By Linda Castro, Assistant Policy Director
By now we suspect that you have seen some news about the attacks that have been launched against our federal public lands and the agencies that manage them (e.g., Bureau of Land Management [BLM], U.S. Forest Service [USFS], and National Park Service [NPS]).
A brief synopsis of the most serious threats is as follows:
Agency Staff Terminations: On February 14th (yes, Valentine’s Day), approximately 5,600 employees of the federal agencies that manage our federal public lands were terminated (about 1,000 NPS staff, 420 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) staff, 800 BLM staff, and 3,400 USFS staff). These terminations have been severe. For the USFS, the reductions are about 10 percent agency-wide, but we are hearing that on some individual National Forests, the number could be closer to 30 percent. We are also hearing that more terminations may be coming. The fact that all of these land management agencies have already been understaffed and under-resourced for decades, makes these terminations even more detrimental.
Proposed Large-scale Selloffs of Public Lands: We also have reason to believe that Congress will use the recent terminations of approximately 5,600 staff from the agencies that manage our public lands as a pivot to an argument that public lands should be sold off. This is a years-long campaign mounted by anti-public land lawmakers to undermine federal land management: the claim that the federal agencies are not able to properly manage the land, and then advocate for the land to be given away or sold off. In addition, we know from a from a House Committee that is in charge of establishing the nation’s budget, that they are considering the large-scale selloff public lands, as well as increasing timber sales, in order to reduce the size of the budget for Fiscal Year 2025 and to likely justify tax cuts. Here is our recent action alert on this issue. If you have not already contacted your Members of Congress about this issue, we urge you to do that now.
Secretarial Order Calling for Numerous “Reviews”: The Department of Interior (DOI) Secretary issued Secretarial Order (SO) 3418 on February 3rd, stated that its purpose was to implement a Presidential Executive Order (EO) that called for the “removal of impediments imposed on the development and use of our Nation’s abundant energy and natural resources”. The SO is extremely broad in scope. It calls for DOI Under Secretaries to “review” virtually everything pertaining to all public lands, including anything that might impede energy development or mineral resource extraction, existing land use management plans, any national monument designated by means of the Antiquities Act, areas that USFWS has designated as critical habitat for endangered species, and much more. It also calls for the revocation of the Public Lands Rule. The DOI Secretary instructed the Undersecretaries to provide action plans to him no later than February 18th to implement the SO, but that date came and went without news. We have not received any specifics as to what land use management plans or national monuments might be at risk, what areas are at risk of increased oil and gas or mineral extraction, or any of the many other possible threats listed in the SO. Moreover, we do not even know if there will be any kind of public input process once decisions are made by the DOI Secretary. We will continue to monitor for DOI announcements and will keep our members updated.
Harmful Bills: Anti-public lands and anti-conservation Members of Congress have been introducing bills that would be harmful to public lands and bedrock conservation laws such as the Endangered Species Act. The bills have us especially concerned at the moment were introduced in the House and Senate by a Representative and Senator from Utah. The bills, entitled “Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act” would amend the Antiquities Act of 1906 to terminate a President’s ability to designate a national monument; the right would be reserved to Congress, only. Click here to learn more and take action on this issue: https://www.calwild.org/take-action-to-protect-national-monuments-and-the-antiquities-act/
CalWild’s tracker of bills that we deem to be the most potentially detrimental to public lands or bedrock conservation laws can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14bl_YGHx-fLOG8JqS3Dgt1oz6Fzi6hEXUV5HsFM3d3I/edit?gid=0#gid=0
Threats have been coming at us at a fast and furious pace which has made it hard to become aware of and track them, much less respond to them. If you are feeling overwhelmed, we understand why – there is good reason to have those feelings. However, to use the words of the administration, their plan was to use “shock and awe” to barrage us with so much that we would become paralyzed and demoralized and simply give up.
We at CalWild are not giving up. We so love our public lands and all of the ecological, cultural, historical, and recreational values that they possess that giving up is not an option. What we will do is to assess all of the threats, prioritize the ones that we consider to be the most detrimental, and bring those to your attention so that you can help us fight back.
Now, more than ever, we need your help to protect our federal public lands in California. Our strength is in our numbers. Together we are strong!
