Press Releases

After touring sites in Anniston Thursday morning, Jewell and Jarvis attended a community meeting at Anniston’s First United Methodist Church. They then toured sites in Birmingham and attended a community meeting at Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. Comments from the public at both sites were overwhelmingly in favor of including the sites in the National Park System.

To date, BOEM has awarded eleven commercial wind leases, including nine through the competitive lease sale process. These lease sales have generated more than $16 million in winning bids for more than a million acres in federal waters. 

The nation’s newest wildlife refuge joins the largest network of lands in the nation dedicated to wildlife conservation, with 565 other national wildlife refuges – at least one refuge in every state – and other protected areas covering more than 150 million acres.

U.S. Representative Suzan DelBene and City of Kirkland Deputy Mayor Jay Arnold joined Secretary Jewell for the announcement, which was made at a first-of-its-kind campout on the Cross Kirkland Corridor near Google’s Kirkland Campus with 60 children from the greater Seattle area

The Secretarial Order  sets out a framework to ensure that Native communities have the opportunity to assume meaningful and substantive roles in managing public lands that have special geographical, historical and cultural connections to the tribes.  

To address concerns regarding mineral leasing and development activity adjacent to Chaco Culture National Historic Park, Deputy Secretary of the Interior Michael L. Connor today announced the U.S. Department of the Interior will expand the resource management planning effort underway in the Farmington, New Mexico area.

The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is the first monument established primarily for the preservation of biodiversity. The presidential proclamation that originally established the monument describes the area as an ‘ecological wonder’ that is ‘home to a spectacular variety of rare and beautiful species of plants and animals, whose survival in this region depends upon its continued ecological integrity.’ Senator Merkley’s proposal to expand the monument would protect approximately 50,000 additional acres, largely in Oregon, with 5,000 acres in California. 

This proactive commitment will protect municipal and agricultural water supplies, infrastructure and ecosystem health. 

The 500,000 acre goal was surpassed Friday when President Obama signed into law the bipartisan Nevada Native Nations Lands Act, which conveys more than 71,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands to the U.S. Department of the Interior to place into federal trust status for six Nevada tribes. The tribes will use their newly acquired lands to expand housing, provide economic development opportunities and promote cultural activities for and by their tribal members.

“LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History” is the first of its kind study conducted by a national government to chronicle historical places, documents, people and events that shaped the LGBTQ civil rights movement in America.