As the Trump administration settles into the White House, seven states are hoping for dramatic changes in the federal government’s public-lands policy, reports E&E News, offering analysis of each state. Alaska, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, which together contain 60 percent of U.S. public lands, are set to be battlegrounds for environmentalists, landowners, ranchers and oil companies.
Alaska is perhaps the most contentious, after President Obama restricted or banned mineral development in several key areas of the state, including the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
“To state that Alaska has had a difficult or tenuous relationship with the outgoing administration is probably more than an understatement,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, at the confirmation hearing for Rep. Ryan Zinke, Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of the Interior. Murkowski is chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
“Instead of seeing us as the state of Alaska, our current president and [Interior] secretary seem to see us as ‘Alaska, the national park and wildlife refuge’ — a broad expanse of wilderness, with little else of interest or value,” she said.
But if GOP leaders and mineral companies are hopeful that Trump will help them roll back Obama’s regulations, environmentalists say they should be ready for extreme public opposition. They point to “a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showing that only 22 percent of Americans want to see more drilling and coal mining on U.S. federal lands,” says E&E.