** March, in brief
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Texas' Castner Range near the base of the Franklin Mountains in El Paso. Photo credit: Mark Clune


** Key news from March:
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* Interior Secretary Deb Haaland toured Texas's Castner Range ([link removed]) , raising hopes that President Biden could soon protect the area as a national monument. Haaland hiked in the area and met with local advocates who are requesting the monument designation. The 7,000 acre area is visible from El Paso, but currently off-limits to hikers because of unexploded ordnance remaining from years of use as a weapons training and testing site for nearby Fort Bliss. Rep. Veronica Escobar, who introduced a bill last year that would create a national monument, accompanied Secretary Haaland on her visit. Local conservation groups, including the Castner Range Coalition, Frontera Land Alliance, and Nuestra Tierra, have asked President Biden to use his authority under the Antiquities Act to designate a national monument.
* President Joe Biden proposed a $4 billion increase ([link removed]) in funding for the Interior Department in his 2023 budget request to Congress. Over a quarter ([link removed]) of the $18 billion spending request would go toward climate change programs, including $325 million to reduce wildfire risk and restore burned land. The budget would also prioritize the president's "America the Beautiful" initiative, including the 30x30 goal of protecting 30 percent of America's lands and waters by the end of the decade. The Interior spending plan includes $25.5 million to create the American Conservation Stewardship Atlas, which would track progress towards the goal. The president's plan would continue onshore and offshore oil and gas leasing, but it also calls for significant increases in funding
for renewable energy development, especially for offshore wind development.
* The country's largest outdoor gear trade show will return to Salt Lake City next year ([link removed]) , leaving Denver, where the show has been held for the past five years. Outdoor Retailer left Utah in 2017 ([link removed]) after the state's leaders petitioned former President Donald Trump to shrink Bears Ears National Monument. The move could force a number of major outdoor brands to make good on a promise to boycott the trade show if it moves back to Utah ([link removed]) , citing the state's ongoing litigation ([link removed]) to undo the restoration of Bears Ears National Monument.
* The Biden administration said it is planning to resume plans to lease public lands ([link removed]) for oil and gas drilling, following a favorable interim ruling in a lawsuit ([link removed]) over whether or not the federal government can factor the true cost of carbon into federal decision-making. The decision temporarily lifts a court-ordered ban on factoring the cost of carbon into federal decision-making issued last month ([link removed]) , which prompted the Interior Department to halt oil and gas leasing.
* The water level at Lake Powell fell below 3,525 feet ([link removed]) , its lowest level since the lake filled after the federal government dammed the Colorado River at Glen Canyon more than 50 years ago. Reaching this critical threshold raises concerns about the ability to generate hydropower from Glen Canyon Dam, a power source that millions of people living in the West rely on. Recent hydrology modeling suggests there’s roughly a 1 in 4 chance ([link removed]) Lake Powell won’t be able to produce power by 2024.
* Gas has been leaking from a major drilling site in the Alaskan Arctic ([link removed]) operated by ConocoPhillips. In response, the company has evacuated more than 300 nonessential personnel from the area, and some 20 families have left the nearby town of Nuiqsut, a village of just 500 people. The report of gas leaking from multiple wellheads comes as ConocoPhillips is seeking approval for a massive project nearby. Should it be approved, Conoco's proposed Willow Project would produce 160,000 barrels of oil a day for 30 years, effectively erasing ([link removed]) the climate benefits gained from the Biden administration's efforts to increase renewable energy on public lands.
* National Park Service Director Chuck Sams told lawmakers that his agency and others within the Interior Department are committed to increasing the role Native American Tribes play in managing public lands ([link removed]) across the United States. Sams, the first Native American to lead the Park Service, noted there are currently four national parks ([link removed]) in which Tribes hold co-management responsibilities, including Canyon de Chelly National Monument on the Navajo Reservation.
* A new mapping project provides the most detailed look yet at where biodiversity is threatened ([link removed]) in the United States. The work is a critical step toward protecting 30 percent of America's land and water by 2030, known as "30x30." By highlighting which areas are most threatened with biodiversity loss, and which areas are currently protected from development, policymakers and scientists can make data-driven decisions ([link removed]) about which areas need protection.
* President Biden delivered his first State of the Union address on Tuesday, March 1, giving only a passing nod ([link removed]) to the climate crisis, touting $500 in household energy savings ([link removed]) by combating climate change. The president did not mention the recently published report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that warned of widespread human suffering ([link removed]) if the world continues on its current path of carbon emissions.


** What to watch for in April:
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* On April 6, executives at Devon, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, and Pioneer Natural Resources will testify before a House Energy and Commerce Committee ([link removed]) subpanel titled “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.” However, the chief executives of EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Occidental Petroleum declined to participate ([link removed]) in a different hearing next week hosted by the House Natural Resources Committee that would have focused on the industry's stockpile of approved but unused drilling permits on public lands. The three companies combined hold more than 2,800 of those approved permits.
* National Parks week is April 16-24 ([link removed]) , an excellent opportunity to highlight the amazing natural and cultural resources of America's national parks and to celebrate Earth Day on April 22.

Best Reads of the Month


** Biden designates Colorado's Camp Amache as national historic site
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Colorado Politics ([link removed])


**
Storymap: Bears Ears and radioactive waste—the White Mesa Mill story
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Grand Canyon Trust ([link removed])


**
54 million acres of BLM rangeland is in "failing health"
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High Country News ([link removed])


**
660 U.S. Place Names Include a Slur for Native Women. Change Is Coming.
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New York Times ([link removed])


**
Oil and gas CEOs blame their own investors for high gas prices
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Huff Post ([link removed])


**
A battle over building codes may be the most important climate fight you've never heard of
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Huffpost ([link removed])


**
How Black creators are tearing down barriers to the outdoors
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Mic ([link removed])


**
Tribes hope for a "reboot" as Yellowstone marks 150 years
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USA Today ([link removed])


From the Center for Western Priorities:


** Dashboard: Onshore oil and gas leasing and drilling under the Biden administration
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While many politicians are using the current crisis to call for opening more public lands for drilling, publicly-available data compellingly shows why watering down drilling safeguards is exactly the wrong path to take.

As war rages in Ukraine and debate over drilling on American public lands is once again in the news, a new dashboard ([link removed]) from the Center for Western Priorities provides an at-a-glance look at onshore oil and gas activity under the Biden administration, including permitting and production that has occurred on leases sold prior to the start of the administration and statistics from past and upcoming lease sales. The dashboard will be regularly updated with the latest information available from federal agencies.

Combined, the oil and gas industry holds leases to more than 26 million acres of publicly-owned minerals, more than half of which sit unused. Companies now hold more than 9,000 approved but unused drilling permits on federal and tribal lands, all of which could be put to use today. Further, oil production on public lands has reached levels not seen in nearly two decades, despite industry claims that the Biden administration has suppressed domestic production.

The Biden administration inherited a federal oil and gas program that is broken and rigged in favor of the oil and gas industry—allowing companies to anonymously nominate public lands they want to drill, purchase leases at bargain rates, lock up public lands, and pay below-market royalty rates that shortchange taxpayers. Without reform to the federal oil and gas program, there is little stopping the oil and gas industry from anonymously nominating our public lands for lease, leasing those lands at auction for as little as $2/acre or over-the-counter for even less, keeping those lands from being managed for other uses, drilling on those lands under an outdated royalty rate, and forcing taxpayers to risk picking up the tab for orphaned and abandoned wells.
Visit the oil and gas leasing and drilling dashboard ([link removed])


** Storymap: Explore Texas' Castner Range
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This former missile range could be America's next national monument

The Center for Western Priorities is excited to share our latest Postcard, a new interactive storymap showing why El Paso’s Castner Range could be America’s next national monument ([link removed]) .

Castner Range ([link removed]) is a former military weapons testing site that is located at the base of the Franklin Mountain Range and is beloved by residents of both El Paso, Texas and nearby Ciudad Juarez, Mexico for its natural beauty, as well as its rich archaeological resources.. The 7,081 acre area is a unique high-desert landscape and is currently threatened by residential and commercial development, but advocates for creating a Castner Range National Monument want to change that. The community of El Paso has been working for the last 50 years to gain access to and protect this valuable landscape, which still belongs to the military and is off limits to the public. They say green space is important in a city like El Paso, which is one of the largest urban areas in the United States, and they hope the Range will be opened to the public one day.

Explore the map ([link removed]) to learn more about the history of Castner Range, the plant and animal species that make the area a biodiversity hotspot, and the decades-long effort by El Pasoans for access to more open space.

To learn more about the Postcards campaign and to read, listen, or watch other stories, please visit www.RoadTo30.org/postcards ([link removed]) . More postcards are on the way, so check back soon!
[link removed]
Explore the interactive Castner Range storymap ([link removed])


** It's time for President Biden to designate Texas' Castner Range a national monument ([link removed])
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** The community of El Paso has pushed to conserve this former weapons testing range for decades
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** By the numbers: Oil industry awash in permits, leases while pushing for more drilling ([link removed])
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** A new dashboard highlights the hypocrisy of the oil industry
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Gas prices are going crazy in much of the U.S. right now, and the oil and gas industry has been quick to blame President Joe Biden. It’s using the Ukrainian crisis—and the resulting global oil and gas shortage—to push for more leasing and less regulation on U.S. public lands. But is a lack of access to our public lands really behind rising gas prices? On the latest episode of The Landscape ([link removed]) , we put the question to Jenny Rowland-Shea, deputy director of public lands at the Center for American Progress, and Jesse Prentice-Dunn, our very own policy director, and they refute Big Oil’s claims using cold, hard leasing and permitting data.
Quote of the month


** "With the facts laid bare, we see the fossil-fuel industry’s crocodile tears for what they are – the same old demands for cheaper leases and looser regulations they’ve been peddling for decades. These pleas have nothing to do with countering Putin’s invasion or stabilizing gas prices, and everything to do with making oil and gas development as easy and profitable as possible."
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** —Representative Raúl Grijalva ([link removed]) , chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee
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Picture this


** @I ([link removed]) nterior ([link removed])
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Happy First Day of Spring! 🌺 Here’s to warmer temperatures, new life and dramatic splashes of every imaginable color. Photo courtesy of Scott Eliot

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