How Project 2025 Could Threaten Public Lands

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.”