The Year in Public Lands

What did this year’s politics mean for public lands in the American West? Jonathan Thompson surveys recent political trends and their potential impact on conservation in the West in an article for High Country News.

The war in Ukraine has boosted demand for fossil fuels and other dormant industries like uranium mining while the federal government seeks to clean up polluted sites. “A gusher of federal funding aimed at plugging and cleaning up abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells shone a spotlight on a pervasive and long-neglected problem. Meanwhile, the Biden administration, plagued by high gasoline prices, continued its back-and-forth approach to energy development on public lands.” The demand for “green metals,” which is growing due to the proliferation of electric vehicles, solar panels, and wind turbines, “has sparked the biggest mining rush on Western public lands since the uranium craze of the 1950s.”

Elsewhere, conservationists are celebrating the imminent removal of four dams and the possible removal of several others as federal regulators recognize the damage caused by dams to local biodiversity. But water supplies in the West’s major reservoirs continue to dwindle as states debate how to handle the deepening crisis.

More of Planetizen’s coverage of the water crisis on the Colorado River:

• Colorado River Compact Needs 21st Century Update
• Colorado River Water Crisis Deepens
• Department of the Interior Forced to Intervene on the Colorado River
• Report Sounds the Alarm for Western Reservoirs
• States Agree to Drastic Water Cuts From Colorado River