This Week at Interior April 9, 2021

Transcript:

This Week at Interior 

Secretary Haaland hit the road this week for the first time as Secretary, making stops in New Mexico and Utah. In Albuquerque, she held a listening session with the All Pueblo Council of Governors at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. She spoke about President Biden’s American Jobs Plan, which would support a number of Interior initiatives including funding for Tribal and rural communities to expand broadband coverage, as well as improving roads, bridges, water systems, and spurring economic development.  

Then it was off to Utah, where the Secretary took part in discussions on the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, meeting with Tribes,  federal, state and local leaders, and other stakeholders. Interior is leading a review of the boundaries and management conditions of the two national monuments, pursuant to the President’s Executive Order. Both trips were done under strict COVID-19 guidelines to keep everyone safe.   

Interior will invest $1.6 billion this year to take on critical deferred maintenance projects and improve transportation and recreation infrastructure in national parks, national wildlife refuges and recreation areas, and at Bureau of Indian Education schools. The funding was made possible by the newly created National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund, established in 2020 by the Great American Outdoors Act. 

Secretary Haaland this week announced the formation of a new Missing & Murdered Unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services. The MMU will provide leadership and direction for cross-departmental and interagency work involving missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives. The Secretary said violence against Indigenous peoples is a crisis that has been underfunded for decades.  

The Bureau of Reclamation has released final technical details supporting the 2021 SECURE Water Act Report. Reclamation’s 2021 West-Wide Climate and Hydrology Assessment, plus seven individual basin reports, provide detailed information on climate change impacts and adaptation strategies to increase water supply reliability in the West. 

After a five-year review the Fish and Wildlife Service has recommended no change to the status of the grizzly bear in the lower 48 states as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. This recommendation follows a thorough review of the best available science, informed by an independently peer-reviewed species status assessment. 

The week of April 5th through the 12th is International Dark Sky Week, and the National Park Service is collaborating with the Illuminating Engineering Society to improve outdoor lighting in national parks, without affecting night sky viewing, the fastest-growing park visitor activity. Together they'll develop lighting standards and best practices for parks and other protected areas, to help plan night sky friendly lighting in future construction projects in parks of the national park system.   

And our social media Picture of the Week, where you can almost catch the scent of these wildflowers in bloom at eight-thousand feet, on BLM-managed land just south of Monitor Pass in California's Sierra Nevada. The picturesque range stretches for some 400 miles in eastern California, and translates literally as "snowy mountains." 

Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and You Tube. 

That's This Week, at Interior. 

This Week: Secretary Haaland hits the road this week for the first time as Secretary, making stops in New Mexico and Utah; Interior will invest $1.6 billion in critical infrastructure and deferred maintenance projects; Secretary Haaland announces the formation of a new Missing & Murdered Unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services; the Bureau of Reclamation releases final technical details supporting the 2021 SECURE Water Act Report; the Fish and Wildlife Service recommends no change to the status of the grizzly bear in the lower 48 states; we'll tell you why things are looking up at national parks, especially at night; and we stop to look at the flowers in our social media 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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