The Border Lands Conservation Act gives the Department of Homeland Security the power to waive myriad federal laws, including the Wilderness Act, under the pretense of border security.
Bureau of Land Management
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More than 2,000 jobs could be cut at Interior during shutdown
Research, wildlife and conservation are in the crosshairs.
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What we stand to lose if national monuments fall
Can one of the nation’s best conservation tools survive?
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Tribal governments fend off the worst of the impacts of the shutdown
In the weeks leading up to the shutdown, tribal nations hefted their political and economic capital to protect services for their citizens.
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Visiting public lands during the shutdown? Be polite and prepared
Public land advocates say the shutdown threatens resources but offer advice on how to help.
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What the government shutdown means for public lands
Many parks will stay open, and oil and gas permitting will continue — even as tens of thousands of staff are furloughed at NPS, BLM and USFS.
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The Trump administration’s war on wind
How energy companies and states are navigating federal policy that’s hostile to wind.
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The dismantling of the Forest Service
The Trump administration’s plans would remake the agency and public lands. The deadline to comment is Sept. 30.
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New Mexico’s billion-dollar orphaned oilfield problem
After oil companies go bust, the state is left paying to clean up abandoned wells, tanks, machinery and sludge pits.
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Decades of public-lands planning, overturned in a day
The House voted to nullify three Bureau of Land Management plans, and critics fear many more could follow.
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Access to public land? There’s an app for that
Tech is facilitating land access in new, and sometimes fraught, ways.
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Firefighters question leaders’ role in ICE raid near Bear Gulch Fire
Firefighting veterans believe the management team overseeing fire crews played a key role in handing team members over to immigration authorities.
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Trump looks to suffocate public lands
The administration and Congress divert funds away from conservation.
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Law enforcement surveilled Nevada lithium mine protesters, according to records
Activists opposed to the Thacker Pass mine were ‘under the microscope’ for years.
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The national parks are not OK
A former national park supervisor explains how toilets may be clean this summer, but the parks themselves are actually ‘hollowed out.’
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Mass layoffs can move forward, with devastating impacts for conservation and science
‘Shortsighted’ cuts could eliminate bird banding program, federal bee research and much more.
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Public land sale a ‘frontal assault on tribal treaty rights’
Senate Republicans’ proposed legislation could have unique impacts on tribal nations.
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MAGA and the developers are coming for your public lands
Sen. Mike Lee slips federal land privatization provision into Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
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Protests greet Western governors in Santa Fe
After a bipartisan outcry, Senate proposal to sell public lands is blocked for now.
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What Sonoran Desert fungi are teaching scientists
The understudied mycorrhizal fungi are vital to ecosystems and may prove critical to the survival of fragile deserts stressed by climate change.