|
After bipartisan opposition forced the removal of language from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would have sold off national public lands, the Trump administration is still moving forward with proposals to transfer control over tens of millions of acres of public land to the oil and gas, mining, and timber industries.
A new report from the Center for American Progress explains how the Trump administration is moving full speed ahead on its plans for removing protections for some of the most intact national forest lands, opening sensitive Arctic wildlife habitat for drilling, eliminating restrictions on mining for ecologically sensitive lands and waters, and erasing conservation requirements and habitat protections. At the same time, the administration is hitting the gas on sales that will hand corporations primary control of public lands, including those lands recently stripped of their protections.
According to the report, the Trump administration has already initiated actions that could eliminate or weaken protections from more than 175 million acres of U.S. lands—an area larger than the states of California, Florida, and Georgia combined. This includes removing protections from 88 million acres of public lands and weakening species protections across more than 87 million acres of wildlife habitat. The report concludes that simultaneous actions to sell or give control of public lands to corporate interests for drilling, mining, and logging could spell long-term losses for the American public, stating, “At rock-bottom prices, extractive corporations can scoop up long-term leases or mining claims that encumber public lands for many decades.”
|
Allowing 21 days to unravel 25 years of forest protections tells you exactly what’s going on here, which is that this administration has no interest at all in listening to the American people.”
