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President Joe Biden made substantial progress toward his conservation goals in 2023 and is on the precipice of being able to claim he is the most consequential first-term conservation president since Teddy Roosevelt, according to a new progress report from the Center for Western Priorities.
In the third year of his first term, President Biden made significant progress toward his administration’s goal of protecting 30 percent of the country’s lands and waters by 2030. He protected more than 1.5 million acres of public land using the Antiquities Act and made use of important tools like mineral withdrawals and land management plans to protect millions of acres of public land from mining, oil and gas drilling, and logging.
The report also notes that while the Biden administration accomplished a host of pro-conservation reforms in 2023, it also sold a significant amount of public land out to Big Oil through its approval of the Willow Project. The project, which opponents describe as a “carbon bomb” in the Arctic, could produce 180,000 barrels of oil a year.
“President Biden made an epic comeback from last year in terms of protecting public lands,” said Center for Western Priorities Deputy Director Aaron Weiss. “The administration is going into this year with major conservation momentum, but the president’s public lands legacy depends on whether his administration is able to execute important rulemakings and whether the president himself is willing to pick up his pen and protect over a million more acres of public land.”
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The stage is set to make 2024 one of the most consequential years in public lands history. The question is whether President Biden is bold enough to fulfill his own vision.”
