Last February, I piled into my Jeep and rumbled up a rocky ledge that took me high above a breathtaking corner of the Mojave National Preserve. At the top was an old gold mine, which an Australian company had recently reactivated in search of rare earth minerals.
The National Park Service’s Dateline Resources company claimed it operated the Colosseum Mine without a permit and destroyed the surrounding landscape with heavy machinery. Dateline said it had the right to operate the mine based on plans that previous operators submitted to the Bureau of Land Management decades ago.
President Trump had been inaugurated several weeks before my visit. Environmentalists told me that the conflict was an early test of how the administration would respond to corporate exploitation of public lands.
At the time, observers were unsure how things would progress. They noted that preserving public lands is one of those rare issues that is popular on both sides of the political spectrum.
Almost a year later, it has become clear that the Trump administration is siding with companies.
President Trump ordered the Interior Department to inventory mineral deposits on federal lands and prioritize mining as the primary use for those lands. He directed authorities to significantly speed up permitting and environmental reviews for certain types of energy and critical minerals projects. Metallurgical coal is also an important mineral, enabling companies to mine it.
His budget proposal would require companies to pay the government to extract coal, oil and gas from public lands and provide other financial incentives for such projects, while reducing the power of federal land managers to veto them.
Under the President’s direction, the DOI was required to enter into new coal lease agreements and moved to rescind both provisions that protect swathes of national forests from mining activity by banning most new road construction and that place conservation and restoration on par with other uses of BLM lands, such as mining, drilling, and grazing.
The administration is seeking to roll back restrictions on mining and drilling on certain public lands, including parts of Alaska, Minnesota and New Mexico. Meanwhile, conservative lawmakers overturned a management plan that would have restricted energy development on certain BLM lands in , , and .
Together, the Trump administration and its legislative allies are taking steps to reduce or eliminate protections for about 90 million acres of public lands. Including habitat protections that have been diminished by government efforts to undermine the United States, that number increases to more than 175 million acres, the group said.
“All of this represents, in some ways, the greatest attack on our public lands and giveaway to large multinational mining corporations that we’ve seen since probably the 19th century,” said U.S. Representative Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, who likened the level of resource exploitation to “something that happened in the era of robber barons, where there were no regulations or protections for communities or the environment.”
Stansberry’s idea would increase the fees mining companies would have to pay to maintain speculative claims on federal land and require them to use those funds for conservation. She told me that this is just a small contribution to a larger effort to resist the government’s approach to start mining on public land. She said this approach is so frequent and widespread that it is “similar to whack-a-mole.”
“So much damage has been done administratively and legislatively in the past 11 months since President Trump took office,” she said.
As for the Coliseum Mine, the DOI said this spring that Dateline Resources does not need to seek permission from the Park Service to continue mining. President Trump and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum also made announcements. The company’s stock price soared, reaching .
The company has already discovered high-grade gold deposits. We are closed for Christmas, but the new year is about to begin.
recent land news
The Pacific Forest Trust has transferred approximately 900 acres of land near Yosemite National Park, partially funded by the state, back to the Southern Sierra Miuk Nation. . Members of indigenous groups were forced from their ancestral lands during California’s gold rush, when state-backed militias worked to exterminate the indigenous people. Some are now hoping new real estate will shore up their finances.
California state parks were recently found to be in violation of the Endangered Species Act by allowing off-roaders to drive over sand dunes that are home to the western plover. The lawsuit is part of a long-running lawsuit over the use of Oceano Dunes State Recreation Area along the Central Coast. State parks will need a federal “right-of-way” permit to continue allowing off-road driving at the popular beachside spot.
California lawmakers have introduced a bill that would preserve more than 1.7 million acres of public land across the state. This will be done, in part, by expanding Los Padres National Forest and Carrizo Plains National Monument.
The federal public lands grazing program was created as a bulwark against environmental damage, but it has been transformed into a huge subsidy program that benefits a select few. Including billionaire hobby ranchers and large corporations, according to. There has also been reduced oversight of the health of these lands.
Some final climate news
President Trump’s media company to merge with fusion energy company in $6 billion deal Some analysts say this is a significant conflict of interest.
House Republicans passed a bill that would overhaul the federal environmental review process. Critics say it could speed up the approval process for oil and gas projects while hampering clean energy.
The iconic ‘chasing arrow’ recycling symbol is likely to be removed from milk cartons in Californiamy colleague Suzanne Last. The judgment revealed how used beverage packaging was illegally exported to East Asia as “recycled” mixed paper, in violation of international environmental law.
Wind energy is again under attack from the Trump administrationthis week ordered a halt to all major wind energy construction projects. The White House has consistently worked to delay clean energy development into 2025, but offshore wind has been a special concern for the president, according to Haley Smith of the Times.
We have published a comprehensive collection of stories looking back on the The wildfires that burned through Altadena and the Pacific Palisades last January, and everything that’s happened since then. Columnist Steve Lopez called it “one of the most apocalyptic years in Southern California history.” .
This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. . Listen to the Boiling Point Podcast .
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