William Perry Pendley’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Land Management has been withdrawn and while President Trump offered no explanation for withdrawing Pendley’s nomination, it seems he didn’t have the votes necessary for Senate confirmation. The Senate Democrats were united against him and a few GOP Senators found themselves in an election year hot […]
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The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is America’s environmental charter. Signed into law by Richard Nixon, it has three central tenets. First, federal agencies must look before they leap and examine the full environmental impacts of most major actions that receive federal funding, including the direct, indirect, and cumulative effects those actions will have. Second, […]
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By Tim Whitehouse and Erik Molvar
Amid the COVID-19 crisis and the uprisings against police brutality and systemic racism, it is understandable if many Americans overlooked the Trump administration’s continued attacks on the management of public lands and the Constitution’s mandates about how our leaders are appointed.
The most recent attack of this type came […]
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A week ago, I was touring Montana public lands with my 13-year-old daughter. As we approached Yellowstone National Park, I explained how the slaughter of bison was largely to appease the livestock industry, pushed by a handful of ranchers who didn’t want bison migrating out of the Park. Bison, as it turns out, eat […]
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Ed. note: An earlier draft version of this post was inadvertently posted before final review. Please replace all prior copies with this final draft.
Last summer, in a remote corner of the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, in the one spot with just a little cell reception, I sat in my car listening by phone to […]
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Western Watersheds Project, Alliance for the Rockies, and the Yellowstone to Uintas Connection are seeking to block the killing of up to 72 grizzly bears over the next 10 years on national forest land in the headwaters of the Green River. With the Yellowstone grizzly listed as a ‘threatened species’ under […]
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The Wilderness Society just teamed up with Yale University to release a report promoting renewable energy development on public lands, and like the recent Michael Moore documentary Planet of the Humans, it’s stirring up controversy. The report suggests we should ramp up utility-scale renewable production on federal public lands, with a particular focus […]
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The National Park Service recently released the public comments on how Point Reyes National Seashore should be managed and they show that the vast majority of the public wants beef and dairy operations booted off Park Service lands. Contrary to prevailing assumptions that local food culture overrides conservation concerns in the local area, some […]
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In an act of appalling hubris, the oil and gas industry is asking the federal government to loosen enforcement of federal regulations on public lands in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Kathleen Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance, one of the petroleum industry’s primary lobbying groups, was quoted in EnergyWire as seeking one-year extensions […]
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The Trump administration is stampeding ahead with a rewrite of the regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This landmark law requires federal agencies to study—and let the public weigh in on—the environmental impacts of federal actions. Ironically, given NEPA’s central purpose of including the public in environmental decision-making, the Trump administration is […]
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