On Jan 20., 2025, President Trump issued an executive order that could profoundly affect public lands. “Unleashing American Energy” mandated that the government explore energy production on federal land to achieve American energy independence.
A few months later, he issued another order. “Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production” directed the Department of the Interior (DOI) to prioritize energy and mineral production on federal lands.
Since those orders, the federal government has sought to economically develop national monuments, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas, sparking backlash. A recent report from The Wilderness Society (TWS), a conservation nonprofit, identified the landscapes most likely to undergo development.
The commercialization of some of these areas, like Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, has become a national debate, while others, like the Ruby Mountains, have remained more local issues. As arguments over resource extraction on public lands go on, these are 10 debates to follow.
Alaska: National Arctic Wildlife Refuge
In March 2025, the DOI announced that the entirety of this 1.56-million-acre wildlife refuge would be open to oil and gas leases. It also opened 82% of the National Petroleum Reserve’s 23 million acres to drilling. The Wilderness Society objected to these moves on several counts.
“These places sustain wildlife and Indigenous cultures, and they are among the last truly wild public lands in America,” it said in its report. Important wildlife here includes polar bears, migratory birds, and large caribou herds.
While proponents of drilling here see it as a necessary step toward protecting national security, opponents worry about potential environmental impacts. “Drilling in the Arctic is risky, with the potential for chronic spills of oil and other toxic substances onto the fragile tundra. Development would forever scar this unspoiled landscape, fragmenting vital habitat and harming its wildlife,” TWS said.
The Arctic Defense Campaign, a group of Indigenous Alaskans, conservationists, and other residents, is pushing back against development with the Arctic Refuge Protection Act. This law would permanently protect the state’s Coastal Plain from drilling. Since being referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources in April 2025, there has been no movement on the bill.
Recent news: Expanding oil leasing in Alaska so far has been a mixed bag. The Bureau of Land Management said in a press release that sales in March in the National Petroleum Reserve generated $163 million. And yet, in the same month, the BLM received zero bids for oil and gas leases in Cook Inlet.
Arizona: Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument and Ironwood Forest National Monument
Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, a 917,000-acre area near the Grand Canyon, became a National Monument in 2023. It is an important site to 13 different Native American Tribes, and is home to over 2,000 cultural resources, including petroglyphs and pictographs.
The land is also a major potential source for uranium, a rare and valuable commodity. When President Biden designated the land a national monument, he made the existing 20-year ban on uranium mining, instituted in 2012, permanent.
In September 2025, Congressman Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) introduced the Northern Arizona Protection Act, which would nullify the land’s national monument status and thus allow mining. Gosar saw Biden’s declaration as a radical land grab. “Federal lands belong to the American people, not unelected bureaucrats or woke presidents who abuse executive authority to shut them off from productive use,” Gosar said in a press release.
Since its introduction, the bill has remained with the House Committee on Natural Resources.
Groups like the National Parks Conservation Association slammed the bill, criticizing the disregard for Indigenous communities. There’s also concern over how uranium mining would affect the region’s water sources.
“Protecting the areas around the Grand Canyon from uranium mining and other mineral extraction is protecting Arizona’s ground water and the Colorado River against irreversible contamination, protections long-fought for by our Tribes,” Dana Orozco, federal organizer for Chispa Arizona, said in a press release.
Many of the same issues and people from Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni also appear in the debate over Ironwood Forest National Monument. Since President Clinton designated this 129,000-acre parcel of the Sonoran Desert as a monument in 1990, there have been questions about its economic future, with some seeking to mine for gold and copper here.
Gosar also introduced another bill, the Southern Arizona Protection Act, to nullify the land’s protected status and allow mining.
Recent news: Republicans in the Arizona House of Representatives recently introduced a bill that would require new national monuments in the state to get approval from Congress and the state legislature. The bill would have no legislative power, but rather serves as a rebuke of the current designation process.
Utah: Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument
When it comes to national monuments in 2026 to keep an eye on, this one might be at the top of the list. It’s been controversial ever since President Clinton created it in 1996.
In 2017, President Trump sparked major debate when he shrank Grand Staircase by nearly 50%, reducing its size to just 1 million acres. Then in 2021, Biden restored Grand Staircase to its former size, a decision that courts upheld in a 2023 ruling.
In 2025, the BLM adopted a resource management plan (RMP) for Grand Staircase. An RMP is an expansive document that guides the use, zoning, and permitting of an area.
On Jan. 15, 2026, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) judged that the RMP counts as a rule under the Congressional Review Act (CRA). Putting something under the CRA means that Congress can endorse or reject a federal agency’s actions.
Then, Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Celeste Maloy, both Republicans from Utah, introduced a joint resolution of disapproval. If it passes, it would nullify the 2025 RMP, making it so that “no substantially similar plan can” be adopted, and instead restore the 2020 RMP, in turn allowing for more development.
Colorado: Western Colorado Canyons and Mesas
2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill mandated that quarterly land lease auctions be held in several states, including on 72,000 acres in Colorado. The law also reduced the federal royalty rate on leases, making investment cheaper for companies.
These parts of Colorado have potential for oil and natural gas, but they’re also home to one of the most important water sources in the West: the Colorado River.
The BLM’s 2024 Resource Management Plan (RMP) limited leasing in low- or medium-production areas, but pro-development representatives in Congress could use the same strategy here as they are with Grand Staircase–Escalante to toss the plan out.
The TWS says that these efforts would undo years of effort and engagement with local stakeholders. “Recent use of the Congressional Review Act to overturn land‑use plans that were adopted with extensive public input has created a precedent that undermines communities’ ability to shape how their public lands are managed. It also threatens future conservation and introduces legal uncertainty across millions of acres in Western Colorado and across the West,” it said.
Recent news: From March 13 to April 13, the BLM is accepting public comment on the potential leasing of 17,250 acres in Colorado in September. A parcel of 160,000 acres is scheduled for a leasing sale in June.
Minnesota: Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW)
Of all of the areas on this list, the Boundary Waters has gotten the most public attention. The BWCAW is a 1.1-million-acre area of land in northern Minnesota, close to Voyageurs National Park. It is located within the larger 3-million-acre Superior National Forest.
Twin Metals, owned by a Chilean mining company, had been pushing to open a copper mine in the Superior National Forest on the fringe of the BWCAW.
In January, the House of Representatives passed a bill to reverse a 20-year ban on mining in the area, instituted under the Biden administration. If passed, the bill would open about one-quarter of the Boundary Waters to mining.
Supporters, including Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.), saw the mining ban as a lost economic opportunity. “The Biden Administration’s decision to enact its illegal mining ban in Northern Minnesota was not only an attack on our way of life and cost countless good-paying, union jobs, but it also put our nation’s mineral security at risk,” he said in a press release
Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, a local nonprofit, strongly condemned the action on Facebook. “They voted to put the most polluting industry in America at the edge of our cleanest water. They voted to disregard protections for a national treasure.”
Recent news: Since the bill was received in the Senate in January, there has been no movement. With other pressing issues, including the current partial government shutdown, it appears unlikely to receive a vote in the immediate future.
Nevada: Ruby Mountains
The Ruby Mountains, a series of peaks reaching up to 11,000 feet, are a major hub of outdoor recreation in Nevada. Most of the range falls within the Humboldt–Toiyabe National Forest, and, under the Biden administration, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) took steps to protect this area. In December 2024, it proposed a 20-year ban on oil, gas, and geothermal development on 264,000 acres.
Then, in April 2025, the USFS canceled the proposal, reopening the land for possible resource extraction. In response, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) introduced the Ruby Mountains Protection Act, which would make this potential ban law.
“The natural beauty of the Ruby Mountains, Nevada’s Swiss Alps, is beloved by locals and draws tourists from across the country,” Senator Cortez Masto said in a press release. “Unproductive oil and gas drilling would only harm Northern Nevada’s tourism economy and keep this natural treasure from generations of future Nevadans.”
Recent news: The Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests, and Mining held hearings on the Bill in February 2026.
Utah: Bears Ears National Monument
In a major example of just how mutable public lands policy can be, Bears Ears National Monument has experienced several pendulum swings in the last decade. President Obama declared it a national monument in December 2016. Less than a year later, President Trump slashed the size by 85%, reducing it from 1.35 million acres to just over 201,000, opening up the land to uranium mining and oil and gas projects.
In 2021, President Biden restored the area to its former size. Then in 2025, DOI Secretary Doug Burgum issued Secretarial Order 3418, entitled “Unleashing American Energy.” It directed the agency to review all withdrawn federal land and critical habitat designations, and canceled leases with the stated goal of increasing energy supply. The order “directs the removal of impediments imposed on the development and use of our Nation’s abundant energy and natural resources by the Biden administration’s burdensome regulations.”
The area is important to several Native American tribes, who worked with the BLM to create a cooperative management plan that was approved in 2025.
“Rollbacks of protections for Bears Ears would undermine Tribal Nation priorities and interests, jeopardize irreplaceable cultural and ecological resources and strip communities of their freedom to shape the future of their homelands,” the NWS said.
Recent news: Reporting from Aspen Public Radio indicates that Utah lawmakers are considering using the same Congressional Review Act tactic here that they are with Grand Staircase, should it prove successful.
New Mexico: Chaco Culture National Historical Park
Located in Northwest New Mexico, Chaco Canyon is sacred to many Native American peoples, including the Hopi and Pueblo. It contains thousands of archaeological and historic sites.
In 2023, the DOI removed 336,000 acres in this area from mineral leasing laws and banned new oil and gas leasing within a 10-mile radius of the park. The current DOI has not reversed this policy yet, but as with Bears Ears, all of these withdrawals are under review by the Secretary. Burgum. There is a long history of mining here, with over 37,000 drilled wells.
In 2025, the DOI sent a letter to several Pueblo Nations inviting them to participate in a 14-day comment period about possibly reversing the 2023 order. “The Secretary of the Interior is proposing to revoke PLO No. 7923 and reopen the subject lands to location and entry under the U.S. mining laws and to mineral leasing,” the letter read.
Wyoming: Northern Red Desert and Big Sandy Foothills
This 3.6-million-acre parcel in Wyoming is a major habitat for rare species like the burrowing owl and sage grouse. If you’re a backpacker with big thru-hiking goals, you might have heard of or hiked through this land. Sections of the Continental Divide Trail and Oregon, California, and Mormon Pioneer trails pass through here.
As with several other areas on the list, the debate centers on the resource management plan. In 2024, after a great deal of public engagement, the BLM approved an RMP. Then, in October 2025, the BLM announced its intent to revise the plan.
The announcement specifically mentioned changing attitudes toward resource extraction. “Potential for fluid mineral development was previously determined to be low for much of the special management-designated areas; however, new technologies and industry interest have changed over recent years, and the reasonably foreseeable development needs to be reevaluated. Additionally, locatable, coal, solid leasables, and saleable mineral availability needs to be reviewed in consideration of recent Executive Orders,” it said.
RMPs take years to devise, and the TWS criticized the agency’s attempt to modify it. “The BLM reopened the widely celebrated resource management plan for the region, raising concerns that the agency’s new leadership will scrap years’ worth of careful planning and public input to produce a new plan that offers far fewer protections for important wildlife habitat and recreation areas,” it said.
GearJunkie reached out to the BLM for comment on the report from The Wilderness Society, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
