The impact of President Trump's energy dominance agenda

As President Trump’s term comes to an end, his energy dominance agenda has already left deep scars on our wildest places and on the health and well-being of communities across the nation. We’re taking a closer look at these impacts through seven maps. We hope this information is helpful in educating the public about public lands issues and encourages individuals to contact the Trump administration to express support for public lands.

Over the last four years, the federal government has offered an area of over 108 million acres of public lands and waters for oil and gas leasing—an area larger than the entire state of California.

On land, over 24 million acres have already been put up for sale and 50 million acres are being made available for oil and gas leasing through draft and finalized resource management plans overseen by federal land agencies. These plans provide blueprints for which lands can be developed by energy companies, locking in the decision to prioritize energy development over conservation or recreation for decades.

The numbers show an administration that is willing to give up our most treasured natural resources, regardless of need or demand. Since 2017, the energy industry has purchased approximately 11 million acres of the oil and gas leases that have been made available onshore and offshore.

By placing such a large emphasis on leasing, President Trump’s administration has changed the fate of many lands that are far better suited for recreation and conservation. Throughout his term, the president has stripped protections from wild places that provide critical habitat for many plants and animals, clean water and offer fantastic opportunities for recreation and exploration.

Once they are sold off to the fossil fuel industry, sometimes for as little as $2 an acre, these lands will be scarred by drilling rigs, roads, pipelines and pollution wherever drilling occurs.

To make matters worse, the administration has done everything they can to shut the public out of important land management decisions and failed to listen to communities that are directly impacted. 

The following maps give a closer look at the dangerous impacts of handing our lands to oil and gas development. 

1

In August 2020, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) finalized an illegal leasing program that handed over the entire coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the oil and gas industry. That’s a massive 1.5 million acres of unspoiled wildlands up for destruction. 

The Arctic Refuge holds the largest stretch of wilderness in the United States, encompassing 19.3 million acres of majestic mountains in the Brooks Range, windswept alpine tundra and boreal forests. It is home to diverse and stunning populations of wildlife including caribou, wolves, migratory birds and three species of bears.

Drilling for oil on the fragile coastal plain would be a disaster and further contribute to the climate crisis.

The BLM estimates that  more than 375,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions  could be released per year just from the extraction process itself—about the same amount that stems from a year’s worth of energy use in 43,000 households. 

The consequences could be dire for an area already experiencing warmer winters and warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.

The climate and ecological impacts will also create a serious human rights issue. 

Indigenous peoples depend on the Arctic Refuge and its resources to sustain their communities, culture and way of life. The Gwich’in are physically and spiritually linked to the Porcupine Caribou Herd that, for ages, has migrated to the coastal plain each year to birth and calve its young. Drilling threatens the health of the caribou which in turn threatens the Gwich’in. Iñupiat communities rely on Arctic marine species for their diet, which would be impacted by increased oil infrastructure as well. 

The issue has garnered the attention of the United Nations, which has  called for an investigation of the United States ’ proposed development as a violation of Indigenous peoples’ rights. 

2

The region around Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southeastern New Mexico has raised red flags for years due to increasing air pollution and methane emissions coming from nearby oil and gas production in the Permian Basin. 

And yet, the current administration is getting ready to approve a resource management plan that would make 97 percent of the region around the National Park available for oil and gas development, aggravating the public health and climate change problem.

This is a clear example of how the federal government has been ignoring the enormous amount of greenhouse gas emissions that could result from this type of development. Ultimately, we’re all going to pay a hefty price.

Oil and gas leases sold between January 2017 and September 2020 in the Carlsbad region alone could create the equivalent of 93.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide—more than the total emissions from Washington state for an entire year.

Nationwide, oil and gas leases sold on public lands and waters between January 2017 and September 2020 could create the equivalent of 8.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to analysis by The Wilderness Society Action Fund. That equates to more than the total greenhouse gas emissions stemming from all of North America—United States, Canada and Mexico—for an entire year.

This massive amount of emissions could worsen the climate crisis that’s already knocking on our doors. The summer of 2020 ranked as one of the hottest on record and extreme weather events, including severe wildfires and storms, have been intensifying before our very eyes. 

What’s more, this administration is missing an important opportunity to fight climate change. The federal government could immediately curb the country’s emissions by reducing dirty fossil fuel production on public lands, improving the health of lands and their ability to store carbon, and increasing responsible renewable energy development. 

3

At the end of his first year in office, President Trump reduced the Bears Ears National Monument by a staggering 85 percent to make room for oil and gas and other development. 

This decision compromised more than 1 million acres of land that is rich in cultural importance to the Hopi, Diné, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute and Zuni Tribes, as well as archaeological sites—some dating back to 12,000 B.C.E.  

Notably, while the 2016 monument designation provided crucial protection for much of the region, it left vulnerable over half a million acres that the Inter-Tribal Coalition had advocated for in its proposal. Now, with President Trump’s removal of 85 percent of the lands from the 2016 Bears Ears National Monument, the vast majority of the landscape that the five Tribes worked together to protect is vulnerable. 

Native Tribes’ connection to Bears Ears is about honoring their past and preserving their present. Indigenous communities still rely heavily on native plants and wildlife on this land to sustain their way of life—from herbs used as medicine to firewood utilized for ceremonial gatherings—and they are not giving up on their land.

4

Before the end of this year, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is expected to release a draft resource management plan that could open the door to oil and gas drilling on areas of the Northern Red Desert in Wyoming that have been closed for a decade to protect wildlife habitats.

The decision has puzzled local communities and environmentalists, since a  recent geological study  found there are no significant oil and gas deposits in the Northern Red Desert. 

That scientific finding calls into question how the BLM justifies prioritizing energy development over protecting wildlife habitat in the longest known mule deer migration corridor in the West. 

The Northern Red Desert is an immense landscape of nearly 700,000 acres renowned for its unspoiled wildlands and extraordinary wildlife, including a rare desert elk herd, thousands of pronghorn antelope and sage-grouse. The area, alongside the Big Sandy Foothills to the northwest, is home to the Red Desert to Hoback Mule Deer Migration Corridor—one of the most biologically and culturally important wildlife corridors in North America through which about 5,000 mule deer travel between their critical winter range and summer meadows each year.

But over the last four years, the BLM has had its eyes on the land for oil and gas leasing. About 33,000 acres have been offered to fossil fuel companies directly in the migration corridor, with another 250,000 acres of land in surrounding areas.

Instead of managing the land to ensure the health of wildlife populations, the agency is putting politics over science and granting leasing rights to fossil fuel speculators. 

5

The picturesque North Fork Valley in western Colorado is an American success story.

The area was once economically dependent on the boom and bust cycle of the coal industry. But in recent years, it has successfully diversified its economy. The valley is now home to the highest concentration of organic farms in Colorado. It is a hub of organic and traditional agriculture, and one of two federally recognized wine regions in the state.

The success comes from a community that banded together for over a decade to fend off attempts by the federal government to open up areas of the North Fork Valley to oil and gas development. The Bureau of Land Management even agreed to work with the community and consider a  locally-driven plan  for the area’s resource management. 

The community-driven plan, dubbed the North Fork Alternative Plan, represented a vision for the future that included critical protections to safeguard the valley’s air, water, wildlands and wildlife.

But in April 2020, the Bureau of Land Management released the final Uncompahgre Resource Management Plan which blatantly ignored the community-supported alternative plan and opened up nearly 1 million acres in the broader region to oil and gas drilling, including 95 percent of the North Fork Valley.

Just as we hope this information encourages more of us to take action to support public lands, The Wilderness Society Action Fund is committed to stopping the worst attacks on, and building the politics for protecting our public lands and waters now and into the future.