The big budget bill offers up hundreds of millions of acres of public land for drilling, logging, and mining and strips funding from the National Park Service and BLM
The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” is anything but beautiful for public lands. Lawmakers in Congress hid incredibly destructive and unpopular favors to the coal, oil and gas, and timber industries in the budget bill, which — combined with executive actions by President Donald Trump — will put hundreds of millions of acres of publicly-owned deserts, mountains, and forests up for grabs for extraction and threaten public access. The bill also stripped hundreds of millions in funding from the park service and Bureau of Land Management for staffing as well as conservation and climate adaptation projects. While unprecedented national backlash forced Utah Senator Mike Lee to remove his public land sell-off provision from the bill, more insidious attacks on public lands made it through unscathed.
Oil and gas handouts
Thanks to the big budget bill, public lands are now an all-you-can-eat buffet for oil and gas companies to gobble up — at rates set by Congress over a century ago. The bill repeals an increase to the federal royalty rate, which is the share of the revenue generated from the sale of oil extracted on federal lands that companies pay back to the government, implemented by the Inflation Reduction Act. These royalties are split between the federal and state governments and fund public schools and important conservation programs like the Land and Water Conservation Fund. By rolling that rate back from 16.67 to 12.5 percent, taxpayers will lose out on around $6 billion in royalty revenue over the next decade.
The bill also makes over 200 million acres of public land available for oil and gas companies to drill on by mandating quarterly lease sales and requiring the BLM to offer up at least 50 percent of all public land nominated by oil and gas companies and speculators. It removed the $5 per acre fee these entities had to pay to nominate public lands for lease and reinstituted a practice called noncompetitive leasing, which allows companies to snatch up public lands that don’t sell at auction for just $1.50 per acre. These leases start at 10 years but can be extended for decades, keeping lands from being managed for recreational purposes or habitat conservation.
Finally, the bill also turbocharges oil and gas leasing in Alaska, mandating four lease sales in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and six lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska over the next ten years.
Logging windfall
The bill also gives the logging industry a huge boost by requiring the Forest Service and BLM to increase the amount of timber each agency allows logging companies to cut down by 250 million and 20 million board feet, respectively, each year through 2034. (A board foot is twelve inches by twelve inches by one inch.) That represents about an 80 percent increase in the amount of timber cut on both national forests and BLM lands by 2034. The bill also requires the Forest Service and BLM to enter into dozens of long-term timber contracts, locking in logging for at least 20 years.
It’s no coincidence that the Trump administration announced its intent to repeal the 2001 Roadless Rule just as the budget bill went through Congress, opening up 58 million acres of national forest land to logging. Combined with Trump’s call earlier this year for a 25 percent increase in timber production, these changes pave the way for timber companies to clear cut national forests across the country.
CPR for coal
Coal is one of the most expensive forms of energy fuel, as well as the dirtiest, which is why its use for energy production has been on the decline in the U.S. for the past two decades. But lawmakers and Trump are trying to bring it back to life, at the expense of taxpayers and the environment. The budget bill mandates the federal government lease at least 4 million acres of known coal reserves and significantly cuts the royalty rate for coal extracted from federal lands. Again, it’s no coincidence the Trump administration just announced plans to repeal a Biden-era ban on coal leasing in the Powder River Basin, which stretches from Wyoming into Montana. The move is a response to executive orders issued earlier this year by President Donald Trump.
Whether industry will be interested in these leases is another question: prior to the Biden-era ban, coal companies hadn’t nominated a major coal lease in the Powder River Basin in Montana for over 10 years. And major utilities across the country are opposed to reintroducing coal, as it raises the cost of energy for ratepayers.
Park service slaughter
The budget bill rescinds $500 million in Inflation Reduction Act dollars allocated for National Park Service staffing. Meanwhile, park service staffing levels are already down 25 percent since the start of the year, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. After firing around 1,000 park rangers earlier this year, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum promised to hire 5,000 seasonal rangers, for a total of 8,000 rangers. But only about half of those 8,000 positions have been filled so far, according to NPCA. This has left parks severely understaffed during peak visitation, putting visitor centers, trail maintenance, and public safety at risk.
“I’ve been visiting national parks for 30 years and never has the presence of rangers been so absent,” a visitor to Zion National Park wrote in public feedback obtained by CNN. The visitor said they saw just one trail crew at the Utah park, and there were no educational programs offered at any of the five parks they visited on their trip. At Yosemite, another visitor said there were no rangers at the Hetch Hetchy reservoir station, preventing visitors from picking up wilderness permits. Meanwhile, Yellowstone National Park visitation is already up four percent from 2024.
Climate and conservation cuts
The bill also rescinds funding allocated by the Inflation Reduction Act for conservation and climate resilience projects in national parks and on BLM lands, undermining efforts to protect public lands from climate impacts and ecosystem degradation. This included $250 million for projects for the conservation, protection, and resiliency of lands and resources administered by the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management and $250 million for conservation, ecosystem, and habitat restoration projects on lands administered by the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management.
And what did lawmakers do with those savings? They allocated $150 million to next year’s celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary, which the Interior department is already advertising at the top of its website.
What now?
Yes, we kept public lands in public hands, but significant threats remain. This bill, coupled with the Trump administration’s executive actions, puts extractive industries in charge of America’s public lands, lining the pockets of corporations and billionaires while irrevocably reducing public access and degrading wildlife habitat. From mountain biking trails outside Moab to campsites in the White River National Forest, oil, mining, and timber executives will decide whether or not the public have access to lands that are supposed to belong to all Americans.
But there is some hope. While the Trump administration is trying to gut the environmental review process required by the National Environmental Protection Act (oh yeah, the budget bill also allows project applicants to pay a fee to fast-track environmental reviews), some of these actions will be subject to a public comment process. Many of the first Trump administration’s attacks on public lands were thrown out by the courts because officials ignored basic science and the environmental review process. The extent to which members of the public push back on administrative actions and raise concerns with their representatives in Washington can affect the final outcome. The fight over Mike Lee’s land sell-off attempt showed that when Americans speak up for public lands with a united voice, elected officials will still pay attention.
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the percentage increase in timber sales on both USFS and BLM lands.
Featured image: View from the Paiute ATV Trail on public land in Utah; Source: BLM Utah/Flickr