Trump administration opens more public land to drilling and mining
The Trump administration has opened thousands of acres of land in Nevada and New Mexico to oil and gas drilling, geothermal development and hard-rock mining, reversing protections that President Joe Biden enacted during his final weeks in office.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced the decision Friday as part of an emergency order to allow logging in more than half of national forests, or nearly 113 million acres. Rollins said that move was designed to increase timber production. Critics said the government was helping private industries at the expense of the environment.
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Tacked onto the logging announcement was a little-noticed addendum: The agency also ended protections that covered federal land in Nevada and New Mexico in order to “boost production of critical minerals.”
On Monday, the agency confirmed that the affected land is in the Ruby Mountains of Nevada, where about 264,000 acres had been protected from oil, gas and geothermal energy development, and in the Upper Pecos watershed in north-central New Mexico, where the Biden administration had barred mineral mining.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, said in a statement that it was “removing the burdensome Biden-era regulations that have stifled energy and mineral development to revitalize rural communities and reaffirm America’s role as a global energy powerhouse.”
The Biden administration enacted protections, which were supposed to last 20 years, for both areas at the request of Native American tribes and local communities. Lawmakers from both states said they were furious and vowed to fight the move.
“The Trump administration’s decision is a betrayal of trust,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said in a statement. “This kind of top-down decision-making, with zero attempt to discuss or even listen to the communities impacted, is exactly what’s wrong with this administration.”
Ralph Vigil, an organizer for the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, an environmental nonprofit group, said mining would hurt the area’s outdoor recreation economy.
