Trump administration sidelines public to expand drilling and mining on public lands

On Wednesday evening, the Trump administration unveiled emergency permitting procedures to fast-track oil, gas and mining projects on national public lands – sharply curtailing public participation and environmental review. The changes, issued under a declared “National Energy Emergency,” purport to allow the Department of the Interior to bypass key safeguards under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act and National Historic Preservation Act. The move ignores the fact that the country is currently at record production levels.

“This directive, based on an emergency that doesn’t exist, silences the public and guts NEPA’s core purpose – informed decision making,” said Tracy Stone-Manning, President of The Wilderness Society. “By skipping over the public, science and impact analysis, the administration skips over threats to our wildlife, water and cultural resources. And while claiming to create certainty for developers, this move guarantees the opposite: more litigation, more delay and less certainty.” 

A recent report from The Wilderness Society titled Open for Drilling: The Outsized Influence of Oil & Gas on Public Lands underscores the lopsided nature of federal energy policy. As of January 2025, more than 81% of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in the West – over 200 million acres – are open to oil and gas leasing. Nearly half of the acreage already leased is not producing, much of it held speculatively by industry.

The administration’s move also aligns with recent legislative proposals that would mandate oil and gas lease sales across all eligible public lands on a quarterly basis – further tipping the scales toward fossil fuel extraction and away from recreation, conservation and cultural uses that federal law is meant to protect. 

These policies could have profound consequences for communities across the West. Areas targeted for extraction often overlap with critical wildlife habitat, cultural and historical sites and lands valued for recreation and tourism. By removing meaningful review and public input, the emergency permitting scheme puts those resources and the people who depend on them at risk.