With too few employees and rangers, Yosemite National Park hosts visitors with the 'wrong kind of wildness'

Yosemite's iconic rock face, the Half Dome.
( Photo by J. Andersson, Unsplash)

National Park staffing reductions have left Yosemite's increasing number of visitors to their own devices. Park guests "were far less supervised than they normally were, which had led to the wrong kind of wildness — littering, cliff jumping, drone-flying," reports Soumya Karlamangla of The New York Times. Since 2025, the National Park Service staff has shrunk by 25%.

Meanwhile, Yosemite's visitor numbers have increased, and last summer was one of the park's "busiest summers in recent years," Karlamangla explains. "October was unusually packed because the park was left open and free during the federal government shutdown."

Without enough park rangers and staff, scientists working in Yosemite have taken to picking up trash and cleaning the bathrooms. Mark Ruggiero, a retired Yosemite ranger who still does part-time work in the park, told Karlamangla, "It’s really disheartening to see the direction we’re going."

Elisabeth Barton, a co-owner of a Yosemite guided tour company, explained how the lack of park rangers can mean visitors -- mostly unintentionally -- are seen doing things that could harm themselves, others or park land. The Times reports, "She has  noticed more visitors driving the wrong way down one-way roads, parking on sensitive meadows and BASE jumping off cliffs, which is not allowed."

Before the staffing cuts, park employees were stationed at Yosemite's entrance to collect entrance fees and explain the park rules and guidance. Park rangers also supervised the trails to ensure the safety and care of visitors and wildlife. 

"It was the vistas of Yosemite. . .that helped inspire the creation of the entire national park system," Karlamangla adds. "President Abraham Lincoln in 1864 made the Yosemite Valley federally protected land designated for public use."

Right now, Yosemite's staff is struggling to maintain the most basic services. Barton told Karlamangla, "I struggle to see the long game here.”

National Park Service let go its last engineer who monitored abandoned wells, which pose a 'significant threat'

Unplugged oil and gas wells can still spew noxious gases 
and pollute groundwater. (Adobe Stock photo)

Forrest Smith was the National Park Service's sole engineer tasked with finding and cleaning up the roughly 93 abandoned gas and oil wells scattered across federal lands. But in September, the NPS chose not to renew Smith's contract, leaving no one to track leaky wells. Old, unplugged wells can pose a "significant threat to the environment and public health," reports Maxine Joselow of The New York Times.

Often dubbed "orphaned wells," most forgotten sites were drilled and abandoned before the "national parks were established," Joselow explains. Orphaned wells can continue to spew noxious gases, such as methane, a greenhouse gas, and benzene, a chemical "linked to leukemia and other blood cancers. . . . .Oil and brine can seep from the wells into aquifers that supply drinking water to nearby communities."

Inactive and orphaned wells will continue to pose an unseen threat because the NPS lacks employees to monitor sites and make arrangements to have them sealed through a process know as "plugging". Beau Kiklis, associate director of energy and landscape conservation at the National Parks Conservation Association, told Joselow, "I don’t think I can underscore enough that this has been a significantly underestimated public health and safety problem." 

Smith estimated that there are "around 2,500 inactive wells on Park Service lands, including 93 that are orphaned. Of those abandoned wells, about 70 are leaking methane," Joselow reports.

A spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which oversees the Park Service, told the Times that "the Park Service 'has made strong progress in meeting the administration’s priorities to identify and plug orphaned wells on park lands,' and that 'staffing levels naturally fluctuate as appointments conclude and new positions are filled.'"

States having issues with federal program to plug orphan oil and gas wells: not enough pluggers, new rules from Interior

Crude oil, water, chemicals and probably methane leak from an orphaned well’s

borehole in West Texas. (Photo by Shelby Webb, Energy & Environment News)

The federal government has $4.7 billion to plug orphaned oil and gas wells, "but the new federal money is creating logistical and regulatory challenges . . . raising many questions about whether the money will live up to its promise," Shelby Webb reports for Energy & Environment News.

"Some officials say they are having a hard time finding enough crews to plug the wells under the timelines dictated by the federal funds, and available workers are charging higher prices than originally anticipated," Webb reports. "Many orphaned wells also remain undiscovered, putting pressure on states to develop new methods for finding and plugging them."

The latest hiccup is the Interior Department's new rules for the grant money, which it announced last week. They "will require states to track methane emissions, develop screening processes to check for groundwater pollution and prioritize plugging wells near historically underserved communities," Webb reports. "However, Lori Wrotenbery, executive director of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, said in an email that Interior cannot require states to track methane or groundwater pollution and can instead only tell states they are 'expected' or 'encouraged' to do so. The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission represents all but one of the 26 states that have been deemed eligible to receive the federal orphaned well plugging funds."

The Interior Department told Webb that while methane and water-pollution measurements were encouraged in its initial grants, they are now “requirements.”

Webb writes, "There may be as many as 800,000 orphaned wells across the country, according to some estimates. In 2021, states reported 126,806 to the Department of Interior, although many experts say that number vastly understates the problem. Along with being eyesores, the wells may be polluting groundwater and are estimated to be the 10th largest source of methane emissions in the U.S., according to a study by McGill University in Canada."

California, Arizona and Nevada will take less water from the Colorado in return for at least $1 billion in federal funds

Lake Mead (Photo by Matthew Reamer, The New York Times)

"The Biden administration has negotiated a hard-fought agreement among California, Arizona and Nevada to take less water from the drought-strained Colorado River," reports Christopher Flavelle of The New York Times, noting that the deal "reduces, for now, the risk of the river running dry below the Hoover Dam, which would jeopardize the water supply for Phoenix, Los Angeles and some of America’s most productive agricultural land."

The states along river, also vital source of hydroelectric power, reached an agreement with the administration Monday "to conserve an unprecedented amount of their water supply in exchange for about $1 billion in federal funding, according to people familiar with the situation," reports Joshua Partlow of The Washington Post, who reported the outlines of the deal last week. The money would go to states, cities and Native Amerian tribes.

"California, Arizona, and Nevada have agreed to voluntarily conserve 3 million acre-feet of water over the next three years, which amounts to 13 percent of these states’ total allocation from the river," Patrlow reports. "The Biden administration has committed to compensating the states for three quarters of the water savings — or 2.3 million acre-feet — which would amount to at least $1 to $1.2 billion in federal funds, the people familiar with the talks said. The money from the Inflation Reduction Act would pay farmers and others who voluntarily forego their supplies."

Flavelle reports, "The agreement struck over the weekend runs only through the end of 2026, and still needs to be formally adopted by the federal government. At that point, all seven states that rely on the river — which include Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — could face a deeper reckoning, as its decline is likely to continue."

Feds want to allow leasing of federal land for conservation; critics call it a back-door attack on grazing, mining, drilling

Cattle graze along a section of the Missouri River in the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument near Fort Benton, Montana. Much federal land in the West is used for grazing. (Photo by Matthew Brown, The Associated Press)

The Biden administration's plan to sell leases of federal land for conservation, just like it does for "oil drilling, livestock grazing and other interests," has drawn "pushback from Republicans and ranchers," reports Matthew Brown of The Associated Press. 

"The proposal is stirring debate over the best use of public land, primarily in the West," Brown writes. "Opponents . . . are blasting it as a backdoor way to exclude mining, energy development and agriculture. Tracy Stone-Manning, director of the Bureau of Land Management, said the proposed changes address rising pressure from climate change and development. She said it would make conservation an 'equal' to grazing, drilling and other uses while not interfering with them."

The bureau, part of the Interior Department, "has a history of industry-friendly policies for the 380,000 square miles it oversees, an area more than twice the size of California," Brown writes. "Those holdings put the agency at the center of arguments over how much development should be allowed." At the first virtual public meeting about the proposal, "There was no opportunity for public comment, and the agency screened questions . . . Officials acknowledged receiving numerous queries about grazing and drilling potentially being excluded. Brian St. George, acting assistant director for the bureau, said the conservation leases would not 'lock up land in perpetuity'."

Stone-Manning said conservation-leased property could still be used for hunting or recreation. "Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada — where the federal land bureau controls about two-thirds of the land — urged the administration to work with ranchers and farmers before finalizing the proposal."

L.A. Times: Counting evaporated water in Colorado R. dibs would be unfair to California; creative management needed

Arizona and Nevada have never used all their shares, the Times says.

The six Colorado River states that are not California came up with an idea to manage the river that was both clever and disingenuous, the Los Angeles Times says in an editorial: "When calculating the amount of water used by each state, include the amount that evaporates in the Lower Basin before it reaches its destination. The Colorado travels farthest to reach California, which uses the most water, so naturally — the argument goes — California should be on the hook for most of the evaporation."

The plan, offered in January, "was a public relations victory, because left unexamined, it sounds almost reasonable. California and the [L.A.] Metropolitan Water District had a different proposal, but the evaporation argument caught them flat-footed," the Times reports, then argues: "Federal regulators should not be swayed. Evaporation was not part of the formula when all seven states entered into the Colorado River Compact in 1922, nor in the subsequent treaties, agreements and court decisions that together form what is known as the Law of the River. It’s a questionable measure even for the long-term recalculation that the states face in 2026. It has no legitimate place in discussions of short-term emergency measures.

"All seven states need a more constructive approach that recognizes not merely the necessity of broad cuts all around, but of creative management of existing supplies. Nevada knew this when it wisely banned thirsty decorative lawns. The other states and their water agencies have likewise adopted smart strategies, none more so than the MWD, which is building a huge water-recycling plant, and which voluntarily banked much of its supply in Lake Mead to keep the reservoir operating."

The editorial concludes, "The Law of the River is complex and the peril of shrinking water supplies is serious. There are many painful decisions to make between now and 2026, debates about whether to restrict what farmers can grow and what developers can build, how to respect the water rights of Indigenous tribes and Mexico (where the river now dries up before it reaches the Gulf of California), whether and how to adjust the West’s first-come, first-served water laws. First, though, the states need a fair and workable survival strategy, and soon. Nature has its own timeline, and it’s short."

Report documents abuse and deaths of Native American children at government boarding schools from 1819 to 1969

The Sherman Indian School Cemetary in Riverside, Calif. (Riverside Press-Enterprise photo by Cindy Yamanaka)

"An initial investigation commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland cataloged some of the brutal conditions that Native American children endured at more than 400 boarding schools that the federal government forced them to attend between 1819 and 1969," Mark Walker reports for The New York Times. "The inquiry was an initial step, Haaland said, toward addressing the 'intergenerational trauma' that the policy left behind. The report, released today, found that more than 500 indigenous children had died at about 19 federal boarding schools, and said that number is expected to grow to thousands."

Haaland called for the report last June after the unmarked graves of nearly a thousand children were discovered at similar boarding schools in Canada. She vowed that Bureau of Indian Affairs officials would search the grounds of former schools in the U.S. and identify any remains.

It's not an abstract issue for Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo member whose grandparents attended such schools. She said, "I came from ancestors who endured the horrors of the Indian boarding school assimilation policies carried out by the same department that I now lead," Axios reports.

The government forcibly took hundreds of thousands of children from their families to attend the schools. "In attempts to assimilate Native American children, the schools gave them English names, cut their hair and forbade them from speaking their languages and practicing their religions or cultural traditions," Walker reports. The government's other major goal with the schools was to claim Native American land by forcing the removal and relocation of their children.

While at the schools, children "suffered whippings, sexual abuse, manual labor and severe malnourishment," Chen reports. "Many children tried to escape but were found, brought back and punished, according to the report. The damage had long-term health effects."

"Haaland also announced plans for a yearlong, cross-country tour called The Road to Healing, during which survivors of the boarding school system could share their stories," Walker reports. The U.S. government has never before provided a forum for boarding-school survivors or their descendants to talk about their experiences at the schools.

Wind generated more electricity than coal or nuclear for first day in U.S. on March 29, amid favorable spring weather

"Winds of March, we welcome you; there is work for you to do . . . " --Unknown author

More wind turbines are being built offshore.
(National Renewable Energy Laboratory photo)

On March 29, wind power was the second-biggest source of power generation in the U.S. for the first time ever, surpassing coal and nuclear power, says the Energy Information Administration. Natural gas remained in the top spot that day, accounting for 31 percent of power generation.

"Wind turbines in the continental U.S. produced 2,017 gigawatthours of electricity on the 29th, according to data from the EIA. While there have been days in the past when wind generation separately outpaced coal and nuclear generation, the 29th marked the first day that it surpassed both power sources," Zack Budryk reports for The Hill. "The milestone comes a little more than two years after nationwide wind capacity outstripped nuclear capacity in September 2019. This did not immediately result in higher wind power output than nuclear, because wind generators are designed to run at lower capacity than nuclear generators."

The ascension was brief, and influenced strongly by seasonal forces: Wind speeds are generally high in the spring and weather is temperate; that means wind power is often at its annual peak just as nuclear and coal reduce output, Budryk reports. EIA does not forecast that wind will pass up coal or nuclear for a full month anytime in the next two years.

Still, the milestone is a harbinger of greater reliance on wind power. "The Biden administration has made increased wind-power installations a central part of its agenda to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by half by the end of the decade," Budryk reports. "The Interior Department has signed off on a number of offshore wind projects, including most recently the first wind power lease off the Carolinas in late March. The Biden administration has set a goal of leasing 30 gigawatts’ worth of offshore wind power."

Interior opens federal land for new drilling but raises fees

"The Interior Department announced on Friday plans to hold its first onshore oil and gas lease sales since President Biden took office," Anna Phillips reports for The Washington Post. "The department said it plans to open roughly 144,000 acres up for lease next week and will charge oil and gas companies higher royalties to drill on federal land, raising the fees for the first time. Under the plans unveiled Friday, royalty rates would increase to 18.75 percent from 12.5 percent for oil and gas lease sales. The long-awaited announcement follows a report the department issued last fall, which called for royalty fees to be more in line with the higher rates charged by most private landowners and major oil- and gas-producing states."

Matthew Brown reports for The Associated Press, "Friday’s announcement comes amid pressure for Biden to expand U.S. crude production as the pandemic and war in Ukraine roil the global economy and fuel prices have spiked. The Democrat faces calls from within his own party to do more to curb emissions from fossil fuels that are driving climate change."

 

The announcement angered climate activists and violates a campaign promise not to allow any more drilling on federal lands. Biden tried to follow through on that promise, and suspended new leasing a week after taking office to give Interior time to create a report on the state of the leasing programs. But a federal judge in Louisiana ordered the administration to resume the sales, Brown reports.

"In opening new land for drilling, while at the same time requiring companies to pay more to drill, Biden appears to be trying to walk a line between trying to both lower gas prices and fight climate change," Coral Davenport reports for The New York Times. "While Biden came into office with the most ambitious climate-change agenda of any president in history, his climate policies have been largely stalled, stymied by inaction in Congress."

Quick hits: $725 million released to clean up old coal mines; National FFA Week is Feb. 19-26

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

The Society of Environmental Journalists is accepting submissions for the SEJ 2022 Awards through March 1. Read more here.

The Interior Department announced the release of nearly $725 million in funding to clean up abandoned coal mines. It's the first tranche of $11.3 billion promised in the infrastructure bill to be disbursed over the next 15 years. Read more here.

The National FFA Organization, called the Future Farmers of America until 1988, will celebrate its seventh annual National FFA Week from Feb. 19-26. Read more here.

A Maine dairy farm's struggles to produce its signature chocolate milk illustrate the complexities of the supply-chain issues facing farmers and others. Read more here.

Unharvested crops dramatically increase the amount of food wasted in agriculture; some farmers are trying to find solutions. Read more here.

Interior declares 'squaw' derogatory word, creates speedier process for renaming federal sites with racist names

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland declared "squaw" a derogatory term for Indigenous women and created a task force to find new names for sites on federal lands that use the word. "The order, which takes effect immediately, stands to affect more than 650 place names that use the term, according to figures from the U.S. Board on Geographic Names," Bill Chappell reports for NPR.

Haaland, a registered member of the Laguna Pueblo, said in a press release that "racist terms have no place in our vernacular or on our federal lands. Our nation's lands and waters should be places to celebrate the outdoors and our shared cultural heritage — not to perpetuate the legacies of oppression."

Haaland created two groups to facilitate name changes, Chappell reports. In a nutshell, the Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names will help identify other derogatory place names, and the Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force will help vet proposed replacement names. Both are required to have Native American representation. The new committees "will accelerate the process by which derogatory names are identified and replaced," Native News Online reports. "Currently, the Board on Geographic Names is structured, by design, to act on a case-by-case basis through a process that puts the onus on the proponents to identify the offensive name and to suggest a replacement. The process to secure review and approvals can be lengthy, often taking years to complete a name change. Currently, there are hundreds of name changes pending before the Board."

The move follows previous Interior moves to remove racist names from federal sites. "In the 1960s and '70s, the agency said, place names containing slurs for Black and Japanese people were replaced on a wholesale level," Chappell reports.

Interior may make make oil, gas companies pay more to drill on federal lands; wouldn't affect home energy costs much

The Interior Department announced plans Friday to make oil and gas companies pay more to drill public lands and waters. The federal leasing program is outdated, fails to serve taxpayers, and worsens climate change, said an18-page report from the department.

"The document calls for increasing the government’s royalty rate — the 12.5 percent of profits fossil-fuel developers must pay to the federal government in exchange for drilling on public lands — to be more in line with the higher rates charged by most private landowners and major oil- and gas-producing states," Sarah Kaplan reports for The Washington Post. "It also makes the case for raising the bond companies must set aside for cleanup before they begin new development." Raising the royalty rate could generate between $1 billion and $2 billion a year annually, and wouldn't significantly impact energy prices for American households.

The report focuses on fiscal rather than environmental benefits of updating the law, but "Interior officials say they will also consider how to incorporate the real-world toll of climate change into the price of permits for new fossil fuel extraction," Kaplan reports. "Economic analyses suggest the changes to royalty and bonding rates will increase revenue, but they will not significantly curb carbon emissions." That's because "Less than 10 percent of oil and gas produced in the United States comes from Interior-controlled land, and cuts to U.S. production will be partly offset by increases in other countries."

Interested parties on both sides of the issue expressed dissatisfaction with the proposal. A representative of the American Petroleum Institute said it would increase the cost of production, Kaplan reports. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Center for Biological Diversity noted that one-third of Americans experienced a disaster driven by climate change this summer, and called for the Biden administration to end drilling on public lands rather than reform it.

The administration is under pressure to deliver on President Biden's campaign promises to protect the environment, especially after the recent United Nations climate agreement. "Even as he has come under criticism for not moving quickly or boldly enough to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, create jobs in a greener economy and alleviate pollution impacting poor and minority communities, Biden has continued to pursue swaths of his climate agenda," Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis and John Muyskens note for the Post. "Less than a year after taking the oath of office, Biden has now targeted half of Donald Trump’s energy and environmental policies." Click here for the Post's frequently updated list of the Biden administration's environmental actions.

Interior Dept. overturns Trump administration reduction of spotted-owl habitat, saying it was based on faulty science

A northern spotted owl pursues a mouse in Deschutes
National Forest in Oregon. (AP photo by Don Ryan)

"Political appointees in the Trump administration relied on faulty science to justify stripping habitat protections for the imperiled northern spotted owl, U.S. wildlife officials said Tuesday as they struck down a rule that would have opened millions of acres of forest in Oregon, Washington and California to potential logging," Matthew Brown and Gillian Flaccus report for The Associated Press. "The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reversed a decision made five days before Trump left office to drastically shrink so-called critical habitat for the spotted owl."

The federal government has protected 9.6 million acres of the owl's habitat—old-growth forests—since 2012, but many have blamed the move for hurting rural logging communities in the West. In August 2020, then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt proposed removing protections for about 2% of the birds' habitat, but "the timber industry said the plan didn't go far enough and called for removal of more than 28%," Brown and Flaccus report.

Northern spotted owl habitat
(American Bird Conservancy)

In January, then-Fish and Wildlife Service Director Aurelia Skipwith "abruptly changed her agency's recommendation and went even further, telling Bernhardt more than one-third of the protected land, or almost 3.5 million acres (1.4 million hectares), should be excluded from protection." She said spotted owls were more threatened by barred owls, and that controlling the predators' numbers would better help. 

Government biologists warned that the changes would trigger the extinction of the species, but Bernhardt and Skipworth dismissed their objections. "Officials said in documents provided to AP that Bernhardt and Skipwith underestimated the threat of extinction and relied on a "faulty interpretation of the science" to reach their decision," Brown and Flaccus report.

However, Bernhardt told the AP in an email that the scientists' "reasonable certainty" of the owls' fate didn't meet the legal threshold for habitat protection. Under the statutory authority established by Congress, the Interior may only protect such areas if a species "will" go extinct, Bernhardt wrote, and suggested that wildlife officials who wish to change that standard should talk to Congress.

Wildlife officials twice delayed the changes after President Biden's inauguration, and the policy was never implemented. But it's one of many Trump administration moves—since struck down—that opened up public lands for drilling, logging and other commercial interests. The administration also tried to weaken protections for the greater sage grouse, declared gray wolves no longer endangered (which may have resulted in overhunting in Wisconsin), and drastically reduced the footprints of two national monuments in Utah that sit atop rich coal seams.

This wasn't the first time Bernhardt undermined government scientists: when he was the deputy secretary, pesticide lobbyists convinced him to block a 2017 FWS study that found that the pesticide chlorypyrifos was so toxic that it threatened the existence of more than 1,200 endangered species.

Biden restores Bears Ears and other national monuments to Obama-declared sizes and protections, reversing Trump

Bears Ears National Monument in Utah (Washington Post photo by Katherine Frey)

"President Biden on Friday restored full protections to three national monuments that had been slashed in size by former president Donald Trump, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah — known for their stunning desert landscapes and historical treasures of Native American art and settlements, as well as a rich fossil record," Joshua Partlow reports for The Washington Post.

Invoking the 1906 Antiquities Act, "Biden used an executive order to protect 1.36 million acres in Bears Ears — slightly larger than the original boundary that President Barack Obama established in 2016 — while also restoring the 1.87 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante monument," Partlow reports. "Biden also reimposed fishing restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument . . . off the coast of New England that Trump had opened to commercial fishing."

President Biden campaigned on restoring protection to the monuments, and in June Interior Secretary Deb Haaland recommended that Biden do so, but conservationists and tribal activists had become frustrated that he hadn't done it yet, Partlow reports.

"Biden’s decision on the monuments, while expected, remains controversial, particularly in Utah. Miners are interested in the area for its stores of uranium and other minerals. Ranchers also use the land for grazing cattle. The area is popular with tourists, RV campers and those who ride off-road vehicles," Partlow reports. "Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) and the state’s congressional delegation have argued that land use rules for the area should be established by legislation, rather than executive order, to avoid regular changes to the boundaries by future presidents."

Bureau of Land Management headquarters will move back to Washington, D.C., but new Colorado office will remain

"The Interior Department will summon the far-flung headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management back to Washington from the mountains of western Colorado, reversing a move by the Trump administration that caused upheaval within the agency and led to nearly 90 percent of the former headquarters staff to retire, quit or leave for other jobs," Joshua Partlow reports for The Washington Post. The Interior Department will retain the Grand Junction office as a "Western headquarters," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said when she announced the decision Friday.

The Trump administration announced the move to Grand Junction and other Western cities in 2018, saying it would save money and put the agency closer to regional stakeholders in the 245 million acres of federal land and energy reserves the bureau oversees in 12 Western states. "But current and former employees have said they believe the intention was to weaken the agency that does environmental assessments and regulates fossil fuel and other energy interests," Partlow notes.

In March 2020 a Government Accountability Office report found the move was based on faulty assumptions with little supporting evidence, and in September 2020 Interior's Office of Inspector General found that top Interior officials misled Congress about the move and overemphasized irrelevant issues in its cost-benefit analysis while ignoring important factors.

By the time the move was completed last year, 87 percent of BLM headquarters staff had quit or retired, leaving more than 80 vacancies. The bureau moved 328 of its 388 headquarters jobs west, but only 41 employees made the transfer, and Haaland noted in July that only three of them relocated.

The Grand Junction office will "remain and grow" and continue to host "important policy functions and senior personnel," according to Haaland. She didn't say how many jobs would be in each place. The agency's director and "key leadership positions" will return to Washington, D.C., she said Friday, but employees who have moved out west won't be required to relocate again, Partlow reports.

Abandoned mine cleanup in Appalachia might be twice as expensive as thought, but little federal money is left to do it

Cleaning up abandoned mine lands in Appalachia might be twice as expensive as previously thought, but there's little federal money available to do it. 

"The federal AML inventory estimates that the cost of cleaning up all abandoned mine land – land that was mined before the passage of the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act in 1977 – is $11 billion," Anya Slepyan reports for The Daily Yonder. "But a new report from the Ohio River Valley Institute shows the cost is more than double what the federal inventory previously claimed: $26 billion."

The 1977 law was the first major federal effort to regulate environmental impacts of coal mining. It "required that coal companies set aside money to pay for the restoration of all land permitted after the law’s implementation. The law also designated any land mined prior to 1977 as abandoned mine land, and set up a fund to reclaim these sites by collecting a small fee on each new ton of coal produced," Slepyan reports. "The AML fund has collected a total of $11.496 billion, of which only $2.23 billion remains." 

The new report shows that's not enough. "According to the report, of the 1.2 million acres designated as abandoned mine land, only 27% has been cleaned up since the 1970s," Slepyan reports. "The cost of reclaiming the remaining 850,000 acres is an estimated $26.3 billion, a price that will only increase if sites are left to degrade for decades more." Unreclaimed mine lands pose a significant environmental and financial threat to local communities, she writes.

Interior nominees would put an environmentalist in charge of public lands, a Native American high up in Indian Affairs

Bryan Newland and Tracy Stone-Manning

On Earth Day last week, the White House announced nominees for major Interior Department positions that underscore administration goals to go greener and put more Native Americans in charge of Native American policy.

Tracy Stone-Manning, a National Wildlife Federation senior adviser for conservation policy, was nominated last week as the Bureau of Land Management director. She is NWF's former associate vice-president for public lands. "If confirmed as land bureau chief, she would preside over all of America’s onshore oil, gas and coal reserves and manage more than 244 million acres of federal public land, mostly in the West," Bobby MaGill reports for Bloomberg. "The potential for her to lead the agency drew skepticism from industry. Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, a trade group representing oil and gas companies operating on land bureau land, said the choice showed environmental activists were running the Interior Department."

Before working at NWF, Stone-Manning was former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock's chief of staff and was an adviser and regional director for Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont, Magill reports.

Former Ojibwe chair Bryan Newland was nominated for assistant interior secretary for Indian affairs. Newland was tribal president of the Bay Mills Indian Community in Michigan and served as a policy adviser for Indian affairs at Interior under former President Barack Obama. He also served as the chief judge of the Bay Mills Tribal Court. "In February the Interior announced Newland's appointment to principal deputy assistant secretary of Indian Affairs," Indian Country Today and the Associated Press report. "The next step is for the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs to confirm Newland. If he is confirmed by the committee, the vote moves to the full Senate."

Biden's jobs plan includes $10 billion for Civilian Climate Corps to preserve public lands and bring rural jobs

President Biden's $2.3 trillion jobs-and-infrastructure plan includes $10 billion for a program to fight climate change, protect public lands, and bring jobs to rural areas. Critics say the job creation might be the most effective result unless more funds are allocated for infrastructure and climate-change goals.

The Civilian Climate Corps is "the Civilian Conservation Corps by another name," Matt Simon writes for Wired. The original was a Depression-era program that put three million disproportionately rural young men to work creating and repairing infrastructure and national parks. Likewise, the new CCC is  meant to "put a new, diverse generation of Americans to work conserving our public lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, and advancing environmental justice . . . while placing good-paying union jobs within reach for more Americans," says a White House fact sheet. 

Congressional Democrats recently introduced a bill authorizing creation of the corps under the Agriculture and Interior departments using existing service programs such as AmeriCorps, Chris D'Angelo reports for HuffPost. A co-sponsor, Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said the program "will keep growing our outdoor economy, which was fueling some of the fastest job growth in rural communities before the onset of the pandemic. The new CCC members can also make vital contributions to restore the health of American landscapes and improve our resilience to climate impacts like more extreme wildfires and floods."

However, some question whether the program will get enough funding to make much impact on infrastructure and climate change. "While $10 billion might seem like a sizable amount, it wouldn’t even be enough to cover fixing crumbling infrastructure on America’s public lands, much less confront the myriad climate impacts across the federal estate," D'Angelo reports. "The National Park Service alone has a $12 billion deferred maintenance backlog."

But the Civilian Conservation Corps was mostly aimed at jobs, and this program may be following in its footsteps. As Simon notes: "The resulting improvements to infrastructure and natural resources were swell, but secondary."

Biden's infrastructure plan includes $16 billion to clean up old oil and gas wells, abandoned mines

"President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion plan to transform America’s infrastructure includes $16 billion to plug old oil and gas wells and clean up abandoned mines, a longtime priority for Western and rural lawmakers from both parties," Matthew Daly reports for The Associated Press. "Many of the old wells and mines are located in rural communities that have been hard-hit by the pandemic. Biden’s plan would not only create jobs, but help reduce methane and brine leaks that pollute the air and groundwater. Methane is a powerful contributor to global warming."

The hundreds of thousands of orphaned wells and abandoned mines cause ongoing environmental damage and pose serious safety hazards to nearby communities. Well and mine operators must post bonds meant to cover clean-up costs, but they're often inadequate. And, perhaps signaling a trend, a judge recently allowed the bankrupt Blackjewel coal mining company to walk away from reclamation costs on some of its abandoned mines. More communities could be left on the hook for cleanup costs if future rulings break that way, making federal investment all the more important.

"The Interior Department has long led efforts to cap orphaned wells — so named because no owner can be found — but does not assess user fees to cover reclamation costs. Bond requirements for well operators, when known, are often inadequate to cover full clean-up costs. Biden’s plan, which needs approval by Congress, would jump-start the well-capping effort and expand it dramatically," Daly reports. "Similarly, the White House plan would exponentially boost an Abandoned Mine Land program run by Interior that uses fees paid by coal mining companies to reclaim coal mines abandoned before 1977. About $8 billion has been disbursed to states for mine-reclamation projects in the past four decades, but Biden’s plan would ramp up spending sharply."

Interior Department to launch Bureau of Indian Affairs unit to investigate missing and murdered Native Americans

"Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the U.S.’s first Indigenous cabinet secretary, will create a unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs to investigate missing and murdered Native Americans, the department announced Thursday evening," Zack Budryk reports for The Hill. "The federal government formed a task force on the issue in 2019 to pursue such cases. Haaland said the new unit will expand on that work and establish a unit chief position to develop policy for the unit. The unit will review unsolved cases and work with tribal, BIA and FBI investigators on active cases as well, according to the department."

Native American and Alaska Natives are at a far higher risk of violence than average. "There are some 1,500 American Indian and Alaska natives in the National Crime Information Center’s database of missing persons, while about 2,700 murders and nonnegligent homicides have been reported to the federal Uniform Crime Reporting program," Budryk reports. "Native American women in particular are the victims of murder at over 10 times the national average, according to the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women. Homicides are the No. 3 cause of death for American Indian and Alaska Native girls and women ages 10 to 24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

The issue has been well known for years, but efforts to address it have been piecemeal. South Dakota recently established an office to investigate missing and murdered indigenous persons, and a six-state federal pilot program unveiled in December aims to help federal, state and tribal agencies better coordinate such investigations. It's unclear how the newly announced unit will affect the pilot project.