Congressional Public Lands Score

S.220 would strip the president's authority to designate national monuments under the Antiquities Act and give that power to Congress. Every national monument created in the last 120 years was designated under this law.

H.R.1897 would overhaul the Endangered Species Act by imposing arbitrary timelines on listing decisions, capping the number of species that can be listed each year, and allowing economic cost to override scientific findings in recovery planning.

H.R.676 would categorically exclude hardrock mining operations on federal lands from environmental review under NEPA, removing the primary safeguard that requires mining companies to assess water contamination, habitat destruction, and community impacts before breaking ground.

H.R.845 delists the gray wolf nationwide by statute, overriding U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service authority. The House-passed version includes court-stripping provisions that bar judicial review. Pending in the Senate as S.1306. USFWS Director Nesvik has publicly supported delisting.

H.R.4090 codifies Trump Executive Orders 14154 and 14241 permanently into law, fast-tracking hardrock mining on BLM land and 193 million acres of National Forest land. Directs DOI to "revise or rescind agency actions that hinder mining." The Rules Committee blocked an amendment that would have prohibited Chinese and other adversary-owned companies from getting priority mining treatment on U.S. public lands.

H.R.1366 codifies a reversal of the Rosemont Copper decision, allowing mining companies to dump waste rock and tailings on public lands adjacent to their claims without a valid mineral discovery. Turns National Forest and BLM land into the mining industry's dumping ground.

H.R.281 directs the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reissue the 2017 Greater Yellowstone grizzly delisting rule and bars judicial review. USFWS itself determined in January 2025 that delisting is not warranted. This bill overrides the agency's own science.

H.R.587 prohibits USFWS from listing the lesser prairie-chicken in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, or New Mexico and delists existing populations. Directly overrides USFWS listing authority for a species the agency determined requires protection.

H.R.180 adds procedural hurdles to USFWS listing decisions under the Endangered Species Act, making it harder and slower to protect species on federal public lands.

The administration is moving to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which protects 58.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas across 39 states from road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvesting. The Tongass National Forest in Alaska is the most immediate target, but the rollback threatens roadless protections nationwide.

The administration is reviewing six or more national monuments for boundary reductions or rescission, including Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, Basin and Range, Berryessa Snow Mountain, and Gold Butte. Combined, these monuments protect more than five million acres.

Budget proposals and hiring freezes have reduced staffing at the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by thousands of positions, affecting wildfire response, trail maintenance, visitor services, and law enforcement across hundreds of millions of acres of public land.

The administration is advancing oil and gas lease sales in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the calving ground of the Porcupine caribou herd and one of the last undeveloped stretches of Arctic coastline in the world.

Steve Pearce, former U.S. Representative (R-NM) and former chair of the New Mexico Republican Party, has said publicly that Theodore Roosevelt was wrong to create national parks and national forests. He is a climate denier who personally profited from oil and gas interests, opposed the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in his own district, and promoted Trump's 2020 election fraud lies. Pearce is one of the most outspoken proponents of transferring federal public land to states and private interests in the country. He would oversee 245 million acres of public land.

Scott Socha, a Delaware North executive with no land management experience, is nominated to oversee 433 national park units and 85 million acres. As a Delaware North concessionaire, Socha's company trademarked the names "Ahwahnee," "Yosemite Lodge," and "Yosemite National Park" itself, then demanded $51 million from the federal government when it lost the Yosemite concession contract. The company ultimately received $12 million in a settlement, including $3.8 million in taxpayer money. The NPS Organic Act requires "substantial experience and demonstrated competence in land management" for the director position.