Goodbye to "America The Beautiful." Hello to "Drill Baby Drill."
Project 2025 calls for a radical expansion of drilling and mining--along with gutting bedrock environmental protections--on hundreds of millions of acres of federal public lands.
A conservative action plan written by a former President Trump appointee calls for radically increasing mining and drilling on federal public lands while canceling the Biden Administration’s commitment to conserving 30% of the nation’s land and waters by 2030. This edition of The Cocklebur documents Project 2025’s plans for the U.S. Department Interior, the agency that manages National Parks, wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, and hundreds of millions of other public land acres primarily in the West.
Project 2025, the policy action plan put together by the Heritage Foundation and their allies from conservative think tanks and political organizations, has been seeing even more attention in recent weeks. Democrats are running against the policy playbook designed to “pave the way for an effective conservative administration.” Former President Donald Trump is currently trying to distance himself from Project 2025, even as the document was written by many former Trump Administration appointees and staff.
William Perry Pendley, for example, authored Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of Interior (DOI). Pendley is Trump’s former Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and has a long history of supporting public lands selloffs and elimination of environmental protections focused on public lands conservation. Due to Pendley’s controversial opinions, he served at BLM without being confirmed by the Senate.
Project 2025’s DOI would be a much smaller agency with a much smaller budget. DOI would promote extractive industries and fossil fuel production over all other priorities. Project 2025 seeks to dismantle the Biden Administration’s 30 x 30 Initiative, along with other public lands protections.
A Summary of Project 2025 Directives for DOI public lands:
“Restore America’s Energy Dominance.” The core of Pendly’s Project 2025 plan is to “Restore America’s Energy Dominance” aka “Drill, Baby, Drill.” Project 2025 regularly repeats rightwing talking points about Democrats’ “war on the West/war on fossil fuels.” Trump and Project 2025 Republicans falsely accuse the Democrats of shutting down fossil production every chance they get, even though under President Biden the U.S. is currently producing more oil and gas than any country in history.
No More 30 x 30. Project 2025 seeks cancellation of the America the Beautiful initiative to conserve 30% of our lands and waters by 2030. The documents urges the next DOI to review all resource management plans finalized during the Biden Administration to consider adopting less conservation-oriented alternatives.
Repeal the Antiquities Act. Project 2025 seeks to end Presidential actions under the Antiquities Act to provide public lands protections on designated National Monuments. President Biden could name numerous new monuments in the coming months, as typically occurs toward the end of presidential terms.
Roll Back Protections on Lands Withdrawn from Mine Projects in Recent Years. Project 2025 call for renewing drilling and mining in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reinstating the Alaska Roadless Rule, reversing a decision to protect the Boundary Waters from mines in Minnesota, and withdrawing protections currently in process for the Chaco Canyon region of New Mexico.
In short, Project 2025 seeks to prioritize fossil fuel and mineral extraction by corporations on public lands as DOI’s marching orders. Project 2025 puts very little, if any, emphasis on conservation, protecting endangered species, climate action, and improving outdoor recreation opportunities. Western voters overwhelmingly support public lands protections and conservation, according to public opinion polling.
The Department of Interior manages more than 500 million acres of federal lands, 700 million acres of sub-surface minerals, 1.7 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), 23 percent of the nation’s energy production, water resources in 17 western states, and federal trust responsibilities for 566 Indian tribes and Alaska Natives.
Vast areas of rural America are home to DOI-managed federal land. Federal land management policy is critical for many rural people and communities, including local economic realities, environmental justice issues, the impacts of outdoor recreation, climate change, water and air pollution, wildfire, and much more.
SEE ALSO: The Cocklebur on Project 2025’s plan for farm, food, and other Farm Bills policies at USDA.
The Cocklebur covers rural policy and politics from a progressive point-of-view. Our work focuses on a tangled rural political reality of dishonest debate, economic and racial disparities, corporate power over our democracy, and disinformation peddled by conservative media outlets. We aim to use facts, data, and science to inform our point-of-view. We wear our complicated love/WTF relationship with rural America on our sleeve.