While the Trump administration veers wildly to and fro on tariffs and Tehran, it has never faltered on one top priority: enabling the plunder of public resources.
Fancy a hike around Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah? Well, squeeze in, because President Donald Trump signed an order last month reducing them by well over half—there is, after all, valuable oil to be exploited near those tribal burial sites. Planning a family vacation to Alaska or Alabama? Better pack a hard hat, because coal mining—the dirty industry America has been moving away from for almost 20 years—is apparently back in vogue.
And in case you missed it, decades-old forestry protections are hanging by a thread, as the administration just moved to open roughly 45 million acres of national woodlands (some of which the US Forest Service has been spraying with Roundup) to paved roads, behemoth logging trucks, and mining and drilling operations.
In Trump’s America, the ransacking of public resources trumps conservation—on both land and sea. You might already know about the deep-sea mining leases up for grabs in American Samoa or Trump’s plans for new offshore drilling rigs from California to the Gulf of Mexico. But you probably didn’t know about his latest target: marine reserves.
Fisheries management 101 teaches that if you want more fish, don’t catch them all at once. The government’s latest “priorities” throw that wisdom out the window. Marine protected areas, conservation measures, and protections for endangered seals, turtles, and whales are now fair game in the name of helping goose short-term profits from America’s fisheries.
Reporting for Inside Climate News, I spoke with conservationists and scientists who have dedicated their entire careers to protecting marine life, and they were blunt: The administration’s new directives, which relax marine sanctuary protections to make way for commercial activities, are both “stupid” and a “great way to crash a fish population.”
You can read all about it here.
—Johnny Sturgeon
