December, in brief

Key news from December:

• The White House released a first-year progress report on President Biden’s America the Beautiful initiative. The report recaps the administration’s actions to protect and restore nature, increase access to the outdoors, and engage in meaningful consultation with Tribal nations. The administration also announced it would launch a public comment period in early 2022 to gather input on the forthcoming American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas. Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Jennifer Rokala said in a statement, “In 2021, the America the Beautiful initiative set the stage for these bold conservation efforts. In 2022, we look forward to the president’s vision becoming a reality.”
• West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin said he won't vote for the Build Back Better Act, a roughly $2 trillion package of legislation that touches on everything from poverty to climate change. Despite the legislative setback, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised a vote in the Senate on the bill in January. Meanwhile, lawmakers are calling on President Joe Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland not to wait on Congress to reform drilling on public lands. "It is now incumbent on President Biden to keep his promise to us and to the American people by using the ultimate tool in his toolbox: the tool of executive actions, in every arena, immediately,” said Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal. 
• The Bureau of Land Management announced details of the agency’s return to its Washington, DC headquarters. The agency will fill approximately 30 vacant positions in Washington, while establishing a Western headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado. Center for Western Priorities' Executive Director Jennifer Rokala called the decision "the end of an error," and noted the damage to the agency done under the Trump administration. “America’s public lands are at the center of the fight to slow climate change and the biodiversity crisis. Protecting our lands for future generations will take a concerted and coordinated effort across the entire government, which is why the Bureau of Land Management’s leadership must be located in our nation’s capital,” said Rokala. 
• The Biden administration admitted that a court decision did not compel it to lease vast tracts of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling in a massive lease sale, though it previously claimed it was legally obliged to hold the sale. The sale, held on November 17 just days after the climate summit in Glasgow, was the largest ever auction of oil and gas parcels, offering up more than 80 million acres of the gulf and locking in decades of carbon emissions. 
• Three of the states that depend on the Colorado River announced a voluntary agreement to withdraw less water from the drought-stressed river. The lower basin states of California, Arizona, and Nevada will work with the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation to provide millions in funding over the next two years to support conservation, efficiency, and reduction measures as part of a plan to boost the level of Lake Mead, the country's largest reservoir on the border of Nevada and Arizona. In August, Reclamation declared a first-ever shortage on the river, triggering mandatory cuts for Arizona and Nevada starting next year. 
• The Bureau of Land Management has approved two large-scale solar farms in California as part of a big push by the Biden administration to permit at least 25,000 megawatts of onshore renewable energy projects by 2025. The BLM announced it also plans to approve a third large-scale solar project early next year. The three solar farms will be the first inside of a special permitting zone in California, called the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) area, which was created under the Obama administration and covers 10.8 million acres of federal land. The land in the DRECP was analyzed for development under Obama, and sensitive wildlife habitat within the area was identified and protected, allowing for expedited permitting.
• A new study projects that in about 35 to 60 years, mountainous states may be nearly snowless for years at a time. The Western United States has already lost 20% of its snowpack since the 1950s, and stands to lose another half (or more) later this century. A lack of snow will also have obvious impacts on winter recreation and communities across the West.
• President Biden signed an executive order compelling the United States government to become carbon neutral by 2050. The order directs the government to utilize its billions of dollars of purchasing power to upgrade federal buildings, create a fleet of electric vehicles, and change the government's electricity buying practices.
• A Colorado mountain has a new name: Mestaa’ėhehe. The peak is renamed for Owl Woman, an influential Cheyenne translator who helped maintain peaceful relations between local Native American tribes and new settlers before her death in 1847. A petition to change the name from "Squaw Mountain" was approved by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. In November, the Interior Department officially recognized the word "squaw" as a derogatory and offensive ethnic, racial, and sexist slur, particularly for Indigenous women, and established a federal task force to find replacement names for geographic features on federal lands bearing the term. 

What to watch for in 2022:

• The Interior department has hinted at a desire to increase royalties, fees, rents, and bonding requirements for oil and gas leasing and production on federal land. The department is also looking at safety regulations for offshore oil rigs as well as regulations for renewable energy transmission.
• After laying the groundwork in 2021, there are numerous conservation opportunities around the country for the Biden administration to ramp up their America the Beautiful campaign and assist community-led efforts to protect special places like the Avi Kwa Ame and Castner Range national monument proposals in Nevada and Texas, and the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary proposal off California's central coast. 

Spectacular #winter scenes at Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge in northern #Idaho. @USFWS photos: Sara Straub http://ow.ly/GbiQ50HeErf. @USFWSPacific