How Project 2025 Could Threaten Public Lands

If enacted, the conservative plan could ‘decimate’ public lands and protected habitats.

1 minute read

August 6, 2024, 9:00 AM PDT

By Diana Ionescu @aworkoffiction


Interior Secretary Deb Haaland standing in a forested area in Colorado to celebrate recent action by the Biden-Harris administration to withdraw around 220,000 acres in the Thompson Divide area for mineral leasing on 1 July 2024.

U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland celebrates the withdrawal of 220,000 acres from mineral leasing in Colorado’s Thompson Divide in July 2024. Project 2025 seeks to renew those leases. | U.S. Department of the Interior, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons / Wikimedia Commons

Writing in Colorado Newsline, David Lien assesses the potential impacts of Project 2025 on public lands. The plan, a conservative proposal to reform government at the highest levels that could affect everything from executive power to housing policy, proposes several changes to the Department of the Interior that, Lien writes, “would decimate public lands habitat” in Colorado and other states.

Proposed changes in the Interior section, which was written by former Bureau of Land Management (BLM) chief under Trump William Perry Pendley, include: restoring mining claims and oil and gas leases in Colorado’s Thompson Divide, aiming to reduce national monument designations, repealing the Antiquities Act, and giving more regulatory power to states.

According to Lien, “Every Colorado Parks and Wildlife district wildlife manager I talk to emphasizes that the proliferation of motorized and mechanized trails (legal and illegal) is negatively impacting elk herds.” In an earlier commentary, Lien writes, “During his three-plus years in the White House, Donald Trump has orchestrated the largest reduction of protected public lands in U.S. history, according to a study published in Science, an academic journal … The Trump administration has worked to weaken safeguards for nearly 35 million acres — nearly 1,000 times more than the administration has protected.”

Friday, August 2, 2024 in Colorado Newsline

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