning for striking the provision of the bill, one of the bill's main sponsors, Rep. Matthew McQueen (D-Galisteo) doesn't plan to challenge her, and noted that the governor's staff told him they would work with him on the issue in a future session. 'Signing a bill on a contingent basis doesn't mesh with my understanding of the [New Mexico] Constitution,' McQueen said. 'But that would only come into play if the bill was challenged, and I say we should move forward.' Senate Bill 5 passed the House along near-party line votes as Rep. Derrick Lente (D-Sandia Pueblo) joined Republicans in opposing it, while the Senate passed the bill with more bipartisan support. But while lawmakers heavily debated many provisions of the bill expanding the scope of the agency, the language for changing the process for game commissioner removal faced little pushback. 'That was the one provision that was completely noncontroversial,' Jesse Duebel, the executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, told reporters on Thursday. Duebel said the remaining language makes some of the most substantial changes to the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish in a century by raising its budget; increasing hunting and fishing fees; changing its name to the New Mexico Department of Wildlife to reflect a more broad effort to preserve declining species. Lawmakers again aim to reform New Mexico Department of Game and Fish 'We're very disappointed that the process for commissioner removal was vetoed from the bill,' Duebel said. 'The removal of commissioners from the state wildlife commission is one of the most important processes that exists for the hunting community in this state, and for too long that process has been purely political.' Duebel alluded to issues over multiple administrations when high turnover and sudden vacancies on the board have hampered its ability to meet, as the board did not have enough people to conduct its business. Two former commissioners, Joanna Prukop and Jeremy Vesbach, said they were forced off the commission during Lujan Grisham's first term over their positions on stream access issues – which a New Mexico Supreme Court order rendered moot. Judy Calman, the director of policy for Audubon Southwest, said the coalition of more than 20 groups, which includes hunting, wildlife and conservation groups, will pursue future legislation, even if the veto goes unchallenged. 'The vast majority of our coalition is committed to getting a removal process in place at some point, somehow,' Calman said. 'I don't think that that fight is over for us or that we will let that go because it's such a crucial part of this for us.' In 2023, lawmakers passed a much narrower bill, also sponsored by McQueen, which gave lawmakers picks for the New Mexico Game and Fish Commission. The bill passed both chambers but Lujan Grisham pocket-vetoed —aka didn't sign —it into law. Brittany Fallon, a policy manager with Western Resource Advocates, who advocated for SB5, said the governor's staff did not accept multiple proposals during negotiations for different types of removal processes, and did not put forward their own. 'The big picture is that she asked us to make multiple compromises and didn't make any of her own,' Fallon said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
