Welcome to the landscape, your show about America's parks and public lands. I'm Aaron Weiss with the Center For Western Western Priorities in beautiful evergreen Colorado open the mountains today. Well, I'm Kate Gretzinger in Salt Lake City. We've got an episode about president Biden's conservation
legacy for you today. Our colleagues, Lauren and Sterling, put out a report earlier this month rounding up the president's actions on public lands over the past 4 years, and let's just say he's been busy. But before we do that, we've got some news. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a confirmation hearing, on Thursday for interior secretary nominee Doug Burgum. We learned quite a bit more about Trump's pick to oversee our public lands.
Throughout the hearing, Burgum referred to public lands as an asset on America's, quote, balance sheet. He was making it clear he sees public lands as a resource to exploit for profit. Now this makes sense given Burgum's very close ties to the oil and gas industry. Essentially, what it sounds like after day today's hearing, to Doug Burgum, if you can't drill it or mine it, there's no economic value there. When he was governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum revealed that he has a land
deal with Continental Resources. That's an oil and gas company founded by billionaire Harold Hamm. Burgum also partnered with Hamm to hold that oil and gas fundraiser for Donald Trump at Mar a Lago. The both The Washington Post and The New York Times reported that Trump asked the oil executives gathered by Burgam and Hamm to raise a $1,000,000,000 for his campaign. And if they did, he would roll back environmental protections at the behest of the oil industry. I put up a piece on our West
Wise blog getting into all of that. There's a link to that in the show notes. Bergam's dedication to fossil fuel executives was on full display during that hearing this week as he bashed what he called intermittent sources of power. That's a a slight against renewables. He claimed the US needs more baseload power, by which he means coal and natural gas. He also said he wants to expand the use of, quote, clean coal, which, of course, does not exist. It's not a thing at all.
Bergham also spoke at length about his adoration for Teddy Roosevelt. He sounded a bit like Ryan Zinke in that way. But Bergam said that the antiquities act was meant for, quote, Indiana Jones type archaeological protections. Now that's despite the fact that Teddy Roosevelt, Doug Bergam's hero, used the law to designate the 800,000 Acre Grand Canyon National Monument.
So, governor Burgum, give us a call. We're gonna walk you through everything you missed in US history class about the antiquities act. Well, speaking of the antiquities act, representative Celeste Molloy of Utah and Mark Amadegh of Nevada have introduced a bill to repeal the country's
cornerstone conservation law. The ending presidential overreach on public lands act would remove the president's authority to designate national monuments and give that authority to congress, which I should add, congress already has that authority. The antiquities act has been used over a 100 and 60 times to protect invaluable natural and cultural resources including the Grand Canyon, the Grand Tetons, and Zion and Arches National Parks.
In fact, 4 out of Utah's mighty 5 parks were first protected by presidents using the antiquities act. Lawmakers passed a law in 1906 because they knew congress was too slow to act when it came to protecting public lands. And that problem has only gotten worse. The rate of congressional land protection has gone from 9 to just 3,000,000 acres in the past 2 decades.
And, of course, given that Celeste Molloy is Cliven Bundy's niece, it should come as no surprise that she is taking in at the antiquities act. Cliven, you'll recall, refused to pay grazing fees and led an armed standoff against the Bureau of Land Management in 2014 when agents came to round up his illegal cattle. And to this day, his cows are still grazing illegally inside Gold Butte National Monument, which was created in 2016 by president Obama using the antiquities act.
Our guests today are 2 of our CWP colleagues, Lauren Bogard and Sterling Homard. They authored our recent report on president Biden's final year on public lands, which looks at the president's conservation achievements over the past year in the context of his full presidential term. Lauren, welcome back to the pod. Thanks, team. Sterling, good to have you back as well. Hey. Happy to be back. So let's start with the upshot from your
report. The White House is saying Biden protected the most land and water of any president in history, which is a pretty big claim. Do we have the data to back that up? Yeah. Well, let's just look at what he's done recently. Just this year already in 2025, he's designated Chuckwalla and Satitla national monuments, in California, and these added 800,000 acres to his already impressive conservation legacy. Also, this year, he banned 625,000,000 acres of the outer continental shelf from offshore
oil leasing. So if you imagine the area that's right, along the border of the the United States, 625,000,000 acres are now banned to new offshore oil leasing, which is a huge deal. I mean, if we look at that in in terms of the total acres of land and water he protected, that total number is 674,000,000 acres. So 625,000,000 is a huge part of that, but let's not overlook the the 4,000,000 acres he protected
using the antiquities act. This includes a restoration of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments which President Trump illegally shrunk, but Biden restored them when he took office. You know there are so many ways to protect public land so it's it's hard to compare apples to oranges here. But, president Biden, what I can say is that he did a phenomenal job of protecting public lands in just 4 years in office. Yeah. Aaron, do you have anything to add?
Yeah. I mean, just to your point of, you know, some of this depends on what is your definition of protected, and the White House's claim does include, of course, the 625,000,000 acres offshore. So when you do add all that together, yes, it is definitely a larger number than any president in history.
And that is also not to take away from the accomplishments of, the recently departed president Carter, who protected tens of millions of acres, 50,000,000 plus acres in Alaska with what was honestly the the first and maybe only offensive use of the antiquities act in history where president Carter invoked that to essentially force congress's hand to pass ANILCA. And ANILCA is the the law that essentially makes Alaska a special sunflower when it comes
to land management. So because of that, Alaska's mostly off the table for future presidents. So can you compare the actions of president Carter and president Biden and say one was better than the other or one protected more than the other? No. They're they had very different and in my mind equally important accomplishments when it comes to the long term health of America's lands.
Alright. Well, sticking with the hard questions here at the beginning, how much progress did Biden make toward protecting 30% of US land and water by 2030? This was a a goal he was his administration called America the Beautiful, and we talked about it a lot on this podcast. But, you know, once again, what is protected? Those numbers are kinda hard to come up with. So, Lauren, I'm curious what you think about this. Yeah. It's a really good question, and it's
timely. I think it's one that many folks are gonna be asking at the end of, president Biden's term. But I I'm not aware of anyone having a final answer on that because as you both just explained, there are a lot of different ways that we can count to 30% protected, and some of that depends on how stringent you are about, private land conservation, conservation easements. And the thing about that is a lot of those areas have some of the best
habitat, riparian areas, other places. There's a reason why, some of those private lands, also have high conservation value. So a lot of it's gonna depend on who you ask. But the way I'm looking at it is looking at rather than the minutiae of the final accounting and tally of acres protected, and to what degree, I'm looking at the actions that he and his administration took over
4 years in office. And I think by all accounts, that's pretty astonishing, especially when you remember what was going on in early 2021 in terms of recovering from the COVID pandemic and economic uncertainty. So the fact that Biden used the antiquities act 15 times over the course of his presidency, and he also established, about a dozen new national wildlife refuges, I I think that's a significant achievement
by all accounts. And I would even throw in there things like some high profile mineral withdrawals, in some some some more sensitive and ecologically valuable areas. And then also preventing extracted activities in areas with high cultural or ecological significance. Yeah. That would be like Chaco mineral withdrawal around Chaco, the Boundary Waters, really high profile important
areas. And like you said, Lauren, I think it's important to point out that, you know, 30% is a number, but, like, some of these areas have higher ecological value than others and and cultural value. And, he he protected a lot of really important
places. And one of the Aaron? One of the things I do give the the Biden administration a lot of credit for is starting to do that difficult work of actually figuring out how do you count to 30, which is, in fact, significantly harder than it sounds at first blush. The work they did to create the the first draft of the conservation atlas was very good and important. And even if, let's assume, that work gets paused under the Trump administration, that work doesn't go away.
It just means that either folks on the outside pick it up, or when there's a future administration from any party that is interested in doing that work, they they pick back up where the Biden administration left off. And the Biden administration recognized some of that does in fact count individual, protection measures on the ground to figure out where you draw that line, what counts as protected.
So that work of starting to do the Atlas and the measurement was was a really important achievement. Lauren, I'm I'm curious, you know, why do you think president Biden was so successful given that he was a single term president and got certainly a whole lot more done in his first term than than president Obama did? It's almost as though he had it in mind for himself and set the tone in his administration in terms of what if this is it? What if this is all the time we
have? And so he set the tone early with his executive order on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad. That's, an elegant name for a lot of really important, goals and objectives that were government wide, including it established the national goal of protecting 30% of America's lands and waters by 2030 and also called for government agencies to come up with a plan for how to reach that goal. And so that is what we, what led to the America the Beautiful initiative.
So I think there's a tremendous amount to be said for setting that as an expectation and and asking for accountability upfront. I would add that president Biden really just got in there and got it done. You know, he came in with the understanding that there really is no time to waste, that we if we want to allow future generations to enjoy these outdoor spaces like we do, then public man protections need to happen, and they need to happen now.
And, you know, by the end of his first term, president Obama, had only protected about 20,000 acres. And let's not forget, by the end of president Obama's second term, he had increased that to over 5,000,000 acres. But but president Biden, just after one term, he protected over 4,000,000 acres using the antiquities act, and that is that is really impressive. I mean, president Obama was a fantastic president on conservation, but it took him a term to get
warmed up. And and president Biden really just, came in there ready to rock. And, Lauren, it should be noted that the president had a supportive congress, through through at least part of his term, and that made a a big difference. Oh my gosh. Yes. Insert wistful sigh of how much you can get done when you have congressional
champions, and that certainly helped. That helped in terms of laying the groundwork for the transition to clean energy, preparing the next generation of climate leaders through the
American Climate Corps. Those are things that he had congressional champions help get over the finish line as well as the passage of some really critical legislation that funded all of these efforts, including the bipartisan infrastructure law and the inflation reduction act, which I understand is the largest investment in climate mitigation efforts that the world has seen. So big deal that that got over the finish line.
So Biden also used the antiquities act to designate national monuments honoring civil rights and indigenous history. You know, these aren't really land protection, so they sometimes get overlooked in our community, but they are, a good argument for the antiquities act, which, as we know, is about to come under fire, in the Trump administration. Lauren, what were some of those monuments that Biden designated, to sort of honor history?
So president Biden and his administration saw the antiquities act as a tool, not just for land and resource protection, but also something that can be applied toward national healing and acknowledgment of some of the events of our past. Some that are, traumatic in terms of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War 2, the murder and lynching of Emmett Till.
The president used his authority under the antiquities act to create new cultural monuments and historic sites that that honor, the the legacy and the struggle of those events. And so that was a a key piece of his use of the antiquities act. Yeah.
That's a really good point. And I think that it's something that is worth stating even though it's maybe obvious is that the Biden administration was really intentional with how they were protecting lands and what lands they were protecting and who they had, you know, in the room when those lands
were protected. So I feel like the it was a, it was we're moving into this age of, conservation where it is a little bit more intersectional and there is it's less about just, like, wilderness and putting acres on the board. And it's more about who does this help? Who does this benefit? Whose story does this tell? And I feel like we really saw that sort of 21st, century concept of conservation come into focus under the Biden administration. So I'm glad you guys brought that up.
And certainly I just wanna add that also certainly, that's true at Camp Hale in Colorado where we're acknowledging both the outdoors that that played such a central role in training the troops for for World War 2, that the landscape and the history in that case are interconnected. And one of the monument campaigns that did not make it over the finish line was Swabhi, swamp cedars in Nevada, where the the tribes were very clear that this is honoring hallowed ground, the the site of,
of a terrible massacre. And there is more work to be done. And we can hope that either congress or a Trump administration will go in and look at places like Musawby and and acknowledge that protecting the land is protecting history in these cases. Right. And and sorry not to belabor this point, but I do think when you have conservation, when you're viewing it from this bottom up model, it becomes less partisan, which, of course, is helpful in every sense. You know, protecting these lands,
shouldn't be political. And when you start with real people on the ground saying this is this really matters to me, I think you can, avoid some of the the partisanship that sometimes comes with conservation. And I think that leads us, of course, to to tribal land stewardship co management, and what president Biden did there, Lauren, I think is really remarkable.
It is. There have been tribal consultation laws on the books for for decades, but in some cases, that's been more of a checking the box exercise rather than meaningful consultation.
So the president and his administration sought to engage with tribal nations and leaders early on as partners and, updating some of those tribal consultation procedures and and guidelines, as well as bringing more indigenous people into leadership roles within agencies like secretary Holland and Chuck Sams, the director of the National Park Service.
The president also reengaged with tribal nations on an annual basis by restarting the White House Tribal Nations Conference, something that had been done under president Obama and, was halted under president Trump. Yeah. And let I mean, let's just look at the most recent, national monument designation. Satitla Highlands National Monument, in Northern California, that is an effort totally led by the the Pit River Nation.
And president Biden did a phenomenal job of listening to their requests of of land protection for these lands that are healing, that are sacred. Yeah. And and one thing that, bears mentioning is the the final Bears Ears National Monument Management Plan, which was just finalized, just in time. And it really, the the BLM in that plan, you know, it was the first plan developed in coordination with tribes, with the the tribal commission that was created by the monument proclamation.
So that's pretty historic, and it's just awesome to see that the Biden administration got that over the finish line, because I think it will have some lasting power, hopefully, under the Trump administration regardless of what happens to the monument. And that's certainly the most high profile example, I think, just given the national attention on the establishment and illegal reduction and then restoration of
Bears Ears. But over the course of president Biden's term, the interior department and the forest service, committed up front to enhancing tribal management efforts, and that led to over 400 co management agreements that have been signed since the beginning of the administration. That's so awesome. That number, I feel like, is not getting enough attention. So I'm glad you brought that up. Thanks, Lauren.
So we we mentioned Chuckwalla and Satitla National Monuments, which were were both tribally led. The White House, when they created those monuments, announced this that they'd also created the largest stretch of protected land in North America. They're calling it the Moab to Mohave conservation corridor, and this kind of caught me by surprise. I hadn't heard about this before, last week. So, why is that important, Sterling, and what sort of makes up that corridor?
Well, I think you're not alone in, in saying that you hadn't heard of it before. Honestly, I'm not sure the Biden administration themselves had heard of it before they did it. So someone looked at the map and realized what they'd just done? Exactly. Yep. Yep. We were joking around that the maps guy was like, you know what? I think we did something here.
So, I mean, it's true. Yeah. Biden used the antiquities act, so well that he created, whether on purpose or not, this 600 mile stretch of contiguous landscape that is now protected is the longest contiguous stretch of protected public lands in the continental United States. The Moab to Mohave conservation corridor, and it it includes places that president Biden protected using the antiquities act of Ekua Mae National Monument, Chuckwalla National Monument as of just this year,
Grand Staircase Escalante, Bears Ears. These are places he restored. I mean, looking at president Biden's conservation legacy, he he dropped a bomb with this one. I mean, 608 600 miles is nothing to sneeze at. And and, you know, as time goes on, it is harder and harder to find places that aren't interrupted by human development. I mean, that's the definition of contiguous. Right?
And so to have this space in in Southwest, in the Southwest United States is so important not just for, the conservation of it, the the tribal recognition that these lands were where indigenous peoples traveled along the Colorado River, but also for wildlife. You know? Wildlife need these spaces that aren't interrupted by by human development. So in addition to protecting lands and waters, Biden also made public lands part of the
renewable energy transition. And this is, you know, not necessarily conservation, but it is important. How did he do that, Lauren? Yeah. So early on, the administration set a goal to permit 25 gigawatts of new clean energy on public lands by 2025. And they actually achieved that goal this past April in 2024,
which was obviously several months in advance. And in the end, the BLM approved 45 renewable energy project projects with the capacity to generate 33 gigawatts, which is enough to power 15,000,000
homes. So part of what allowed the agency and the administration writ large to achieve this milestone was the necessity to update some regulations and incentives that would make it easier to both thoughtfully cite renewable energy development on public lands, and then just provide a framework for how to do so in a way that has fewer resource conflicts. Because as as you all were mentioning just a second ago, there's there just aren't going to be more public
lands, more land in the US. It's it's a finite thing, and there's certainly pressure, for it to serve a lot of purposes. So the fact that they managed to to do this in a way that brings a lot of renewable capacity online and keeping in mind some of those conflicts is is really remarkable. And I think you also have to acknowledge the oil and gas reforms that got done, first under the inflation reduction act, and then the rule making that followed.
That overhauled a oil and gas leasing system that had been rigged in the industry's favor for a century. So fixing a 100 year problem is nothing to sneeze at, and that that credit goes to both congress and secretary Holland, and, of course, Bureau of Land Management director Tracy Stone Manning, who got that stuff done.
And those those overhauls, most of which are required by law and a little bit was done through a a durable rule making, that really is going to have a long term difference, in terms of how America manages publicly owned oil and gas, both in terms of making sure we are not locking up acres unnecessarily that are never gonna get drilled and making sure that when oil and gas gets drilled, that taxpayers get a fair return.
So then I think we have to look forward to what happens next as we're recording this, on Wednesday. There are, by my math, a 120 hours left in the Biden presidency. We know that president-elect Trump has already pledged to try to roll back a number of national monuments, something that he tried to do the last time around. Lauren, just refresh our memory. What happened back then, what, about 7 years ago? Yeah. The public outcry was immediate. It was
swift and unequivocal. People hated the Trump, and then and then interior secretary Ryan Zinke did that. And the polling results, even in Utah, reflected that sentiment. Yeah. They they they did a whole public comment process on this national monument review, and 99% of the public comments
told them to leave national monuments alone. I mean, it's just crazy when you think about any subject in America where there is 99% agreement, and that folks care enough about to write into to to their elected officials and tell them, oh, gosh. No. Do not do this. So, and we continue to see that year after year in public polling. Lauren, what did we just see this week?
Yeah. Exactly. The Grand Canyon Trust commissioned some new polling in both Utah and Arizona that was just released yesterday, and it reinforced how much people love the monuments in their state and support their existence going forward, with the majority saying they wanna keep Bears Ears, Grand Staircase, and Bajnavio Itaukukfani as they are. So it's it might not be 99%, but it's a a majority of voters in those states. Yeah. And of Republicans, if I remember correctly.
True. Sterling, you sort of have an interesting window into public sentiment because you run our TikTok account, where you've and and our some of our insta you make our Instagram reels as well, and some of these have really, gone viral recently. So what are you hearing and seeing from people online about public lands? Oh my gosh. Well, I'll I'll use a
recent example. We've been doing a lot of coverage of, Utah's latest attempt to to seize control of, what they call unappropriated public lands in their state. And these are national public lands, so they belong to all Americans across the the United States. But I made a video about it because the supreme court denied to hear Utah's, case that they want 18,000,000 acres of public lands to be transferred to the state. I made a video about it, and it blew up, and there are over 500 comments.
And as I've been looking through these comments, people are saying that they want public lands to remain in public hands. You know. They want their national public lands to remain, accessible, for fishing, for hiking, for camping, for for all their their recreation purposes, and they don't want their public lands to be sold off to to, developers, to the oil and gas industry, to mining companies, you know. And so across the board, I mean, I'm seriously, like, 500 comments on this one video.
I've been looking at all the comments, and I think I've seen one that says that Utah was was right in in making this lawsuit. So I'll let you do the math there on what percentage that is of people who support national monuments. But, I mean, people love their public lands, and they don't want to see protections for those public places, be rolled back. So speaking of protections, how much of the progress made under Biden is at stake under
Trump, Lauren? I know we've touched on this, but but can you sort of pull it all together for us? I'll try. I mean, the good and the bad news is that they've told us what they're gonna do in their project 2025, whether Trump wants to say he knew nothing about it or not. Many folks who had served in the 1st Trump administration, said what they wanna do in terms of public lands and oil and gas. So while we don't know for sure when or what or what they'll actually target,
they have given us their road map. And so I I think the bottom line is that any time we spend going backward or not making progress reducing our carbon emissions or protecting biodiversity and ecosystems as much as possible is time that we simply don't have. Okay. Completely accurate. We don't have any time to waste, but there is some good news here. Right, Erin? Like, these some of these regulations and and changes will be hard to undo. That's right.
One of the things that, especially, the Bureau of Land Management did right is they got these rules over the finish line in a way that they are durable. They can't just be reversed using the congressional review act. And we know from the past that the the first Trump administration tried to cut so many corners that a great deal of their anti conservation agenda didn't stick because they didn't follow the law. Things like the Administrative Procedures
Act. Things like NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act. The Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act. Those are all in place and those are all strong safeguards for our public lands, for our clean water. And the at the administrative level at least, they really do put some serious handcuffs on any attempts to just wholesale get rid of these land protections and these new environmental patrol, and and these new environmental protections that we saw under the Biden administration.
That is for me one of my north stars going into these next 4 years, along with the fact that we can continue to hold this administration accountable from an ethics standpoint, from a transparency standpoint. All of those safeguards are still in place, and and that's what I look at every day when when I go into work. And I refuse to end this episode on a bleak note because this is a celebration of a remarkable conservation legacy of of president Biden's.
So I wanna ask each of you to wrap up by giving us your north star as a conservation advocate as president Trump takes office? And let's let's start with Lauren on that one. Oh, Erin. Good idea. Let's not end on a bleak note. It's it there's a lot coming at us right now, but, you're right. This is a celebration of the durability and the progress that was made. Gosh. In terms of North Star as Trump takes office, I mean, I I put that to every single one of us
in this country. Anyone who has a fake favorite hiking trail or values clean air, clean water, we can all be conservation champions, and I hope we're we're up to the challenge. There's gonna be a lot happening, but, it's it's, you know, you gotta stand up for the things that you love. So I'm looking to to all of us to be part of that groundswell of protecting the progress that was made by president Biden and his administration. Sterling, what's, what's keeping you going?
I think it's so easy to feel alone in the belief that conservation is popular. Right? As we see Trump elect all these different Trumpers to to be part of his administration, it has made me kinda think like, oh my gosh. Am I the only one that cares about conservation here? I mean, all these people, just like they said they were gonna do in project 2025, are are now, backing president Trump in his anti conservation agenda.
But I think it's important for people to realize that for con I I think it's important for conservationists to realize that we are not alone. There is a huge community of conservationists in the United States. A majority of Americans are, supportive of public lands protections and, I think it's important for me to just take a step back and realize that the anti conservation, rhetoric that the Trump administration is pushing is unpopular
among the public. It is largely undemocratic when, he puts forth anti conservation legislation that is not supported by a majority of Americans. So at the very least, we have a team amongst each other, and we have support with other conservationists, across the country. Yeah. I'll I'll jump jump on that and just say, yeah, we have numbers on our side. You know, I'd we said this after the election, and I'll say it again here.
Trump was elected in spite of his position on public lands, not because of it. And, you know, the other thing for me that keeps me going is remembering how incompetent the Trump administration was the first time around. They like to cut corners. They like to do shortcuts, and we have an army of attorneys on our side in addition to to public sentiment. So, it will be hard to undo a lot of this progress.
And, you know, hopefully, after 4 years of attacks on public lands and, anti climate rhetoric, will have a president who believes in conservation and climate change again. So I look forward to that future. I can just add one other thing, which is that, we're so lucky that this is popular, that, people love their parks and public lands. So we've definitely
got that going for ourselves going forward. And one thing that I think I'll be doing that'll put a smile on my face and make me feel gratitude is just looking back at all the places that I was able to visit with Kate and Sterling and others on our team in doing the road to 30 postcards campaign. And what it makes me think of is how some of those protection efforts were decades decades
in the works. And to see those efforts get over the finish line gives me a tremendous amount of satisfaction and pride and gratitude that that that's where we are at the end of this. And I would even say that for some of these long overdue rule makings and reforms. Some of those were decades in the making as well. So to be here now is definitely a big celebration and something we can appreciate and enjoy going forward.
That is a beautiful place to leave it, along with the batch of remember the incompetence bumper stickers that I'm gonna print up right after this. Lauren Bogard, Sterling Homard, thank you so much for that progress support. It is a wonderful flag to have planted, to remember how remarkable the last 4 years have been. And of course, we are not going anywhere. Alright, folks. That is it for today's episode. As always, we love to hear from you. Podcast@western priorities.org.
It is kind of remarkable to think that this was our last podcast of the Biden presidency. And as you can tell from our news segment at the top of this show, things are gonna get crazy over the next couple months. We will be here to keep track of it all. If there's stuff that you wanna hear about or learn about, again, use that email address, podcast at westernpriorities.org. Tell us what you wanna hear.
Thanks again to Sterling and Lauren for their time today, and thank you for listening to the landscape.