This Week at Interior April 30, 2021

Transcript:

This Week at Interior 

Interior this week took several steps to honor our nation-to-nation relationship with Tribes and uphold the Department's trust and treaty responsibilities. A new Secretarial Order will re-delegate authority to review and approve applications to place tribal land into trust to the Bureau of Indian Affairs' regional directors...that move speeds up the pace for Tribes to develop housing projects, manage law enforcement agencies and develop local economies. Interior's Solicitor's Office also issued rulings that speed up the land into trust process, and expanded Interior's authority over that process for the benefit of Alaska Natives.

At a White House Press Briefing last week, the Secretary spoke about the Biden-Harris Administrations "all of government approach" to tribal engagement.

For too long, Indian issues were relegated to the Tribal offices within federal agencies.  If we’re going to make sure that Native American and Alaska Native communities thrive, that Tribal sovereignty is respected and strengthened.  And if we are truly to repair our nation-to-nation relationships, then that means every federal agency needs to be thinking boldly about our obligations to Indigenous Peoples.

Secretary Haaland joined the Second Gentleman of the United States Douglas Emhoff to mark National Park Week, and to announce sixteen additions to the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program. They join nearly 700 other sites, programs, and facilities in the network that honor, preserve, and promote the history of resistance to enslavement through escape and flight. 

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management this week announced it will prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for the Construction and Operations Plan submitted by Revolution Wind. If approved by BOEM, Revolution Wind would be allowed to construct and operate an 880 megawatt wind energy facility offshore Rhode Island and Massachusetts. 

For the sixth year, people from around the globe can get up-close-and-personal with an endangered California condor chick in real-time.  The newest chick hatched earlier this month...its parents are a ten-year old female and fifteen-year old male. Thanks to intensive, ongoing captive breeding and recovery efforts led by the Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners, the California condor population has grown to just over 500 birds worldwide. In 1982 there were only 22 birds in the wild. 

The Tyrannosaurus Rex has been extinct for 65 million years, but we're still learning new facts about history’s most fearsome predator...and it turns out they may have been even scarier than we imagine. The Bureau of Land Management says new research from Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument reveals T-Rex may not have been a solitary predator, but instead hunted in packs, much like modern wolves. You can find out more, and get a virtual tour of the monument's paleontology lab, at "utahpubliclands" on Instagram. 

And our social media Picture of the Week, this Florida bobcat prowling around the Sunshine State's Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Occupying 140,000 acres on Florida's largest barrier island, the refuge shares its space with the Kennedy Space Center...it's home for a thousand plant species, hundreds of varieties of birds, and dozens of species of fish, reptiles, and mammals.

Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and You Tube. That's This Week, at Interior. 

This Week: Interior takes several steps to honor our nation-to-nation relationship with Tribes and uphold the Department's trust and treaty responsibilities; Secretary Haaland joins the Second Gentleman of the United States Douglas Emhoff to announce sixteen additions to the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program; another wind energy facility may be coming to the waters off New England; a live streaming cam allows viewers to get up close and personal with an endangered California condor chick; new research from the Bureau of Land Management says the most ferocious dinosaur of all may have hunted in packs; and a prowling Florida bobcat makes for a purrfect Picture of the Week!

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    04/11/2025

    This Week at Interior April 11, 2025

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    This Week at Interior

    President Trump this week signed Executive Orders aimed at achieving the Administration's goal of American Energy Dominance with a renewed focus on coal. One of the orders directs Interior to identify untapped coal resources on federal lands, while removing barriers to mining and leasing.

    The value of untapped coal in our country is one hundred times greater than the value of all the gold at Fort Knox, and we're going to unleash it and make America rich and powerful again.

    To advance the President Trump's order, Interior will implement a series of policy moves and regulatory reforms to position coal as a cornerstone of the nation’s energy strategy by ensuring federally managed lands remain open and accessible for responsible energy development. Secretary Burgum likened the actions to creating a new Golden Age of "Mine, Baby, Mine," saying that  

    Interior is unlocking America’s full potential in energy dominance and economic development to make life more affordable for every American family while showing the world the power of America’s natural resources and innovation.  

    Among the actions are ending the moratorium on federal coal leasing, reopening federal lands in Montana and Wyoming to coal leasing, removing regulatory burdens for coal mines, and providing royalty rate relief.  

    Interior this week announced the disbursement of more than $13 million in grants to support the reclamation of abandoned mine lands, furthering the Trump administration’s commitment to American Energy Dominance, environmental stewardship and economic renewal in coal communities. The funding is administered through the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, and it will support job creation and economic revitalization efforts in North Dakota, Tennessee and Texas.  

    Interior this week announced the release of updated oil and gas reserve estimates for the Gulf of America's Outer Continental Shelf. The new data and analysis over the last couple of years reveal an additional 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent since 2021, bringing the total reserve estimate to 7.04 billion barrels of oil equivalent. That figure includes 5.77 billion barrels of oil and 7.15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced plans to significantly increase oil and gas leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf, and just last week Secretary Burgum directed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to hold the first Gulf of America oil and gas lease sale since its renaming in February.

    Secretary Burgum held his first All Hands meeting this week at Interior's historic Yates Auditorium. The Secretary saluted the notable accomplishments the Department has achieved in making the transition from the previous administration, and expanded on his vision that innovation, rather than regulation, is the cornerstone of American prosperity.

    The thing that has led our country for 250 years is innovation, doesn't matter whether it's the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution our ability to innovate in a way that allowed us to win World War One and World War II and lead the world and become the world leader, all of it was innovation based, and we have to get back to those roots. That's how we win. That's how America wins in this world, that's how we win again for our children and our children's children, is we win with innovation.

    U.S. Geological Survey crews were deployed late last week and this week to monitor flood impacts after storms dumped heavy rain across portions of the southeast and Midwest. Crews are still hard at work gathering flood measurements in Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and Ohio, as well as West Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi, where as much as ten inches of rain fell causing massive flooding. The gages provide information for the National Weather Service to predict when dangerous flooding might occur and allow for warnings to vulnerable residents, as flood crests will continue into early May.

    And our social media Picture of the Week, California's Battery Point Lighthouse. Perched on California's rugged northern coast, this historic beacon stands among the rocky outcrops of the California Coastal National Monument and has guided mariners since its first lighting in 1856.

    Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X! That's This Week at Interior!


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    News and headlines from Interior April 11, 2025

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