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Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in his office at the Interior department. Source: DOI Flickr
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Key news from April:
- Interior Secretary Doug Burgum signed a secretarial order giving up oversight of the Interior department and handing full control of the department’s organization and staffing over to Tyler Hassen, Elon Musk’s DOGE operative who also serves as Interior’s acting Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget. The order gives DOGE carte blanche to run “consolidation, unification, and optimization efforts” across the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and other Interior bureaus. The secretarial order does not require Hassen to report back to Secretary Burgum regarding the reorganization, nor does it reserve any authority to Secretary Burgum if Hassen were to fire thousands of public lands managers, park rangers, or wildfire specialists across the country.
- Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is making strange requests of Interior department staff, according to reporting in The Atlantic. Burgum has requested political appointees in his office learn to regularly bake cookies for him using industrial ovens in the department, and, on at least one occasion, requested staff remake a batch of cookies he deemed “subpar,” according to three people. He has also made political appointees act as servers for a multi-course meal and used a U.S. Park Police helicopter for personal transportation. One person familiar with the behavior described Burgum as “Doug the diva.”
- The Trump administration removed protections for over half of the National Forest System via the issuance of an emergency order related to wildfire risk. The order covers more than 110 million acres of forest land and will fast-track timber production by removing National Environmental Policy Act regulations in the name of wildfire mitigation. The order comes on the heels of an executive order issued by President Donald Trump to expand timber production in the country by 25 percent—a move that scientists have warned will increase wildfire risk.
- A leaked draft strategic plan revealed the Interior department's plans to open national public lands—including national monuments designated by past presidents—to drilling and other extractive development. The plan also includes selling public lands to housing developers and weakening bedrock environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act (ESA), all in the name of an “energy emergency.” According to two people within the Interior department, at least six national monuments are currently being reviewed to be abolished or greatly reduced as part of the plan.
- President Donald Trump signed four executive orders aimed at bolstering the mining industry and reviving the nation’s declining coal power industry. One order, titled “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry,” requires the Interior secretary to identify coal reserves on national public lands, assess impediments to mining those resources, and propose policies to enable the mining of the coal at those sites. A 2023 study by Energy Innovation found that it costs more to run 99 percent of existing US coal plants than it would to replace them with local wind, solar, and energy storage resources.
- Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma withdrew her nomination to lead the Bureau of Land Management. The news outlet, Documented, published a memo Sgamma wrote to members of WEA in 2021 after the January 6 insurrection. In it, she said she was “disgusted by the violence” that day and by “President Trump’s role in spreading misinformation that incited it.” In a statement, Center for Western Priorities Deputy Director Aaron Weiss said, “The Trump administration should avoid nominating anyone else with massive conflicts of interest to lead the Bureau of Land Management, and instead focus on implementing Congress’s multiple-use mandate for America’s public lands.”
What to watch for in May:
- Will Trump nominate a new Bureau of Land Management director?
- Will Trump try to shrink or eliminate national monuments?
- Colorado Rally for Public Lands is Saturday, May 17
- More layoffs within Interior as "restructuring" efforts begin
- Funding cuts to land management agencies in the President's proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2026
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From the Center for Western Priorities:
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Trump’s Interior secretary ignores the real value of American lands
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Trump’s Interior secretary thinks responsibility for America’s parks and public lands is beneath him
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Without proper guardrails to ensure affordability and contain sprawl, turning public land over to developers will do nothing to bring down housing costs
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Kate and Aaron nerd out with John Ruple, public lands professor at the University of Utah and a former member of the White House Council on Environmental Quality about recent changes to how the National Environmental Policy Act is being implemented across federal agencies, like the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.
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Kate and Aaron talk to two experts about recent executive orders that negatively affect public lands. Mitch Friedman, founder and executive director of Conservation Northwest, talks about how Trump’s executive order aimed at increasing logging in national forests squares with existing law and forest management plans, while Rachael Hamby, policy director at the Center for Western Priorities, covers Trump’s recent order seeking to ramp up mining on public lands.
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Wave of Earth Day protests as Americans mobilize against Trump
The Guardian
Why the Interior department is a top target for DOGE
E&E News
Trump admin fired hundreds of workers who help fight wildfires, despite promises not to
ProPublica
The Trump administration’s push to privatize US public lands
Grist
Will the U.S. housing crisis be exploited for a massive public lands sell-off?
Center for American Progress
Acadia to Zion: A guide for visiting national parks during an uncertain summer
New York Times
Opinion: National Park Service veterans lament state of agency, parks
National Parks Traveler
Trump officials say destroying endangered species’ habitats isn’t ‘harm’
Washington Post | Associated Press | Common Dreams | Colorado Sun
Trump wants to log more forests. Will it really help prevent wildfires?
Science
Draft strategic plan for Trump's Interior department would boost extractive industries, cut protections
Public Domain
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“Public lands belong to the American people, not to drilling or mining interests. The BLM Public Lands Rule simply affirmed that conservation is just as valid a use of our public lands as development, and it brought common-sense and overdue reform to how these places are managed.”
—Alison Flint, senior legal director at The Wilderness Society, Colorado Sun
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A bison herd thunders across the prairie in @badlandsnps, a scene once common across the Great Plains. Today, the park is home to around 1,200 bison, a powerful reminder of what this landscape looked like before their numbers were pushed to the brink in the 19th century.
For your safety and theirs, always stay at least 100 feet away and never approach or provoke bison.
Photo by Jack Denger
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