Mono Lake from the Bodie Hills                                                                                                                        (Mike Painter)

 
April 17, 2025

Dear CalUWild Friends & Supporters —

The last twelve weeks have been chaotic in Washington and across the country. There is no aspect of public policy that has been left untouched, and the public lands sector is no exception. This has been a difficult Update to compile, given that it is impossible to report fully on every action the administration has taken, and worse, every day there is something new. But we will give brief summaries or links to press articles on some of the more important or interesting developments, which you can then read at your leisure (though maybe not all at once).

Please keep in mind that the vast majority of Americans strongly believe in the value of national public lands and support their protection. And we expect that many of the decisions being made in such haste will be overturned in court. However, it will take time to repair the damage being done, due to the loss of institutional knowledge in the various agencies. So it’s up to all of us to make our opinions known to anyone in any position of influence.

 
On a happier note, CalUWild is very proud to welcome Bob Wick to our Advisory Board. Bob retired in 2021 from the Bureau of Land management, where he worked as a Wilderness Specialist in the DC office, though he lived in California. Bob is most known, however, for his spectacular photography of the diverse landscapes around the country, which have even shown up on U.S. Postal Service stamps, which we used on our April 2019 Update. Bob now works as a freelance photographer. In our last Update we linked to an article in Backpacker: Bob Wick Is the Greatest Outdoor Photographer You’ve Never Heard Of. The Atlantic featured a gallery of Bob’s photos when he retired from the BLM in 2021. Bob’s website is here.

 
Many thanks to everyone who has continued to send in contributions in response to our Annual Membership Appeal, helping to fund our work. But most importantly, thank you for supporting our national public lands.

 
Best wishes,
Mike Painter, Coordinator

 
IN UTAH
1.   America’s Red Rock Wilderness Bill Introduced
          Cosponsor Update
          (ACTION ITEM)

IN UTAH
1.   America’s Red Rock Wilderness Bill Introduced
          Cosponsor Update
          (ACTION ITEM)

America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act was reintroduced at the end of March in both the House (H.R.2467) and Senate (S.1193). As in the last Congress, Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) are the lead sponsors. 41 House Members and 15 Senators signed on as original cosponsors. The following California representatives signed on:

If your representative is on the list, please call his or her office to say thank you. If they’re not on the list, ask that they become a cosponsor. It’s never too late.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D) will not be cosponsoring for now, and while we had hoped he would, his support on many other priorities is just as valuable. Sen. Adam Schiff (D) was a longtime cosponsor when he was in the House, and we’re hoping he will cosponsor once again now that he’s in the Senate. Please call his office asking him to do so.

You can find a full listing of Washington, DC office phone numbers for California Senate and House members and their cosponsorships on our online California Congressional Information Sheet.

A full list of cosponsors nationwide may be found here.

 
IN CALIFORNIA & ELSEWHERE
2.   National Monuments under Threat
          (ACTION ITEM)

Here is another example of the chaos in Washington: On the afternoon of Friday, March 14, the White House published a fact sheet stating that an executive order had been signed rescinding 19 executive actions by Pres. Biden. Included in the list was:

Terminating proclamations declaring nearly a million acres constitute [sic] new national monuments that lock up vast amounts of land from economic development and energy production.

Though not named directly, it is widely assumed that this referred to Chuckwalla and Sáttítla national monuments here in California, since they were the most recent designations (though neither monument has large potential for “economic development and energy production”).

But by the next day, Saturday, that language had disappeared without explanation. It’s not clear whether the item in the original release was a mistake or whether its removal was the result of behind-the-scenes political pressure. Regardless, no signed order rescinding the monuments has yet appeared, so as far as we know, they still exist.

This does not mean that the threat to them has gone away. We know that in the first term, the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments were significantly shrunk, and there are suggestions that the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in Arizona is also in the crosshairs.

There are a few things you can do to support our national monuments:

Many thanks!

 
IN THE ADMINISTRATION & CONGRESS
3.   Executive Orders and More
          (ACTION ITEM)

We’ll lead off here with a bit of good news: Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance and the nominee for Director of the Bureau of Land Management, withdrew her name from consideration just before her scheduled confirmation hearing in the Senate. Apparently, this was in response to reporting earlier in the week that had uncovered a lengthy post written on January 7, 2021 expressing disgust at the misinformation spread the previous day by the president in his speech before the riot at the Capitol. Of course, it remains to be seen who might be nominated in her place.

We reported in our last Update that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has issued a Secretarial Order requiring action plans to be drawn up to review designations and policies from the Biden Administration. So far, nothing has been released. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-2) and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) wrote a letter to him demanding that those plans be made public. Still, nothing.

Thousands of probationary employees were fired in the Interior Department and U.S. Forest Service. (Other agencies across the government are also being severely cut as well.) Courts ordered that some be rehired, but reports are that more than 10% of Park Service employees have taken early retirement or other buyouts. National Parks have been ordered to maintain their levels of visitor services, even in the face of those cutbacks.

It’s being reported that the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, is planning a massive reorganization of the USFS. These actions include combining the current nine regions into three; cutting its research team and research stations drastically; combining individual national forests; moving the Wildlands Fire division to another agency; and “hollow[ing] out” the DC headquarters.

At the same time, Brooke Rollins, the Secretary of Agriculture, has issued an “Emergency Declaration” following up on the White House’s executive order to increase timber production.

Our long-term concern is that funding and personnel cuts to the land management agencies will cripple them to the point that they can’t function effectively, leading to efforts to turn public lands over to the states. Ironically, most state budgets are also under stress, such that they wouldn’t be able to manage them properly either, which in turn would lead to the sale of them to private interests, depriving all of us of access and enjoyment.

On Tuesday of this week, Secty. Burgum announced plans to study for possible recission the Public Lands Rule adopted last year by the BLM, that formally put conservation on equal footing with development at the agency. It is also reviewing the Biden Administration’s rule restricting oil & gas development in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Finally, the Fish & Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service announced a proposed rule that would change the definition of “harm” in the Endangered Species Act to mean actual physical harm rather than habitat destruction that endangers a species.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO) introduced an amendment to the Senate budget bill that would have prevented the sale of public lands through the budget process. All Democratic senators, but only two Republicans, voted in favor of it, and so it was defeated. The administration has announced it is considering selling off lands as far as ten miles from towns with 5,000 residents or more in an effort to provide affordable housing. Serious analysts do not believe this will help increase housing supplies. Click here for a map showing lands potentially affected.

Again please take any (or all) of the actions mentioned in Item 2.

 
IN GENERAL
4.   Webinar on Public Lands
          Wednesday, April 23, 5 p.m. PDT

The Sierra Club’s National Utah Wilderness Team, of which I am a member, will be hosting a webinar looking at the status of public land in the United States. Our speakers will be Nada Culver, most recently Deputy Director for Policy & Management at the Bureau of Land Management and long-time public lands attorney at The Wilderness Society and Audubon and John Leshy, professor emeritus at UC Law San Francisco and author of Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands.
Pre-registration is required at this link.

We hope to see you there.

 
IN THE PRESS & ELSEWHERE
5.   Links to Articles and Other Items of Interest

A note regarding the Washington Post: Given the changes in editorial policy that have taken place at the paper beginning last fall, CalUWild’s subscription to the paper will lapse this month. So we won’t be sharing any more articles. And while the Post often had interesting feature articles, there was little in solid news that couldn’t be found elsewhere.

If a link is broken or otherwise inaccessible, please send me an email, and I’ll fix it or send you a PDF copy. Gift links are temporary links from some websites, allowing non-subscribers to view articles for free for a limited time. As always, inclusion of an item in this section does not imply agreement with the viewpoint expressed.

Utah

California

Nevada

Texas

General

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