September, in brief

Key news from September:

• The Center for Western Priorities released a new ad urging President Biden to continue our nation’s conservation legacy by protecting more public lands. The ad, “Every Generation,” highlights how “every generation contributes to America’s greatest idea” that public lands are ours and that what we protect, commemorate and share defines us. It calls on President Biden to now “define our legacy by protecting places that matter and fulfilling a bold new conservation vision driven by the people.” 
• The U.S. Senate confirmed Tracy Stone-Manning as the director of the Bureau of Land Management by a vote of 50-45. When she is sworn in, Stone-Manning will be the agency’s first Senate-confirmed director since January 2017. Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Jennifer Rokala praised Tracy Stone-Manning's confirmation: “As the agency in charge of ten percent of the land in the United States, the Bureau of Land Management is central to America’s climate future. Tracy Stone-Manning will make sure our public lands become part of the climate solution, rather than exacerbating the climate crisis.” The Senate also confirmed Robert Anderson to serve as Interior Department solicitor by a vote of 53-44.
• The Bureau of Land Management's top leadership will once again be located in Washington, D.C. The move marks the end of the Trump administration's failed effort to relocate the agency's headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado. Critics of the original move, including the Center for Western Priorities, said that the Trump administration always intended to break the agency and force out career expertise. Interior confirmed that “of the 328 positions moved out of Washington, D.C., only 41 of the affected people relocated, with 3 moving to Grand Junction. This led to a significant loss of institutional memory and talent.”
• A coalition of Native American tribes has called on President Biden to take immediate action to restore protections to Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument, which the Trump administration cut by 85 percent. President Biden campaigned on reversing the rollbacks of such national monument protections—including in nearby Grand Staircase-Escalante—but has yet to take action to do so, despite receiving a recommendation from Interior Secretary Haaland months ago. “Each day that passes without national monument protection for numerous sacred sites and irreplaceable cultural resources risks desecration, looting, vandalism, and misinformed visitation to an area that contains the exact kind of antiquities that inspired the creation of the Antiquities Act,” the letter to Biden from the tribal coalition reads. “These artifacts, considered by us to be messages our ancestors meant for us to see and incorporate as lessons into our present, are literally being erased.”
• The Biden administration formally announced that it will offer leases on more than 80,000,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas companies on November 17, essentially setting off a "carbon bomb." The sale, which was originally planned by the Trump administration, could generate more than one billion barrels of oil over the coming decades and release 723 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere—as much carbon as driving 157 million cars for a year.  Following the Gulf sale, the Interior Department plans to offer leases on more than 700,000 acres of public land across the West, primarily in Wyoming and Colorado. The lease sales are happening despite the Interior Department's ostensible commitment to address long-awaited reforms to the broken federal leasing system. 
• The Interior Department is expected to release final regulations to restore enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a foundational wildlife conservation law passed in 1918. For decades, the law has been used to hold companies accountable for killing birds in oil spills and other environmental disasters, most notably after the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The Biden administration’s actions will reverse a disastrous legal opinion and rulemaking under the Trump administration that declared the law only applies when companies intentionally kill birds.
• The Interior Department’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) announced it will formally withdraw a Trump-era rule that  amended regulations governing how oil, gas, and coal companies assess the value of publicly-owned minerals they extract and the amount of royalties that they should pay to taxpayers.
• 8 philanthropic foundations pledged a collective $5 billion towards the goal of protecting 30 percent of the planet's land and water by 2030. Hansjörg Wyss, founder and chairman of the Wyss Foundation, said his organization would donate an additional $500 million towards 30x30, on top of the $1 billion pledged three years ago. “For our grandchildren and their grandchildren to have the same opportunities we’ve had, for them to inherit a functioning planet, we have to rapidly slow the rate at which our economies are destroying nature,” Wyss said. The pledge also included $1 billion from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Bezos's announcement said that his 30x30 efforts would focus on “areas that are important for biodiversity and carbon stocks and will give emphasis to the central role of local communities and Indigenous peoples in conservation efforts.”
• Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Jennifer Rokala wrote a column in the Denver Post ahead of President Biden's visit to Colorado urging the president to take substantive steps to address climate change. "Next month, the president will head to a global climate summit, urging world leaders to cut carbon emissions, while he simultaneously expands oil and gas drilling at home and does nothing to fix a broken leasing system. When the president encourages Congress and the world to act, he has an obligation to lead by example."

What to watch for in October:

• Negotiations on a massive infrastructure bill will continue into the new fiscal year. Lawmakers also continue to negotiate a finalized a $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package that contains critical funding for programs to address climate change. 
• Expect a confirmation vote on the nomination of Laura Daniel-Davis to serve as the Interior Department’s Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management, a post that oversees some of the most vital agencies within the Interior Department, including the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation, and Enforcement.

@KatmaiNPS
The official bracket is here! Feast your eyes on this year’s tournament of the titans of tonnage! Who do you think will make it to the finals on Fat Bear Tuesday? Comment with your predictions. Fat Bear Week is Sept 29 - Oct 5. Vote at http://fatbearweek.org. #FatBearWeek