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The Bureau of Land Management announced yesterday that it will revert to Obama-era plans for management of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A), throwing out an eleventh-hour Trump administration plan that would have opened up 82 percent of the reserve to oil and gas drilling.
By returning to the 2013 plan, the Biden administration effectively takes 7 million acres off the table for future oil and gas leasing.
An official notice from the Bureau of Land Management stated, "This decision reflects the Biden-Harris administration's priority of reviewing existing oil and gas programs to ensure balance on America's public lands and waters to benefit current and future generations."
The Trump administration's plan included the controversial decision to approve future oil development in and around the long-protected Teshekpuk Lake wetlands complex, an important habitat site for migratory birds, caribou, and other Arctic wildlife.
The Biden administration has also suspended oil leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a largely untouched key habitat area on the opposite side of Alaska’s Arctic, in the northeast corner of the state.
The Center for Western Priorities' Deputy Director Aaron Weiss said in response to the announcement, "This is an important reversal of one of the most damaging decisions to come out of the Trump administration’s final days.... Now the Biden administration must look to the future, creating management plans that ensure all of America’s public lands, from Alaska to New Mexico, are part of the climate solution. President Biden has the opportunity to press ‘reset’ on conservation and reassert America’s role as a global leader on climate change."
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With any snow on the ground, this [fire] absolutely would not have happened in the way that it did. It was really the grass and the dry landscape that allowed this fire to jump long distances in a short period of time.”
