Five Key Day-One Actions for the Outdoors
In the first 48 hours of the new administration, we are seeing a raft of actions intended to protect the outdoors and climate and improve equity and the environment. Here are the five biggest day-one actions that will make a difference for people who care about the outdoors:
1. Climate! With climate change the biggest issue facing not just the outdoor community but the planet, Biden’s early actions on climate are incredibly promising. America will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. The decision will take 30 days to go into effect, but rejoining the climate accord is a good signal of the administration’s desire and willingness to address climate change. Early executive orders also direct land management and other agencies to account for the benefits of reducing climate pollution, including improved public health, reduced pollution, and protection for the climate.
2. Oil and gas leasing reform and Alaska protections. Outdoor Alliance has worked to track and stop the Trump administration’s oil and gas fire sales on public lands over the last four years. This work has brought home an understanding of how much fossil fuel development is affecting not just the climate, but also recreation and conservation values. The Biden administration enacted an immediate moratorium on oil and gas development across America’s public lands, including in Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge, which was the target of a last-minute auction from the Trump administration.
3. National monuments, including Bears Ears. In a first step toward rectifying the national monument rollbacks, the Biden administration has asked the Interior Department to conduct a review of monuments that were rolled back by the last administration, including Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. While there’s no action yet, the Biden administration plans to work with Tribal governments and other stakeholders to find a fix.
4. Restoring NEPA. The National Environmental Policy Act, one of the core conservation laws that ensures environmental reviews and gives Americans a voice about what happens on public lands, was gutted by the Trump administration. The new executive order asks the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality to rescind the prior administration’s guidance and work toward restoring and updating how the government implements NEPA.
5. New leadership. Yesterday, Interior announced senior leadership for the Biden-Harris administration at the agency. The Trump administration’s Interior Department was largely led by veterans of the fossil fuel industry. The Biden-Harris team is oriented more toward the public interest – you can read their full bios here. For agencies that have been understaffed for years, installing experienced leadership and working to rebuild core staff will be incredibly important for getting conservation and climate work done.
There is a lot more in the White House’s full executive order on the environment and public health, which you can read here, including halting border wall construction, which will have a significant impact on public lands and wildlife corridors in the southwest, stopping the Keystone XL pipeline, and many orders around climate, climate impacts, pollution control, and carbon costs. It represents a very significant shift from the Trump administration’s energy dominance agenda and a shift towards a focus on prioritizing environmental justice and ensuring polluters are held accountable, especially for the disproportionate harm in communities of color and low-income communities.
With many of these orders, there will be reviews and opportunities for Outdoor Alliance’s leadership and for the outdoor community to weigh in or get involved. There is more we expect the Biden-Harris administration to accomplish in the coming weeks, and we are working to share the outdoor community’s priorities with the new administration. You can learn more about our goals for the first 10 days here.
