Latest news with #SagebrushRebellion
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump wants to sell off land that all Americans own. It should make you furious.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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.' '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.' 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. 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.
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
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Finding balance in addressing the housing crisis without sacrificing our way of life
Hidden Valley in the McCullough Range south of Henderson and east of I-80. (Photo: Kyle Roerink) Arguing over how to use the land in Nevada has defined the political conversation for a long time, starting with statehood, running through the Cliven Bundy saga, and up to the present moment with the debate over what role public lands should play in addressing the housing crisis. The availability of thriving natural places is a blessing that we need to manage carefully to make sure Nevada stays a great place to live and work as we also work to expand affordable housing for working families. It's important to add some context to the current push to liquidate these places for development. The 'Sagebrush Rebellion' kicked off in Nevada nearly half a century ago by special interests that wanted to gain control over public property for their own commercial gain. It continued on through Mr. Bundy's challenge to public ownership of land he refused to pay to use. And unfortunately, it's rearing its ugly head again in the conversation, this time under the pretext of mass disposal of public lands to create affordable housing. Modern day sagebrush rebels have seized on the affordability crisis to create a narrow private gain from public resources. One proposal in Congress from Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a longtime opponent of public ownership of public lands, would create the broad liquidation of public lands under the deceptive guise of creating more housing. That legislation doesn't mention the word 'affordable' once, meaning that it could be sold to anyone from politically-connected billionaires to wealthy real estate developers who want to create high end housing for the super-rich. There are frankly no details available to confirm that the latest Trump administration is much better. As they have done with so many other initiatives, the administration issued a press release before the policy, so there's no telling if the ultimate use of this land will be for Tesla server farms or places Nevadans can afford to rent or buy. Public lands are supposed to benefit the public. Period. That's why any sales for the purposes of housing should truly create affordable options for working people. Fortunately, there are already tools in place that accomplish this goal. Regulations currently in place at the Bureau of Land Management require such lands to be sold only when it benefits the 'national interest' – exactly what's at stake in the campaign for affordable housing. A bill recently passed with bipartisan support to make some administrative U.S. Forest Service lands available for lease for the purposes of affordable housing. These measures are a better path for Nevada and other states with fast-growing communities across the West, and they've already been used to create more affordable housing right in our backyard. Public lands conservation is an important tool for managing growth. They provide essential services like clean water filtration and and air purification—services that benefit everyone, not just those who live near them. Surging ahead without protecting these important resources will not benefit anyone in the long-run. As the conversation continues around how to tackle the housing crisis, we urge decision-makers to consider policies that are not just focused on short-term solutions but that also preserve our public lands for the long term. With Lake Mead sitting at only one third of capacity we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater (if you'll pardon the expression) through a wholesale liquidation of public lands that includes no guarantees to protect the public interest. If public lands are truly to benefit the public, then we must make sure any that are sold or leased are guaranteed to be used for affordable housing. And we must ensure that some other lands are protected for their water resources and the quality of life they create for our families. The majority of people in Nevada and around the West want a balanced approach to public lands management, not a return to the tired old fights of the past. Our leaders have a chance to chart a new path. Let's hope they hear us.
Washington Post
22-03-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Exploring the American frontier
Out where the world is in the making, Where fewer hearts in despair are aching, That's where the West begins … – Arthur Chapman The West has long captivated Americans' imaginations with its iconic vistas and mythical lore. Mountains jutting toward the heavens. Windswept valleys and ochre-colored deserts. A land of rugged freedom. Yet endless transformation may be the region's most significant feature, one that explains both its past and its future. 'Change is a constant,' Donna L. Lybecker, a professor at Idaho State University, has written. 'From manifest destiny to the Sagebrush Rebellion, from ranching to fracking, from boom to bust to boom again,' the West's reality as well as image have been 'redefined and remade.' Today that is happening ever faster, fueled post-pandemic by technology, economics and wealth. 'You're starting to see a shift not just in urban centers but in these small communities,' Lybecker says. The impact is uneven and not always welcome. There are, of course, those who benefit and those who come up short. Washington Post photographer Matt McClain traversed this evolving frontier to look for some of the most pronounced signs of change. Guided by population, employment and other data, his search ultimately landed him in five communities from Montana to New Mexico. In each, he took in the old and new. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Scroll to continue Montana Losses and gains in Missoula County Andrew Willard goes hunting south of Missoula before his workday at onX, a company that's part of Montana's tech boom. Pyramid Mountain Lumber had been in Todd Johnson's family for three-quarters of a century, started by his grandfather and a partner in tiny Seeley Lake at a time when sawmills made economic sense amid the wilderness of Western Montana. But that time is well past, and last fall Johnson made the painful decision to shut down. 1/3 In his office at Pyramid Mountain Lumber, Todd Johnson wraps up ahead of the company's shutdown. 2/3 The demise of Pyramid Mountain Lumber reflects Montana's changing economy. 3/3 Piles of equipment await sale at Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley Lake. 'You just cannot get the labor,' he explains several months after the last load of lumber shipped. People moving to the area these days are mainly retirees and second-home owners, not potential mill workers. The latter, Johnson says, no longer can afford to live in town. He'd come up with no alternative to closure. Pyramid needed to produce more lumber per hour to offset rising costs, yet doing so was impossible without more employees. His voice betrays both sadness and resignation for Seeley Lake's future. 'Our identity,' he says, 'won't be a blue-collar logging town.' Seeley Lake residents like Wendy Dalrymple lost their jobs when Pyramid Mountain Lumber ceased operation. Missoula, Montana's second-biggest city, continues to see development. Barely an hour southwest of Seeley Lake is a far different story of woods and wilderness — plus cutting-edge mapping technology and navigation apps. The 21st-century savvy is how a company called onX helps hunters, hikers and other outdoors adventurers know exactly where they are even when they're in the absolute middle of nowhere. 1/3 Andrew Willard, left, and Zach Sandau are both outdoor enthusiasts and onX staffers. 2/3 Travis Olson works in the Missoula office of onX. 3/3 The onX headquarters in Missoula reflects the tech company's focus on the outdoors. Chief Operating Officer Josh Spitzer emphasizes onX's 'ethos' as much as its growth. 'There is an emphasis on place,' he says, 'and the lived reality that we are in a wild landscape and we respect and take care of it.' Founded in Missoula by a Montana native, the company is part of a high-tech boom that began revving up across the state even before the pandemic. Since 2009, it has grown to more than 400 employees. Half are in Montana. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Scroll to continue Wyoming The changing frontier landscape of Cheyenne County Lene' Whitt gives antibiotics to a calf on the family's ranch in Cheyenne, Wyoming, as daughter Sophia watches. He has neighbors and friends who have sold their land, Dave Berry says. Longtime ranchers who made a deal when wealthy people and corporations came calling. Just last July, Meta announced it would build an $800 million data center outside Cheyenne. Microsoft already has several centers in the area. So how is he feeling about the future? 'Totally mixed,' admits Berry, a third-generation rancher who owns the 50,000-acre Horse Creek Cattle Co. 'Development is a real threat.' Despite the changes taking place, Dave Berry says what's consistent is 'ranchers' love of the land.' His is a 'traditional cow-calf operation.' It entails hard, sometimes dangerous and mostly solitary work. Yet a conversation with Berry is a conversation about a Wyoming native's love of the land and the generations to follow. He is certain his own family's commitment to ranching will endure. 'I have great faith in that continuing,' he says. 1/4 Lene' Whitt shares a moment with daughters Dakota, 11, and Madison, 6. 2/4 Madison Whitt carries milk to the family's farm stand. 3/4 Lola Ringrose stands outside Cheyenne's Atlas Theatre to promote the annual Old Fashioned Melodrama. 4/4 A Lowe's regional distribution center interrupts prairie in Cheyenne. Tom Hirsig's history here also runs deep. He grew up on a cattle ranch north of town, his closest neighbor 13 miles away, and went to college on a rodeo scholarship. And while his résumé highlights a career in real estate management and a stint as state insurance commissioner, it's Cheyenne Frontier Days that matters most now. He's the president and CEO. Actually, the celebration was always at the center of Hirsig's life. His great-great-uncle co-founded it back in 1897; his father was arena director for 37 years. Every summer, the 10-day extravaganza draws nearly half a million people from around the world, and to many, what they see is the genuine West — no matter the reality of those huge data centers. 1/5 An afternoon rodeo attracts an enthusiastic crowd to Cheyenne Frontier Days. 2/5 Rodeo competitors start prepping for their events. 3/5 Saddle bronc rider Chase Brooks hangs on. 4/5 The Little Sun Drum and Dance Group gets ready for its spot in a Cheyenne Frontier Days parade. 5/5 The parade, which marches through downtown Cheyenne, draws a variety of spectators. 'I don't think you can stop it,' Hirsig says of the change that is happening, that will create a different landscape and perhaps a different culture. Even so, he remains hopeful: 'I would like to say we're going to hold on to our Western way of life.' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Scroll to continue Colorado On the Western Slope, renewable energy and reinvention The High Mesa Solar Plus Storage facility in Garfield County, Colorado, is part of Holy Cross Energy's power grid. It started with a small group of farmers and ranchers who came together during the Great Depression, desperate to bring 'the miracle of electricity' to two rural valleys in western Colorado. Their solution was to build their own power grid. Race ahead to the 21st century. Today the cooperative known as Holy Cross Energy annually generates 77 percent of its power through solar, wind and other renewable sources. By the end of this decade, the co-op aims to hit 100 percent — 'to completely decarbonize' for tens of thousands of customers across five counties, president and CEO Bryan Hannegan says. 1/4 Dean and Tayler VanWinkle, with daughter Paisley, have a cattle operation in western Colorado. 2/4 VanWinkle repairs fencing in Mesa County, where he runs part of his cattle operation. 3/4 Securing fencing on the range is arduous but essential. 4/4 VanWinkle loads up his family's dogs after a long day of work. The goal is striking given that Colorado is the fourth-largest oil-producing state in the country. Dalida Sassoon Bollig puts it in a broader context, though — part of the 'reinventing' that's taking place on the Western Slope. Tourists gravitate to the pools of Glenwood Hot Springs Resort in Garfield County. 'The pioneering spirit is very much alive,' according to Bollig, chief executive officer of the nonprofit Business Incubator Center that serves Mesa County and the surrounding region. 'But it's a modern version of it.' 1/5 Matthew Varela, at work at High Mesa Solar Plus Storage, enjoys a stunning landscape. 2/5 Despite the growth in renewable energy on the Western Slope, oil and gas drilling remain strong. 3/5 A drilling rig towers over Duayne Ruona on Laramie Energy property in Garfield County. 4/5 Shoppers check out Bullocks Western Wear in Glenwood Springs. 5/5 Morgan Haners and Brian Goodrich relax at Iron Mountain Hot Springs in Garfield County. Bollig talks up the innovation and diversity she sees in the 79 ventures located on the center's campus in Grand Junction. Valkyrie Recovery Systems, to name one, specializes in cutting-edge parachute technology to help aerospace companies retrieve their rockets. It was started by an Army veteran who spent several of his military years jumping out of planes. 'You have this ecosystem that's being built out here,' Bollig says. 'The soul of entrepreneurship constantly seeps through.' Sunrise begins to color the sky over the Loma Boat Launch in Mesa County. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Scroll to continue Arizona In Maricopa County, huge growth and challenges Laurynn Irsik carries some last belongings as she and her family move into a new home in Maricopa County, Arizona. Eleven cotton gins were once scattered across Maricopa County. That was in the days before Phoenix boomed and sprawled and a once-rural community like Goodyear, due west of the city, became its own burgeoning suburb and a draw for vast data centers and warehouse distribution buildings. These days only one gin remains. It belongs in part to Ronald Rayner's family farming operation, A Tumbling T Ranches, which still grows cotton, alfalfa and grains despite the considerable challenges of ever-encroaching development. 'We're shrinking our acreage,' he says. 'This year will be the smallest in many years.' 1/5 Southwest of Phoenix, sunset silhouettes a cotton harvester. 2/5 Oscar Quevedo harvests cotton on land farmed by A Tumbling T Ranches in Maricopa County. 3/5 Ramon Cuellar takes a break during his shift at the Farmers Gin in Phoenix. 4/5 Christian Grijalva carries a sample at the Farmers Gin, the sole remaining cotton gin in Maricopa County. 5/5 A worker puts identifying markings on cotton recently harvested by A Tumbling T Ranches. The octogenarian is adapting. He and his family are researching a vertical farming project that would require a fraction of the land needed for ground farming while using a fraction of the water. The crops, racked and stacked in layers, would be vegetables like spinach and kale, herbs such as basil and oregano. 'That sounds like agriculture to me,' Rayner says. Old Town Scottsdale dates to the late 1800s, but these days it's filled with restaurants and shops. Deer graze on a golf course in the Verrado neighborhood of Buckeye, on the western edge of Phoenix. If only all creatures had similar ways to adapt to Maricopa's sprawl. Yet since the early 1980s, when the nonprofit Liberty Wildlife was founded, the dangers that such animals face have increased exponentially. So many tall buildings that can be deadly obstacles for migrating birds, so many people moving into desert habitat that rabbits, coyotes and other species call home. 1/5 David Brines of Not Your Husband Moving wheels the Irsik family's possessions into their new house. 2/5 Laurynn Irsik stocks the refrigerator in her new kitchen. 3/5 New housing and subdivisions continue to pop up in Maricopa County. 4/5 Frankie the wild turkey hangs out with Barb Del' Ve at Liberty Wildlife in Phoenix. 5/5 Gerardo Torres and Guille Garcia of Coatlicue Danza Mexica perform during a celebration at Liberty Wildlife. 'We do a huge amount of rehabilitation,' says Megan Mosby, the organization's executive director and CEO. Last year alone, the staff and volunteers treated some 10,000 injured or orphaned animals at their facility just south of the Phoenix airport. Seventy percent of those were birds. 'If we spread out much more into the desert,' Mosby worries, 'then we'll have nothing left.' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Scroll to continue New Mexico High on growing cannabis in Doña Ana County The Organ Mountains are a dramatic backdrop for Las Cruces, New Mexico. Chile peppers, onions and corn. Pecans, peaches and apples. And now cannabis. There's a new crop in town in the fertile Mesilla Valley, where the population of Las Cruces, New Mexico's second-largest city, has increased more than 50 percent since the turn of the century. A new, very lucrative crop that puts the traditional vegetables and fruits of Doña Ana County to shame. 1/5 Erika Garcia and Edgar Luna of Pre-Hispanic Dance Group celebrate Mexican Independence Day in the historic town of Mesilla. 2/5 A competitor reaches for the money during a greased pole contest at the Mesilla celebration. 3/5 Workers go row-by-row of chile peppers in Doña Ana County. 4/5 Sabino Olivas takes a break while picking peppers for Grajeda Farms. 5/5 Quinton and Alison Youngker, with 2-year-old Olive, head to a full-moon-night event at White Sands National Park. Native son Tony Miller is among the enthusiasts here. After the state legalized recreational marijuana in 2021, the former highway engineer got to work turning an egg farm that once housed 3 million chickens into what he now touts as a 'state-of-the-art cannabis grow facility.' Its name? The Baked Chicken Farm. A woman walks down Calle De Guadalupe in Mesilla. Not that his product is going to take over, geographically speaking. Chiles — for which Las Cruces is famous — and pecans are still farmed by the thousands of acres. But the price they bring per pound at market can't hold a green leaf to cannabis. 1/4 Workers in the Baked Chicken Farm's 'veg room' place young cannabis plants in large pots to keep growing. 2/4 Samantha Castro is part of the Baked Chicken Farm's operation in Berino, south of Las Cruces. 3/4 Cannabis is hung to dry at the indoor-grow facility. 4/4 Cannabis cigarettes are nearly ready to go at the Baked Chicken Farm. Miller's first full-year harvest yielded 10,000 pounds, and he says he got an average $1,000 a pound. 'Cash crop wise,' he allows, 'it's super valuable.' Mesilla's history includes the trial of outlaw Billy the Kid, who in 1881 was found guilty of murdering a local sheriff and sentenced to hang.
