Owl in America || December 7, 2024
Notes from an American environmentalist
“Owl in America” is a series of letters chronicling the next four years from the perspective of an environmental lawyer. Practicing conservation and public-lands law during the first Trump administration was an exercise in hope and dogged persistence amidst the ever more effective demolition issuing forth from Washington, D.C. Much ground was lost, only some of which was regained during Biden’s four-year term. This time around, I’m taking notes.
Hi all~
Chaos in American government is the name of the game going forward, I’m afraid, and some major portion of that will absolutely be intentional. Some commotion will be planned, some will be opportunistic, but Trump and his cadre of hangers-on and loyalists will take advantage of any opportunity for confusion. Misdirection will be a key ploy.
For the duration, I’ll strive for clarity here, regarding administration moves that affect the natural world. It’s been a month since the elections, and we have about a month to go until Trump’s inauguration. The outgoing Biden team is pushing through a lot of good policies in these final weeks and finalizing important regulations that have been in the works for months or years.
It’s hard to say what will stick. Some of it depends how far along various rules and designations are. Some of it will be challenging for Trump to unwind. Some of it, his team will rescind with little effort. Many outcomes will be decided in court. Whether these cases are heard before Trump-appointed federal judges will be critical.
I’ve mentioned a few of Biden’s lame-duck efforts in previous posts and will set out several more today. They’re the kinds of things that wound up buried beneath the headlines of havoc during Trump’s first term; I’ll keep tabs on these and others over the next months and years and report back.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees almost half of America’s public lands—along with their associated mining and drilling leases—has quietly reinstated an old policy that the agency has not used in 20 years. Following on the heels of Biden’s 2024 Public Lands Rule, which ordered the agency to consider conservation goals as co-equal to resource management, this revived old policy allows the agency to designate “lands with wilderness characteristics” to receive immediate protections.
This is important because it is a way for land managers to set aside lands that are so far free from resource extraction and its associated infrastructure. This includes logging, drilling, mining, and perhaps most importantly, road-building. Congress designates protected areas under the Wilderness Act, and typically will not consider areas smaller than 5,000 acres, especially if they have been disturbed by extractive activities. This old rule is one that lets BLM mark undisturbed lands as “wilderness study areas,” protecting them as if they had already been given formal wilderness status, until Congress can consider whether to include them. That’s a process that can take several years and is always subject to presidential veto.
The administration has already designated four new wilderness study areas in California and Colorado under the revived rule, and has proposed more than 20 new areas totaling over 40,000 acres in southern Oregon.
It has become popular in environmental circles to decry the idea of wilderness as an exclusionary construct of settler colonialism, and there is certainly a core of truth there. Whatever one’s views on that, it’s important to acknowledge that we face a rapacious incoming administration that will be uninterested in splitting hairs of idealogical purity and will be working with great gusto to open up as much public land as possible to logging, mining, and drilling. The Wilderness Act is perhaps our strongest tool to protect our dwindling intact wild ecosystems—and the beleaguered creatures that live within them—and we should absolutely be in favor of Biden’s last-ditch attempts to scoop up as much of the wild world as possible into the wilderness system.
To that end, but taking a slightly different tack toward it, tribal authorities across the U.S. have been petitioning Biden to use his presidential proclamation powers under the Antiquities Act to add biodiverse cultural heritage lands to the National Monument system before he leaves office. Including lands within this system protects cultural heritage landscapes in full, rather than in small pieces, and is considered far more effective than piecemeal setting aside a petroglyph or village site here or there. It prevents most mining, drilling, road-building, and so on, and gives managers, which can include both the federal agency and the tribes, the ability to limit recreation that harms cultural resources or ecosystems.
In southern California, just south of Joshua Tree National Park, a coalition of six tribes have called on Biden to proclaim Chuckwalla National Monument (pictured at the top of this post), which would include over half a million acres, much of which is critical habitat for the threatened desert tortoise. It’s also the planned reintroduction site for the Sonoran pronghorn, an endangered species that is endemic (meaning only found in one geographical area) to the Sonoran Desert. The tribes have also asked Biden to designate an extension to the national park that Joshua Tree would then incorporate under its management. Tribal leaders would co-manage the monument with the BLM, and it includes the people’s ancestral homelands as well as their historical sites like petroglyphs and pictographs.
In 2023, President Biden designated the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada for the benefit of the Yuman-speaking tribes of the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts and their cultural history contained within it, stretching back at least 10,000 years. The land is now co-managed by the BLM and the tribes. In further hope of reconnecting ancestral homelands, the Fort Yuma Quechuan Tribe is asking Biden to designate Kw'ts'án National Monument, to also be co-managed by the tribe and the federal government. This would begin to stitch together the existing Avi Kwa Ame monument with the proposed Kw'ts'án and Chuckwalla monuments into a protected landscape of three national monuments encompassing and preserving the Quechuan people’s access to much of their ancestral lands.
Here’s more info from the tribe’s website. I think it’s worth reading in full, if only to shake your head at how wise the tribe’s view toward the land and its inhabitants is versus that espoused by the dominant American capitalist culture.
The Kw’tsán National Monument will provide permanent protection for our homelands, cultural objects, and sacred places that are increasingly threatened by mining exploration, natural resource extraction, harmful development, misinformed recreation, management inadequacies, and climate change.
The Fort Yuma Quechan Tribe wishes to better balance outdoor recreation with good stewardship practices by providing improved visitor infrastructure and support to those who wish to hike, backpack, rock climb, camp, drive OHVs, and canoe in their homelands. In this way, natural and cultural values can be preserved and public enjoyment of the landscape can continue in a manner which conserves the region for future generations.
The Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe (pronounced Kwatsáan) is a federally recognized sovereign Tribal Nation that borders California, Arizona, and Mexico. Our ancestral homelands extend beyond current reservation boundaries, and our existence predates the establishment of the United States and other political borders. Our distinct relationship with the natural world and our nonhuman relatives is the foundation of our existence, beliefs, cultural and spiritual practices, language, Traditional Knowledge, histories, rituals, and life ways.
The rugged terrain and jagged peaks of Avikwalal (Pilot Knob), Avi Kwa Ame (Spirit Mountain), the Avi Kwa Suen (Cargo Muchachos), and the Chocolate Mountains connect us to our origins and are our living heritage. Our ancestors gifted us the role as caretakers of Mother Earth and the responsibility to protect all living beings of the natural world.
Our cherished relatives, many of whom are endangered species, share this sacred landscape, and include: Roadrunners (Talypó), Frogs (Xaanyé), Woodhouse Toads, Desert Tortoises, sidewinders, Yuma KingSnake, Quail, Doves, Black-Tailed Jackrabbit (Ak'úlyts), Kit Fox, Roundtail Ground Squirrels, Badger, Goose, and Grebe Chuckwalla, and the Coyote (Xatalwé). The Xá Áxwétta boundary to the east is a critical bird migration flyzone.
Our native flora that add color and character to our traditional homelands include: the Desert Agave, Saguaro, Creosote, Mesquite, Desert Milkweed, Algodones Dunes Sunflower, Arroweed, Sand Food, Desert Devil's Claw, Chocolate Mountains Coldenia, Foxtail Cactus, Munz's and Wiggins Cholla, and the Yellow Palo Verde.
As caretakers and keepers of our ancestral landscapes, the Creator situated us in between the mountains to live in harmony amongst all our relations. The pípa (People) are of the land, and it is embedded in our DNA to protect all of our nonhuman relatives. We are connected to the air, land, plants, insects, and four-leggeds that share our home. As climate change impacts our region through extreme drought and unsustainable water extraction of Xá Áxwétta and other water lifeways, the balance of our local ecosystem is increasingly destabilized. We must speak for the land and wildlife, for they have no words, and create legal protections with proper federal stewardship practices that will preserve them forever.
On the other side of the country, a coalition led by the Gullah-Geechee Nation and the Natural Resources Defense Council is pushing Biden to protect a swath of undersea lands along the southeast coast of the U.S. This area, known as the Blake Plateau, is little-known but contains what scientists have just mapped—this year!—as the largest deep-sea coral reef in the world. It’s a “coral highway” stretching about 80 miles off the coast from North Carolina to the Bahamas, and holds at least 200 species of deep-sea coral. It is also home to an odd collection of mussels that thrive beside its deep-ocean vents, and its rich biodiversity nourishes sperm whales and sea turtles.
The Gullah-Geechee Nation, situated along the southeast coastline and mostly composed of descendants from enslaved West African people, regard the reef as the cultural gravesite for their ancestors who did not survive the Middle Passage. They have asked Biden to protect it from industrial activities.
One avenue would be for Biden to declare the Blake Plateau a marine national monument, which would likely be managed by NOAA Fisheries. Previous presidents from George W. Bush to Barack Obama have used this authority to protect marine areas, and it is fairly robust against attack by later administrations, although Trump did “roll back” protections in his first term. Biden has since restored those and designated new marine monuments, including the Chumash Heritage sanctuary off the Pacific coast just two months ago.
I’ve mentioned the use of wilderness study area designations and national monument proclamations, both on land and in the water, as quick tools the outgoing president is using to protect the living Earth before his avaricious successor arrives. A third method is to create regulatory “overlays” on federal lands under laws like the Endangered Species Act to prevent damaging activities. These tend to require a much longer review process and are generally more vulnerable to a hostile administration, however.
One major development in this area has to do with energy development on western lands within the range of the steeply declining greater sage-grouse. This once-common ground bird species is harmed by ranching and industrial activity and its population has fallen off a cliff in recent decades. After years of work, a truly enormous coalition of federal and state governments, tribes, oil and gas companies, ranchers, and conservationists came together toward the end of Obama’s term to finalize a framework that would keep the grouse off the endangered species list so long as new management plans for its benefit were drawn up.
The Bureau of Land Management proceeded to author dozens of land use plans covering 67 million acres of sage-grouse habitat—an area larger than the United Kingdom—but these were never implemented under Trump I. A new plan released last month would finally protect these areas from new solar and wind projects and would prohibit oil and gas drilling within the overlay, in addition to managing damage from cattle ranching. The Interior Department says it will release another plan by year’s end that will also restrict mining in the sage-grouse conservation zone.
Of the three protective mechanisms I’ve outlined, this one is likely the most vulnerable to the Trump team’s machinations. I’ll keep an eye on this proposal and the others I’ve mentioned and will update you here in the days to come.
Talk to you soon,
Rebecca
P.S. The tribes and nations hoping Biden will protect their heritage as national monuments are asking for signatures on their petitions.
Protect Chuckwalla National Monument
P.P.S. I had a book giveaway a couple of weeks back for a copy of Katherine Rundell’s new book Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures. Several folks were interested, so I wrote all their names down and had my daughter close her eyes and put her finger down on the page. It landed on
’s name, so Rob, please send me an email with your mailing address and I’ll send the book your way! fearlessgreen@substack.comSources:
https://www.blm.gov/public-lands-rule
https://www.eenews.net/articles/blm-revives-long-dormant-wilderness-protection-policy/
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-19/trump-national-monuments
https://www.hcn.org/articles/monuments-what-national-monument-protections-do/
https://protectchuckwalla.org
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/03/21/a-proclamation-on-establishment-of-the-avi-kwa-ame-national-monument/
https://www.protectkwtsan.org/learn-more
https://conserveblakeplateau.org
https://gullahgeecheecorridor.org/the-gullah-geechee/
https://apnews.com/article/greater-sage-grouse-federal-protections-b608a0cd42778437c842ea248ea7f75f
https://www.audubon.org/press-room/organizations-optimistic-about-final-plan-protect-sage-grouse-habitat-call-work-begin
*Inspired by historian Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American.
You can reach me at fearlessgreen@substack.com
Another important set of updates. Your work on this series is soooo appreciated!
I'm definitely familiar with the critiques of the idea of "wilderness" and agree with most of them, but I do also value the Wilderness Act. I think it's best to think of it as a starting point, though, rather than the finish line. That is, it's truly great that it has set aside so many places from destructive human activities, but I think the next step is to amend it to allow traditional indigenous tending practices, since they were absolutely central to making these ecosystems what they were in the first place. I know you know what I'm talking about, but I wanted to register the thought here in the comments for other readers.
Thank you, Rebecca. I really appreciate learning about these last-minute efforts to establish some more sanely-managed pieces of the land.
Mainly, though, I want to say that you're doing an amazing (and necessary) job with these daily postings. I marvel at the work you're putting in.