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earthjustice
Fury as Trump Puts Tens of Millions of Protected Forests on the Chopping Block
"The roadless rule is the most effective conservation rule on the books at protecting mature and old-growth forests," said one environmental campaigner.
Jun 24, 2025
A top Trump official on Monday announced a plan to end a rule that protects tens of millions of acres in the National Forest System and which would clear the way for road development and timber production on those lands—news that elicited alarm from conservation and environmental groups.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced that the Trump administration plans to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has for decades protected 58.5 million acres of forests from timber harvesting and road construction.
Rollins called the rule overly restrictive and added that the move "opens a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation's forests. It is abundantly clear that properly managing our forests preserves them from devastating fires and allows future generations of Americans to enjoy and reap the benefits of this great land."
The environmental law group Earthjustice took issue with wildfire prevention being used to justify the rollback.
"While the Trump administration has suggested that wildfire risk is an underlying reason for these sweeping policy changes, rolling back the roadless rule actually threatens to cause more fires. That's because fire ignitions are far more likely in roaded landscapes," said Drew Caputo, the group's vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife, and oceans, in a statement on Monday.
Rollins made the announcement at the annual meeting of the Western Governors' Association. Hundreds of protestors gathered outside of the building where the event was taking place in Santa Fe, New Mexico in order to denounce efforts that might lead to federal public lands being privatized, according to The Associated Press.
The roadless rule covers areas including the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. In 2019, during the first Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture codified a regulatory framework that exempted Tongass from the roadless rule. Former President Joe Biden undid that change while he was in office.
Idaho and Colorado have adopted state roadless area rules that supersede the boundaries of the federal roadless rule boundaries for those states, according to the USDA's website, which appears to mean that not all of the 58.5 million acres would be impacted if the Trump administration goes through with this change.
"The roadless rule is one of the country's conservation success stories, safeguarding singular natural values across nearly 60 million acres of America's great forests," said Garett Rose, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Great Outdoors Campaign Director Ellen Montgomery at Environment America similarly said that "the roadless rule is the most effective conservation rule on the books at protecting mature and old-growth forests."
"Once again, the Trump administration is ignoring the voices of millions of Americans to pursue a corporate giveaway for his billionaire buddies. Stripping our national forests of roadless rule protections will put close to 60 million acres of wildlands across the country on the chopping block," said Sierra Club's forest campaign manager, Alex Craven, in a statement on Monday. "That means polluting our clean air and drinking water sources to pad the bottom lines of timber and mining companies—all while pursuing the same kind of mismanagement that increases wildfire severity."
Caputo at Earthjustice made some of these same points and indicated his organization is ready to sue over the move. "If the Trump administration actually revokes the roadless rule, we'll see them in court," he said.
The move follows a March executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump directing Rollins and the secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior to take steps to increase timber production.
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After Marathon Markup, House GOP Advances 'Most Extreme Anti-Environment Bill in American History'
"Donald Trump and his allies in Congress are working like mad to hand over our public lands to billionaires and corporate polluters to drill, mine, and log with the bare minimum oversight or accountability," said one critic.
May 07, 2025
Leading up to and after an early Wednesday morning vote by a key GOP-controlled committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, Democratic lawmakers and conservationists renewed their criticism of "a corporate polluter's wish list" that Republicans aim to include in the next reconciliation package.
Republican President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to "drill, baby, drill" and raked in cash from the climate-wrecking fossil fuel industry. While House Committee on Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) celebrated the new vote that advanced legislation intended to deliver on the president's "agenda to make our nation energy dominant," Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) has called the effort to pass the polluter-friendly bill "corruption in broad daylight."
"House Republicans' budget cuts national park funding, slashes clean air and water protections, and pushes the most extreme anti-environment bill in American history as the cherry on top," Huffman said on social media Tuesday, when the committee held a markup for the legislation. "Today, while Democrats called out this billionaire giveaway, Republicans hid in their offices."
Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Md.), a panel member who proposed amendments during markup, said in a Tuesday statement that "House Republicans are once again putting polluters over people. But as a mother, I refuse to let my children's future be auctioned off to Big Oil."
"I offered commonsense amendments that range from blocking funds to agencies that refuse to comply with the courts to stopping oil and gas drilling near schools and hospitals," said Dexter. "This bill is a giveaway to Big Oil and billionaires. My amendments demand House Republicans choose: people or polluters?"
We’re more than 8 hours into this Reconciliation markup in the House Natural Resources Committee and the GOP has completely stopped engaging on answering basic questions about their own bill. We have never seen anything like it. It’s going to be a long night.
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— Rep. Melanie Stansbury (NM-01) (@repstansbury.bsky.social) May 6, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Earthjustice has specifically sounded the alarm over proposed lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska; reinstatement of flawed management plans for both locations; additional lease sales in Cook Inlet; and mandates that the U.S. Forest Service enter into long-term timber contracts in each U.S. region annually for the next decade.
"Here in Alaska, temperatures are rising four times faster than the rest of the planet. We're facing warmer and wetter winters, and communities [are] already facing forced relocation because of climate change," Earthjustice Alaska office managing attorney Carole Holley said Monday. "This bill, if passed without drastic changes, would make things worse by doubling down on reckless oil and gas extraction in the Arctic, maximizing mining and logging on lands valued by the public for recreation and subsistence activities, and halting clean energy projects."
"It amounts to a giveaway of some of our most cherished public lands to bolster corporate profits, all based on wildly speculative assumptions about revenue generation," Holley added. "At the same time, the language includes an attempt to throw away commonsense safeguards like judicial review and public participation in the resource decisions that affect our state."
The House Natural Resources Committee released its portion of the Republican House reconciliation bill late last Thursday. It doesn't look good for the wild. More information: biodiv.us/3GHS6cM
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— Center for Biological Diversity (@biologicaldiversity.org) May 6, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Ahead of the vote, Public Citizen research director Alan Zibel issued an ominous warning about Republicans' "radical budget plan."
"Welcome to the American petrostate," Zibel said. Like Holley, he blasted the proposed lease sales and "an absurd 'pay to play' permitting provision allowing wealthy corporations to pay a fee to speed up permitting and exemptions from judicial oversight."
"The plan is fiscally reckless, returning royalty rates to what they were in 1920, and half of what New Mexico and Texas charge," he argued. "Rolling back reforms to the antiquated federal oil and gas program would prevent taxpayers from receiving a fair return for the extraction of our public resources. Doing so would also impede sensible requirements that oil and gas companies clean up their messes."
After the vote, Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, said Wednesday that "public lands shouldn't have a price tag on them. But Donald Trump and his allies in Congress are working like mad to hand over our public lands to billionaires and corporate polluters to drill, mine, and log with the bare minimum oversight or accountability."
"These lands belong to all Americans, they shouldn't be given away to pad corporate bottom lines," Manuel added. "Congressional Republicans have made it clear that this is their plan, and our public lands, our clean air and water, critical habitat, and our communities will be threatened by unchecked industrial development. The American people will not tolerate it."
Food & Water Watch managing director of policy and litigation Mitch Jones put out a similarly critical statement on Wednesday.
"Selling public lands to pay for tax cuts to billionaires is a horrible idea," Jones said. "Fossil fuel corporations have been chomping at the bit to exploit federal protected lands for oil and gas drilling—House Republicans appear all too willing to pave the way. This partisan move to sell off federal lands is a betrayal of public trust. The spending bill must be dead on arrival."
This article has been updated with comment from Food & Water Watch.
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Outrage as Trump Blows Up Endangered Species Act Protection by Redefining One Word
One conservation campaigner accused the president of "trying to drive a knife through the heart of the Endangered Species Act."
Apr 16, 2025
The Trump administration on Wednesday published an anticipated proposal that one green group warned "would rescind nearly all habitat protections for endangered species nationwide" by changing the regulatory definition of a single word in the country's cornerstone wildlife conservation law.
Two federal agencies published a proposed overhaul of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that would rescind the definition of "harm" to plants and animals protected under the landmark 1973 legislation, which according to the U.S. Department of the Interior has saved 99% of listed species from extinction.
Under the proposal from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), habitat destruction—the leading driver of extinction—would not be considered "harm." Opponents say the Trump administration is planning the redefinition in order to enable more destructive resource extraction like logging, mining, and fossil fuel expansion that would imperil ESA-protected species.
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) warned that the proposal would open the door "for industries of all kinds to destroy the natural world and drive species to extinction in the process."
UPDATE: The Trump administration issued a proposed rule today that would rescind nearly all habitat protections for endangered species nationwide. You can't protect animals and plants from extinction without protecting the places they live. More info: biodiv.us/42EnuQH
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— Center for Biological Diversity (@biologicaldiversity.org) April 16, 2025 at 8:26 AM
Noah Greenwald, CBD's co-director of endangered species, said Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump "is trying to drive a knife through the heart of the Endangered Species Act."
"We refuse to let him wipe out America's imperiled wildlife, and I believe the courts won't allow this radical assault on conservation," he continued. "There's just no way to protect animals and plants from extinction without protecting the places they live, yet the Trump administration is opening the flood gates to immeasurable habitat destruction."
"This administration's greed and contempt for imperiled wildlife know no bounds, but most Americans know that we destroy the natural world at our own peril," Greenwald added. "Nobody voted to drive spotted owls, Florida panthers, or grizzly bears to extinction."
CBD says the definition of harm has been "pivotal to protecting and recovering endangered species," noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed that it includes habitat destruction.
Andrew Bowman, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, said Wednesday, "Despite the fact that the Endangered Species Act is America's single greatest tool to prevent species extinction, has a 99% success rate, and is supported across party lines and the country by 95% of the electorate, the Trump administration is hell-bent on destroying it to further line the pockets of industry."
"The vast majority of imperiled wildlife listed as endangered or threatened under the ESA are there because of loss of habitat," Bowman added. "This latest salvo to redefine 'harm' to eliminate protection for wildlife from habitat destruction, if successful, will further imperil threatened and endangered species. We will fight this action and continue to protect the wildlife and wild places we hold dear as a nation."
Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife, and oceans at Earthjustice, on Wednesday accused the Trump administration of "trying to rewrite basic biology."
"Like all of us, endangered species need a safe place to live," Caputo said. "This misguided new proposal threatens a half-century of progress in protecting and restoring endangered species. We are prepared to go to court to ensure that America doesn't abandon its endangered wildlife."
Trump has already attacked the ESA during his current term by issuing an executive order declaring a "national energy emergency" meant to promote his "drill, baby, drill" fossil fuel policy. The order states that the ESA and Marine Mammal Protection Act will not be allowed stand in the way of fossil fuel development.
The proposed redefinition of "harm" in the ESA comes as the Trump administration, spearheaded by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, eviscerates federal agencies including the Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA. As he did during his first term, Trump is pursuing a massive rollback of climate and environmental regulations and has appointed Cabinet secretaries whose backgrounds and beliefs are often inimical to their agencies' purposes.
These include Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a staunch fossil fuel proponent; Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former CEO of a fracking company who has denied the existence of a climate emergency; and Environmental Protect Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, described by the Sunrise Movement as "a disaster for our planet and a win for Big Oil."
In response to the administration's proposal, Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous said that "in Donald Trump's world, future generations will know bald eagles, blue whales, grizzly bears, and other imperiled species only through photographs."
"A world with the ESA is a world where those species have a chance to thrive," he added. "We will do everything in our power to defend this law and save our wildlife for future generations."
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