In his second term as the U.S. president, Donald Trump has taken actions to remove protections from at least 34.8 million hectares (86 million acres) of public lands, according to the advocacy group Center for American Progress. The nonprofit Conservation Lands Foundation (CLF) recently catalogued 12 such policy actions in its newly released Public Lands Attack Tracker. The tracker examines the myriad ways public lands have been reduced and weakened, from encouraging extractive industries to sidelining public participation, over the last nearly two years. These actions by the Trump administration include expanding oil and gas drilling “to encourage energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters” and repealing the public lands rule, which requires that conservation be considered equally important as extractive industries. The administration has also moved to rescind the roadless rule that currently bans road construction across millions of acres of national forest land and weakened provisions of the Endangered Species Act, which grants protection to species in decline. On its Public Lands Attack Tracker website, the CLF argues that the combined effects of such actions could be greater than the sum of their individual impacts. “This Attack Tracker connects the dots,” the website notes. It lays out eight impacts of the “attacks on public land” including stripping “protections to allow destructive uses” and eliminating “tribal engagement” which “results in lasting damage.” One of the most high-profile reductions in public land protection can be found in Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. In July 2026,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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