Senators Ron Wyden, Jeff Merkley, and Alex Padilla are demanding that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum stop attempting to put data centers on public lands, citing a lack of transparency around his meetings with data center developers and investors. Burgum met with dozens of technology and energy executives last year, including Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, according to the Washington Sun, which reviewed his calendar. “The timing of these meetings taking place concurrently with the administration’s efforts to pursue data center development on public lands raises serious questions about your involvement in these deals,” the senators wrote in a letter to Burgum this week. The senators also warned about data centers’ water use, which could worsen drought across the West. “Effectively privatizing public lands owned by American taxpayers sends a clear message that the Trump administration continues to prioritize the profits of tech CEOs and shareholders over the American people that rely on public lands for hunting, fishing, recreation, and livestock grazing,” the letter states. The only data center BLM has approved so far, near Boulder City, Nevada, is on hold pending more environmental review. In a second letter, Senator Wyden asked about the deal Burgum helped broker in March for Venezuela’s...

The Albanese and Carroll Governments are delivering a $55.5 million package to support the environmental and economic recovery of flood and bushfire affected regions in Victoria. Delivered under the joint Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (DRFA), the funding will ensure the repair, preservation and restoration of assets such as roads, bridges, waterways, boundary fencing and recreational and tourism sites. Almost $42 million will support the delivery of these activities in areas across the state impacted by the January 2026 bushfires. Additionally, almost $6 million will go towards the restoration of the Great Victorian Rail Trail (GRVT), including public safety and risk mitigation works. A further $1 million will support residents with the reinstatement of essential domestic water and wastewater systems. The fires had extensive impacts on the Victoria's natural and built environments across 23 local government areas and one alpine resort. They burned through more than 438,000 hectares of land. A further $6.5 million will ensure environmental support is delivered following the significant impacts from the Wye River - Lorne flood on 15 January 2026. Funding will go towards the reparation of hazardous tree removal, reopening visitor precincts, delivery of biodiversity programs including weed management, and assessments of threatened animal species...

Mon Forest Headwaters are gorgeous, they provide habitat, and they provide ample opportunities for outdoor recreation. Sixteen of these headwaters are so remarkable that the Forest Service says they are eligible for designation under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. A Waterway of Life has made a film about these important waters and the campaign asking Congress to designate these waters permanently as Wild and Scenic Rivers. Premiere screenings of rebirth: wild & scenic headwaters have taken place in Richwood, Thomas, Marlinton, and Elkins. Watch for the upcoming release of the film on YouTube. We’ll keep you posted when the film is available for viewing. • Travel Management Rule changes. Proposed revocation of the Roadless Rule is not the only bad idea from the U.S. Forest Service. The Forest Service just closed comments regarding its proposed change to the Travel Management Rule. These proposed changes will flip the presumption that currently keeps our National Forest free from motorized trails and off road vehicles to a presumption in favor of motorized access. Motorized trails are expensive to build and maintain, threaten streams with sedimentation and other negative impacts, and destroy the quiet and contemplative use of our National Forests. Again, we’ll...

It’s Election Day, and public lands have played a major role in candidates’ campaigns over the last several months. Last year’s failed attempt by Utah Senator Mike Lee to sell off as many as 3.2 million acres of public land has shaped the platforms of candidates in both parties. In Colorado, U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper’s first broadcast ad says he helped defeat the sell-off attempt. In Wyoming, gubernatorial nominee Eric Barlow has promised to “safeguard our public lands.” In Montana’s First Congressional District, ads for both candidates have focused on protecting public lands. Republican Aaron Flint has pledged to “keep public lands in public hands,” and Democrat Sam Forstag, a former U.S. Forest Service smokejumper, has said Montanans should be able to hunt, hike, and fish on public lands “without worrying that they’re going to be sold out from underneath us.” This year, the Bureau of Land Management approved the first data center on federal public land—an 88.5-acre project in Nevada that has become a dominant issue in the governor’s race. Both candidates say data centers must follow state rules, including covering their own energy costs and protecting water supplies. In Arizona, the federal government cut the state’s Colorado River...

In his second term as the U.S. president, Donald Trump has taken actions to remove protections from at least 34.8 million hectares (86 million acres) of public lands, according to the advocacy group Center for American Progress. The nonprofit Conservation Lands Foundation (CLF) recently catalogued 12 such policy actions in its newly released Public Lands Attack Tracker. The tracker examines the myriad ways public lands have been reduced and weakened, from encouraging extractive industries to sidelining public participation, over the last nearly two years. These actions by the Trump administration include expanding oil and gas drilling “to encourage energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters” and repealing the public lands rule, which requires that conservation be considered equally important as extractive industries. The administration has also moved to rescind the roadless rule that currently bans road construction across millions of acres of national forest land and weakened provisions of the Endangered Species Act, which grants protection to species in decline. On its Public Lands Attack Tracker website, the CLF argues that the combined effects of such actions could be greater than the sum of their individual impacts. “This Attack Tracker connects the dots,” the website notes. It lays...

The Commission voted unanimously to adopt the staff recommendation to formally name the Haley property “swatxʷixʷtxʷədʔaltx World’s House State Park.” The motion was made by Vice Chair Scott Merriman, seconded by Commissioner Laurie Connelly, and recorded as approved unanimously.

Senators Ron Wyden, Jeff Merkley, and Alex Padilla are demanding that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum stop attempting to put data centers on public lands, citing a lack of transparency around his meetings with data center developers and investors. Burgum met with dozens of technology and energy executives last year, including Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, according to the Washington Sun, which reviewed his calendar. “The timing of these meetings taking place concurrently with the administration’s efforts to pursue data center development on public lands raises serious questions about your involvement in these deals,” the senators wrote in a letter to Burgum this week. The senators also warned about data centers’ water use, which could worsen drought across the West. “Effectively privatizing public lands owned by American taxpayers sends a clear message that the Trump administration continues to prioritize the profits of tech CEOs and shareholders over the American people that rely on public lands for hunting, fishing, recreation, and livestock grazing,” the letter states. The only data center BLM has approved so far, near Boulder City, Nevada, is on hold pending more environmental review. In a second letter, Senator Wyden asked about the deal Burgum helped broker in March for Venezuela’s...

In June, the Bureau of Land Management approved the first AI data center on America’s public lands. It didn’t write a new rule, hold a public comment period, or prepare a new environmental review. It amended a right-of-way BLM granted in 2023 for a solar farm near Boulder City, Nevada, and let the developer, Townsite Solar 2, swap out its solar panels for an 80-acre data center with a substation, battery storage, and biodiesel backup generators—a very different project with different environmental impacts and energy needs. Boulder City had already voted not to approve the project on city land, so the developer attempted an end run around the community by pivoting to public land. In September, an Interior department administrative judge froze the approval, finding BLM likely acted “arbitrarily or capriciously” when it treated a solar farm and a data center as substantially the same project. Weeks later, the BLM asked a judge to set aside the approval to allow the agency to reconsider the application. Meanwhile, the agency has received applications for at least 16 more data center proposals, following a July 2025 executive order directing the Interior department to identify national public land for data centers. The BLM...

A startup wants 456 nuclear reactors, a fuel plant, and nuclear waste storage on 9,000 acres of public land. The Senate permitting bill would make sure the next president can’t touch it

In his second term as the U.S. president, Donald Trump has taken actions to remove protections from at least 34.8 million hectares (86 million acres) of public lands, according to the advocacy group Center for American Progress. The nonprofit Conservation Lands Foundation (CLF) recently catalogued 12 such policy actions in its newly released Public Lands Attack Tracker. The tracker examines the myriad ways public lands have been reduced and weakened, from encouraging extractive industries to sidelining public participation, over the last nearly two years. These actions by the Trump administration include expanding oil and gas drilling “to encourage energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters” and repealing the public lands rule, which requires that conservation be considered equally important as extractive industries. The administration has also moved to rescind the roadless rule that currently bans road construction across millions of acres of national forest land and weakened provisions of the Endangered Species Act, which grants protection to species in decline. On its Public Lands Attack Tracker website, the CLF argues that the combined effects of such actions could be greater than the sum of their individual impacts. “This Attack Tracker connects the dots,” the website notes. It lays...

Turn on your tap, and there’s a good chance the water started high in a national forest. That’s no accident: the 1897 law governing our national forests made protecting water flows a core purpose. After a century of road building for logging and mining, the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule set out to protect a small percentage of National Forests with intact, backcountry watersheds known as Inventoried Roadless Areas. Those lands safeguard 80,000 river miles, supply drinking water to 25 million Americans, and shelter some of the last native trout and wildlife strongholds. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is seeking to repeal the rule, in what would be the largest rollback of river protections in U.S. history. The good news is that 1.6 million Americans, including many of you, have weighed in during the initial public comment period which ended on October 6th calling on the USDA to retain these existing protections for our rivers and clean water. Protection of our public lands built by the public The Roadless Rule was finalized in 2001 after hundreds of public meetings and roughly 1.6 million public comments, overwhelmingly in support. It covers about 58.5 million acres, nearly a third of the...

WASHINGTON— More than 100 groups urged Congress today to oppose the Senate permitting bill, which contains sweeping provisions gutting protections for hundreds of millions of acres of public lands across America, including the Arctic, Boundary Waters wilderness, Bears Ears National Monument and countless other treasured wildlands. “Handing our public lands over to corporate polluters and tech billionaires is a staggering betrayal of all Americans. It will put irreplaceable public lands at the mercy of industries bent on exploiting them,” said Ashley C. Nunes, public lands policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This disastrous bill would permanently scar our natural heritage and sacrifice clean water, wildlife and the health of our communities just to make the wealthiest people on Earth even richer.” The bill, introduced by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), would rubberstamp destructive projects including mining, logging, oil and gas drilling, and fracked gas pipelines intended to power data centers. Polluting projects would be fast tracked regardless of their harm to public lands and the water, wildlife, cultural resources and recreation these lands support. The bill’s so-called “project certainty” provisions would lock in near-permanent fossil fuel dominance and...

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via BBC News — Trump said he has plans to turn a 106-year-old public golf course in Washington DC into a tournament-capable golf course for pros, but local golfers are not happy.

Western Watersheds Project, represented by the Western Environmental Law Center, on Wednesday filed a complaint in Montana Federal District Court against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for revoking American Prairie’s permits to graze bison on public lands in Montana. Revoking the permits conflicts with the plain language of controlling laws, and contradicts BLM’s own prior decisions. In 2022, after completing a multi-year review finding that bison grazing is permissible on public lands and in fact would likely be better for prairie grasslands than cattle, BLM authorized American Prairie to graze bison on allotments. However, in a politically motivated reversal, over the course of just five months in 2026, BLM rescinded the bison permits under a brand new theory that a livestock owner must be a “production-oriented” entity, and did so without defining what that means. “BLM’s new interpretation has no basis in law and contradicts its own findings,” said Pete Frost, attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. “BLM reversed itself due to politics, not the law, nor the need to restore prairie grasslands.” In fact, BLM’s 2026 decision directly contradicts its position in 2022, that reading a “production” requirement into federal law “would read words and requirements” into...

via US news | The Guardian — In attempting to turn a public space in DC into an enclave for elites, Trump is moving the US capital closer to Graceland When is a tree not a tree? When it’s an obstacle to a par-3. If a tree falls in the middle of a golf course, does it make a sound? Yeah, probably. I wasn’t there, but I have to assume, based on my limited knowledge of the laws of physics. What I do know is that Donald Trump’s crusade to clear more than 400 trees for the purposes of redeveloping East Potomac Golf Links into a