President-elect Donald Trump promised clean air and water while bringing down prices for American families.1 Meanwhile, according to multiple reports, he privately told a group of oil and gas executives that they should raise money to get him elected so he could roll back environmental regulations and advance policies favorable to them.2
How the Trump administration manages America’s public lands—those lands and waters entrusted to the care of the federal government—will say a lot about whose side the president-elect is on. Will a Trump administration and Congress ultimately stand up for healthy lands, waters, and communities, or will they sell out U.S. public lands to well-connected special interests?
As Trump prepares to take office, corporate lobbyists have quietly proposed to carve up America’s public lands for their own benefit. These include proposals to auction control over massive areas or even sell them off entirely, to rig the system and rewrite laws for their own benefit, and to erase protected areas from the map.
Many of the ideas being pitched are part of Project 2025—an extreme agenda President-elect Trump repeatedly disavowed during his election campaign.3 Leaving nothing to chance, some industry lobbyists are going so far as to draft the executive orders they want Trump to sign, according to news reports.4 While well-connected industry insiders may profit from these proposals—as outlined below—local communities, wildlife, and future generations would get stuck footing the bill and living with the consequences.
1. Massive oil lease sales
Project 2025 policy proposals written by oil and gas industry insiders5 would substantially expand the auctioning of public lands to the oil and gas industry.6 Particularly when combined with other proposals to eliminate basic protections for wildlife, watersheds, and iconic places (outlined below), these lease sales would threaten sensitive, high-value lands and lock in oil and gas development as the priority use of public lands for decades at a time.
Who stands to gain
An oil and gas industry already rolling in profits and insider access7
Among the oil and gas companies most active on public lands are several that are run by the wealthy insiders President-elect Trump asked to raise $1 billion for his reelection. (see text box below) A public lands leasing bonanza could also enrich the same companies recently investigated for possibly colluding with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to inflate oil prices.8
Public lands are notoriously leased at below-market prices, enabling companies to speculatively lock up tens of thousands of acres at minimal cost, whether they have plans to develop them or not.9 To make matters worse, companies can sit on leases for at least 10 years and can extend them indefinitely if they start producing. Larger auctions will likely result in even more speculation.10
Who loses
American taxpayers, consumers, and downstream communities
Auctioning public lands at rock-bottom prices means that American taxpayers—who are stuck picking up the tab for unaddressed pollution—see minimal compensation. Moreover, leasing millions of acres of U.S. public lands to private industry won’t make a dent in global oil prices.11 The dangers and instability of gas prices will remain. It will, however, add to climate change and impair local air and water quality for downwind and downstream communities.12 Oil and gas production on arid western lands also consumes massive amounts of fresh water and can destroy and fragment wildlife habitat.13
The ultimate insider’s track
At a private dinner of oil and gas executives in April 2024, President-elect Trump was widely reported to have suggested that attendees raise $1 billion so that he could win the presidential election and eliminate environmental policies they didn’t like.14 While the full set of attendees is not publicly known, news reports have named at least 4 of the top 8 companies holding leases on federal public lands as attending the gathering at Mar-a-Lago: Occidental Petroleum (the number-one federal lands leaseholder), ExxonMobil (number two), ConocoPhillips (number six), and Chevron (number eight).15
This exclusive event was also reportedly organized by Harold Hamm, executive chairman of Continental Resources.16 His company ranks among the largest producers of federal oil and gas resources17 and was a big contributor to the largest super political action committee (PAC) supporting Trump in 2024.18 Hamm has a well-established, close relationship with President-elect Trump and, in 2020, he successfully lobbied Trump to push OPEC and Russia to cut production and increase global oil prices.19 Hamm is particularly close with Trump’s nominee for secretary of the interior, former Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND), who also helped organize the April dinner and may soon run the agency charged with overseeing the majority of U.S. public lands.20
2. Selling off America’s public lands
On top of massive lease sales, some politicians are pushing to literally sell off or give away large amounts of public lands. Legislation proposed early in the first Trump administration to facilitate selling vast areas of public lands was shelved after an outpouring of public opposition, particularly from hunters and anglers.21 Nevertheless, some close allies of President-elect Trump, including William Perry Pendley, who oversaw the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) during Trump’s first administration, and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), are peddling even more extreme public lands seizure proposals this time around.22
In a lawsuit filed in 2024, the state of Utah attempted to force the United States to dispose of more than 18 million acres of public lands in Utah23—an area that’s bigger than the entire state of West Virginia24—pushing a radical legal theory that would ultimately affect more than 200 million acres of public lands nationwide.25 Twelve states endorsed the lawsuit—including North Dakota, under the watch of then-Gov. Burgum.26 Burgum has so far declined to express his views directly,27 but he is President-elect Trump’s nominee to become secretary of the interior, a position that would oversee the majority of U.S. public lands. The Supreme Court rejected the case on January 13, 2025, but Utah’s political leaders may refile the case in a lower court.28
Meanwhile, those seeking to erode public lands ownership rights have pivoted to a new tactic. Citing housing affordability, Sen. Lee, Perry Pendley, and even the Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform29 have called for public lands to be sold off for housing construction. During the primary campaign, President-elect Trump called for construction of “freedom cities” on public lands and, more recently, discussed opening public lands for industrial construction of some kind but offered no details.30
Who stands to gain
Anti-public lands politicians and real estate investors
On its face, it can be hard to trace who would benefit from public lands seizure aside from anti-public lands politicians. Despite claims about housing needs, most public lands are not located close to population centers facing the housing affordability crisis.31 In fact, a bill pushed by Sen. Lee in the name of housing includes no mention of affordability, essentially forcing the sale of valuable public lands and opening them up to wealthy buyers of second—and third—homes.32 Existing laws already allow for the disposal or exchange of public lands with important safeguards to make sure transactions are truly in the long-term interest of the American public and that the public is compensated.33
Who loses
Everyone
Public lands belong to the American people, and privatizing those lands would permanently cut off public access and other benefits, impoverishing current and future generations of Americans. Opening sensitive lands to sale and subsequent industrial, commercial, and other development would also have a range of harmful impacts to clean water, recreation, and wildlife.
3. Helping polluters dodge cleanup costs
The powerful industry lobbying group American Petroleum Institute, as well as Project 2025, have called for removing oil and gas leasing rules, including updates requiring companies to cover the cost of cleaning up their own messes.34 When an oil and gas company successfully bids on a lease, it must post a bond—or insurance—to guarantee that it will follow the terms of the lease, including cleanup costs for spills and after the well stops producing. Under the Biden administration, federal bonding rules were updated for the first time since the 1950s.35 Low bond minimums make it easy for companies to abandon polluting wells and stick taxpayers with the cleanup costs. This is not an abstract risk: Outdated bonding requirements have resulted in at least 16,000 orphaned oil and gas wells polluting public lands.36
Who stands to gain
Corporate polluters
According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, it costs roughly $71,000 to plug and clean up an orphaned well.37 Without updated rules in place, oil and gas corporations will be able to skate by with putting down a mere $10,000 blanket bond to cover hundreds, or thousands, of wells on a federal lease.38 These low bonding rates incentivize companies to cut corners and to drill without properly cleaning up their operations.
Who loses
U.S. taxpayers and polluted communities
When these bonds inevitably fall short of what is needed to pay for cleanup, the contamination and the cost to remediate it land on taxpayers. If the oil and gas industry gets its wish, bonding levels will be so low that they won’t cover the cost of cleaning up even a single well, let alone the multiple wells operated by a company on a single lease or across the country. This would likely mean more orphaned wells dotting and polluting the landscape.
4. Pushing widespread timber sales instead of wildfire solutions
Under the guise of protecting communities from wildfire, the special interests behind Project 2025 have proposed initiating massive timber sales on public lands while walking away from proven, science-based solutions to America’s wildfire crisis.39 They also proposed opening protected areas—including the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Oregon and massive swaths of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest,40 the Tongass National Forest in Alaska—to boost timber production.41
Who stands to gain
Corporate timber investors
Addressing the nation’s wildfire crisis requires a range of solutions, including thinning forests where needed to restore healthy conditions and long-term resilience. The U.S. Forest Service, supported by the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, began focusing on restoration projects that are reducing catastrophic wildfire risk, improving forest health, putting people to work, and producing marketable biomass for mills.42 Shifting the agency’s focus to board feet of timber produced and larger timber sales would funnel benefits to a narrower set of investors and away from communities with the greatest needs.
Who loses
At-risk communities, fish and wildlife populations, and taxpayers
Turning back the clock to the era of massive timber sales would shift focus at precisely the wrong time for communities put at risk by more than a century of national forest mismanagement and accelerating climate change. Meanwhile, misguided timber sales, erasure of forest safeguards,43 and logging more old growth forests in Alaska and elsewhere would be a disaster for wildlife, stream and water quality, climate and clean air, and communities. An estimated 60 million people in 3,400 communities depend on national forests for drinking water.44 Finally, large timber sales are a losing proposition for taxpayers, who end up footing the bill for construction of roads for private timber companies.45
5. Skewing public lands decisions
Lobbyists for oil, gas, and other extractive industries are also pitching an aggressive agenda to the incoming Trump administration that would rig decisions about public lands in their favor. In fact, the oil and gas industry has made revoking the BLM’s Public Lands Rule a top ask of President-elect Trump.46
The Public Lands Rule puts conservation and land stewardship responsibilities on par with resource extraction when it comes to how 250 million acres of public lands will be managed.47 Eliminating the rule would skew decision-making to favor drilling and other destructive activities on public lands; downgrade the importance of wildlife habitat, watersheds, and ecosystem health; block opportunities for voluntary habitat restoration; and impose barriers for publicly and Tribally-recommended conservation proposals.48
See also
Beyond rigging public lands decisions into the future, Project 2025 calls for a search-and-destroy mission to target all recently completed land management plans, which are developed through years of public input and engagement. It calls for rewriting the final decisions “to eliminate management decisions that advance” conservation goals.49 The same agenda calls for specifically targeting a set of plans aimed at conserving and restoring habitat for the imperiled greater sage-grouse,50 a disappearing ecosystem that is home to diverse wildlife and plants, including migrating big game.51
Who stands to gain
Destructive oil, gas, and mining operations
Tilting the scales of public lands management away from conservation would be a windfall for the oil and gas companies, mining corporations, and other developers that destroy wildlife habitat, water resources, land and soil health, and more. Clearing the decks of important conservation requirements and eliminating new or proposed protected areas will mean these corporate interests can stake their claim to more publicly owned acres and have destructive projects greenlit more easily.
Who loses
Local communities; wildlife; and visitors who count on healthy lands, waters, and recreation opportunities
Given the scope of public lands at stake, particularly in the western United States, the impacts of favoring drilling, mining, and destructive development over land, water, and wildlife health are massive and widespread. About 1 in 10 Westerners depend on drinking water sourced from these BLM-managed public lands.52 These lands also see more than 80 million recreation visits per year, generating $11.4 billion in economic output.53 In particular, hunters, anglers, and other wildlife viewers who regularly access public lands would be affected by wildlife habitat destruction.
For a specific look at some vulnerable landscapes at risk, see
6. Gutting safeguards for pollution and wildlife
In addition to targeting health rules set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for air and water pollution, the well-connected corporate interests behind Project 2025 are calling for the elimination of safeguards that protect wildlife and public lands and waters.
Some of the public lands safeguards in industry’s crosshairs include:
- Waste Prevention Rule for oil and gas operations on public lands. A final rule issued by the BLM requiring oil and gas companies to reduce waste and pollution—by limiting venting and flaring of methane gas—and to compensate taxpayers by paying royalties on wasted gas.54
- Migratory Bird Treaty Act requirements. Legal requirements holding companies responsible for killing migratory birds, through actions such as oil spills and uncovered oil pits, while encouraging the adoption of best practices to avoid accidental deaths.55
- Endangered Species Act safeguards. Various legal requirements protecting at-risk species and their habitats. (Project 2025 also proposes changes to limit and hamstring the gathering of science for species protection.)56
- Requirements for offsetting environmental damage. Long-established policies that require industry to avoid or, where necessary, offset damage to natural or historic resources on public lands.57
- Farm bill funding conservation requirements. “Conservation compliance” requirements that ensure farm operations receiving federal subsidies through the farm bill avoid destroying wetlands and follow basic conservation practices.58
Who stands to gain
Big Oil, Big Agriculture, and other corporate bad actors
Letting big corporations off the hook for negligently killing wildlife, polluting the air, destroying wetlands, and other damage fulfils the asks of companies that want to cut corners to improve their bottom lines, particularly highly polluting oil companies.
Who loses
Responsible companies and farmers
In addition to affected communities and wildlife (which repeatedly get the short end of the stick), responsible companies, farmers, and business owners lose out when bad actors aren’t held responsible for their actions. Letting companies off the hook for negligent behavior and pollution means that responsible business owners—often small, locally owned businesses—aren’t competing on a level playing field.
7. Wiping protected lands off the map
Since 1906, the Antiquities Act has been the landmark tool for protecting national treasures from destruction. Responsible for preserving gems such as the Grand Canyon, Zion, and Acadia, the Antiquities Act has been used by Republican and Democratic presidents alike—including President-elect Trump—to permanently conserve lands and waters as national monuments. (Many were formally reclassified as national parks later.)59 Yet despite the massive popularity of these protected areas,60 the extreme Project 2025 agenda calls for Congress to revoke this tool forever.61
On top of that, the authors of Project 2025 are pushing President-elect Trump to review and revoke previously created national monuments,62 and news reports suggest that his transition team is listening.63 The anti-parks proposals go far beyond eliminating protections for the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments—actions that were deeply unpopular during the first Trump administration64—and instead suggests an eradication mission without bounds.
Additionally, the special interest architects of Project 2025 are pushing President-elect Trump to remove protections for a suite of other iconic lands and waters. Proposals include erasing protections for the watershed that feeds Minnesota’s legendary Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, eliminating the protected status of Colorado’s Thompson Divide and culturally rich lands around Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, and greenlighting the industrial Ambler project through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and the Brooks Range.65 Also targeted in Alaska are protections for 28 million acres of lands and waters valued for their wildlife habitat, connected rivers, and importance to the subsistence traditions of Alaska Native communities,66 as well as world-class wildlife habitat in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Western Arctic.67
Who stands to gain
Big Oil, mining, and timber corporations
Opening popular protected lands to resource extraction would narrowly benefit the large corporate interests who would profit from mining and drilling there. Publicly released emails have exposed that mining and drilling were, secretly, driving factors behind the first Trump administration’s decision to gut the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments.68 In fact, after the monuments were eviscerated, numerous mining claims were staked and more than 100,000 acres of Bears Ears were leased for oil and gas drilling, although the majority of those leases were later canceled under President Joe Biden.69 Industrial logging is also cited by Project 2025 as justification for undoing protections for the ecologically rich Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Oregon.70
And while major oil companies previously demonstrated no interest in bidding on leases in the remote Arctic Refuge, well-connected corporations clearly have their eyes on some of America’s other protected lands.71 Foreign mining company Antofagasta, whose billionaire owner rented a home in Washington, D.C., to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner during the first Trump presidency, has been trying for years to develop a sprawling copper-sulfide mine in the now-protected lands abutting the Boundary Waters.72
Who loses
Visiting families, local businesses, and nature-deprived communities
With such a wide-reaching assault on parks, the specific impacts will depend on where Trump decides to act, but America’s national monuments are visited and enjoyed by families from all over the country and the world. Eliminating national monuments and other protected areas will hurt visitors, local businesses, and nearby communities who currently enjoy cleaner water and air, healthier fish and wildlife populations, and recreation opportunities because of these protected areas. Monuments and other protected places can be boons to local economies. A study from Resources for the Future found that new monument designations result in increased local jobs and business establishments, and a Harvard study found that mining in the watershed of the Boundary Waters is likely to have an overall negative effect on the regional economy.73
A recent Center for American Progress analysis investigated what’s at stake—in terms of nature access—if the largest national monuments created, expanded, or restored by the Biden administration are threatened. That analysis found that 88 percent of communities near these monuments are classified as “nature deprived,”74 meaning they are experiencing above-average levels of nature loss. And beyond the impacts of erasing existing national monuments, the cost of Trump successfully rescinding or weakening the Antiquities Act itself would be unfathomably immense: It would be felt by future generations through the parks that are never created in the first place.
See also
8. Blocking voluntary land conservation
Beyond attacking parks and public lands, Project 2025 authors have proposed blocking the fundamental tools used today by private citizens wishing to voluntarily conserve lands. For example, Project 2025 proposes blocking the U.S. Department of Agriculture from supporting permanent “easements.”75 Easements are a commonly used tool that allows private landowners to ensure farmlands or natural areas remain undeveloped in perpetuity while still retaining ownership of the land. Another proposal would severely hamstring the nation’s most important source of funding for voluntary land conservation, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, by giving state and local politicians a veto to prevent landowners from voluntarily selling lands for parks and public lands.76
Who stands to gain
Anti-parks politicians
It’s hard to see anyone gaining from preventing private citizens from voluntarily conserving their land or from blocking new parks, aside from anti-conservation politicians aiming to score some political points.
Who loses
Farmers, ranchers, and people who enjoy outdoor recreation
Meanwhile, the people and communities affected would stretch across the country. In 2024 alone, private land conservation programs provided $1.6 billion to help farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners conserve more than 11 million acres.77 Further, the Land and Water Conservation Fund has supported park and recreation projects in almost every county across the United States, and conservation easements are also used across the country to conserve valuable forests, wetlands, and open space.78
Conclusion
As President-elect Trump takes office, powerful special interests are pitching him on an alarming agenda to sell out and sell off public lands; rig the system for their own benefit; and remove protections for parks and other lands and waters. The choices will pit a set of wealthy corporate insiders against everyday Americans as well as the deeply held, bipartisan commitment to conserve America’s natural wonders for future generations. The answer is clear: President-elect Trump must stand with the American people and reject these extreme proposals outright.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Will Beaudouin, Meghan Miller, Mona Alsaidi, Reema Bzeih, Leo Banks, Sam Zeno, and Nicole Gentile for their contributions to this report.