November, in brief

Key news from November

• The midterm elections confirmed what Western outdoor voters already knew—support for public lands is a winning issue in the West. Following President Joe Biden's designation of Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument in Colorado, Senator Michael Bennet was easily re-elected in what had been predicted to be a close contest. Similarly, Congressman-elect Gabe Vasquez successfully ran on a pro-conservation resumé to represent New Mexico's 2nd congressional district, a part of the state with significant oil and gas development. Other Western contests saw anti-conservation candidates win by much smaller margins than expected. With gridlock all but certain to paralyze Congress, the President can use the next two years to build a solid conservation legacy using executive action, which remains overwhelmingly popular with the public. And members of Congress can take heart that voters see and appreciate their conservation efforts despite gridlock in Congress. 
   
• President Biden announced his intention to protect Avi Kwa Ame in Nevada as America's next national monument. Biden made the pledge at the White House Tribal Nations Summit and hopes to visit the area soon. Twelve Indigenous tribes have led the effort to create the Avi Kwa Ame monument, which holds deep spiritual significance. The area, spanning approximately 450,000 acres near the southern tip of Nevada, also connects more than a dozen wilderness and conservation areas, providing continuous habitat and migration corridors for wildlife including bighorn sheep and desert tortoises.
   
• The science-backed goal of protecting 30 percent of the world's land and oceans by 2030 got a major boost as 112 nations pledged support for the 30x30 goal at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, up from just 70 countries one year ago. The 30x30 goal is the centerpiece of a global effort to protect nature and biodiversity, a pact that is expected to be finalized at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity summit (COP15) in Montreal next month. The overlap in intention between the two COP gatherings is evidence of a growing awareness that limiting global emissions requires protecting nature, and vice versa.
   
• The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released a new policy identifying and prioritizing habitat connectivity on America’s public lands. The Instructional Memorandum directs BLM state offices to explicitly consider how wildlife, fish, and plant habitats are connected as part of its land use planning process. The new policy will lead to a geospatial database that identifies lands and waters that priority species need to move between habitats, especially as those habitats shift with a changing climate.
   
• A group of 27 organizations sent a letter to the Department of the Interior (DOI) urging the agency to initiate a rulemaking to implement leasing reforms passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA included several important reforms to the federal onshore oil and gas program, but DOI must develop and issue regulations to implement the changes. The letter argues that DOI should not move forward with new leasing until it has completed this rulemaking. 

What to watch for in December:

• Will Congress pass public lands bills during the lame duck session?
• Will Congress confirm Laura Daniel-Davis as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management?
• When will President Biden designate Avi Kwa Ame as America's next national monument?

Languishing Lands: How executive action can rescue popular conservation proposals that are stalled in Congress

A new report from the Center for Western Priorities finds that bills to protect over 16 million acres of public land in the West are currently languishing in Congress. Protecting these landscapes would bring the nation closer to achieving the goal of conserving 30 percent of public lands and waters by 2030, a scientifically-driven priority backed by the Biden administration.

Despite incredibly strong and enduring support for conservation actions, worsening partisan gridlock has caused progress on conservation to grind to a halt. Over the decade from 2000 to 2010, Congress protected 9.5 million acres of lands through legislation. The next decade, from 2011 to 2021, Congress protected just 3.3 million acres, one-third of what had been protected the previous decade. This has not been for a lack of effort—many bills have been introduced and several have passed the House, some of them multiple times, only to stall out in the Senate.

This report, titled Languishing Lands, details a selection of landscapes that have been proposed for protection, including the greater Grand Canyon region and the Great Bend of the Gila in Arizona, the Ruby Mountains in Nevada, Castner Range in Texas, and the Owyhee Canyonlands in Oregon. The President has a clear opportunity to deliver for the communities that have worked hard to craft broadly-supported proposals, and should not hesitate to exercise the authority that the Antiquities Act gives him for exactly this purpose.

CWP Executive Director Jennifer Rokala and Colorado-based political consultant Curtis Hubbard joined Aaron on the Landscape to break down the 2022 election results and what they mean for public lands across the West.

Aaron and Kate talked to forest scientists Megan Cattau and Nayani Ilangakoon to find out what’s up in the world of wildfire risk reduction and forest recovery. Specifically, they asked about the U.S. Forest Service’s plan to plant a billion trees over the next decade, as well as how climate change is affecting forest recovery after wildfires.

700,000-acre monument proposed near Joshua Tree National Park

The Press-Enterprise
 

New report warns climate change accelerating in California

Los Angeles Times
 

Can recreationists turn Utah into a red state that prioritizes outdoor conservation?

Salt Lake Tribune
 

Alaska's critical minerals prospects hinge on a disputed road in the Arctic

Bloomberg Law
 

How did national parks and mining get so entangled?

Slate
 

Amah Mutsun Tribal Band rallies to save sacred sites in California

High Country News
 

Colorado's Environmental Justice Action Task Force finalizes recommendations to lawmakers

CPR
 

Giant methane plume discovered by NASA in New Mexico

NM Political Report

"Americans in these Western states of both political parties agree that holding and protecting large amounts of public land and national ownership really has been extraordinarily visionary and beneficial.”

—John Leshy, former Interior Department Solicitor and public lands legal scholar and historian