September, in brief

Key news from September:

• Wildfires devastated the West. This year's unprecedented fire season is spread across 13 Western states, fueled by compounding climate change impacts including drought, heat waves, and unusual summer wind events. Particularly large blazes in California, Oregon, and Washington ripped through human developments and spiked air pollution across the West, dramatically impacting the lives of many. West coast cities such as Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle had the worst air quality in the world. The wildfires impacted wildlife as well: hundreds of thousands of migratory birds were found dead all across New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and Mexico, and biologists suspect that wildfires and smoke are to blame. The blazes and their catastrophic impacts brought wildfire science to the fore. The scientific community is in agreement that climate change exacerbates risk in critical ways, although forest management, changing human behaviors, and wind all play a role in creating wildfires.
• After months of controversy over anti-public lands extremist William Perry Pendley, a federal judge in Montana ousted him as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management. The ruling found that he had been unlawfully serving in that capacity for well over a year. The ruling could invalidate a range of recent policies and decisions impacting Western public lands. Earlier this month, the top watchdog at Interior found that political appointees, including Pendley, misled Congress when they testified that high rent was a factor in moving the Bureau of Land Management headquarters out of Washington, DC.
• The Trump administration proposed and finalized rollbacks of regulations on the fossil fuel industry. The EPA finalized a rule that relaxes limits on heavy metal pollution from coal-fired power plants, allowing wastewater to contain higher levels of toxic chemicals. The U.S. Forest Service proposed a rule that would eliminate some environmental reviews and limit public participation when oil companies want to drill inside America's national forests; in the process, forest managers would no longer be allowed to consider climate impacts or protect specific wild places.
• The Trump administration continued to roll back protections for endangered species, as well as the Tongass National Forest. A recent change would allow the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to give more weight to the economic impacts of designating critical habitat for species, further tilting precedence towards industry. The administration also finalized a plan to open 9 million acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, one of the world's largest temperate rain forests and carbon sinks, to road construction and logging.
• The world's continued loss of biodiversity was highlighted this month. A new report found that human activities have caused wildlife populations to shrink by 68 percent since 1970. A different report found that countries have made insufficient progress on goals designed to halt the collapse of biodiversity; in fact, countries across the world failed to meet a single established goal for the second consecutive decade. The reports demonstrate the urgency and necessity of working to protect 30 percent of America—and the world—by 2030 (the 30x30 goal).
• Extractive industry executives had a rough month as secret recordings revealed their true opinions and plans, continuing a pattern of companies lying to the public, as they did for decades with climate change. In a recording of a discussion last year by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, fossil fuel industry leaders expressed concern about the amount of natural gas flared off, and discussed how to appear more environmentally friendly. Separately, recordings of conversations among mining executives revealed that the controversial Pebble Mine in southwest Alaska could operate for longer and at a larger scale than the proposal submitted suggests.
• New legislation and changes introduced this month would bring accountability and increased health regulations to oil and gas leasing and development. Colorado Senator Michael Bennet's new legislation would clean up abandoned or "orphaned" oil and gas wells, strengthen financial bonding requirements, and expand opportunities for providing local input for lease sales on public lands. At the same time, Colorado regulators approved a preliminary plan requiring at least 2,000 feet between homes, schools, businesses and new oil and gas wells, which would be the largest setback requirement in the country.
• A new account came out from the senior-most D.C. National Guard officer on the ground during the violent clearing of Lafayette Square protestors in June, who served as a liaison to the U.S. Park Police. The account contradicts Park Police and Trump administration claims that protesters were violent, that tear gas was never used, and that demonstrators were given ample warning to disperse.
• Indigenous groups worked to protect sacred protected landscapes. In Arizona, groups protested the border wall as it devastated the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona, resulting in violence from federal agents. Native tribes also worked with archaeologists to identify cultural sites and resources on public lands surrounding New Mexico's Chaco Canyon, which could be threatened by increased oil and gas development.

What to watch for in October:

• The fallout from a federal court ruling ousting William Perry Pendley calls into question the legitimacy of many actions taken by the agency. In October, the court will consider which actions were illegal, and the Interior Department will decide whether or not to appeal the decision.
• The Road to 30 Virtual Tour will be holding its sixth virtual event, focusing on the role America’s national parks can play toward reaching the 30x30 goal. Find more information here.
• An already devastating wildfire season will continue through October, especially in the hotter and drier parts of the West.  
• With three months left in the Trump administration’s first term, here are the environmental rollbacks it is trying to accomplish.