We have cute bears in the Smokies. Deep black fur, chocolate-brown eyes, couple hundred pounds…giant teddy bears that look adorable from a safe distance.

Then one day I was running solo through Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I’d seen bears before, mostly from the saddle of my gravel bike, 100 yards away. But this time the bear was large, like a refrigerator on four paws, and just 30 feet off. I was alone, deep in the backcountry, and spooked it as I ran around a blind corner. The bear looked up, a sinister presence.

I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do. Should I look at my feet or stare back or run like hell?

Fortunately, the bear was absorbed in scratching at the ground near a tree, and after a glance my way went about its business. I sidestepped off the trail, giving the massive beast a 200-foot berth while keeping my eyes on it. A hundred yards later I crept back on the trail, and we both went our separate ways. That’s how most wildlife encounters go.

“People think they’re monsters that are bloodthirsty [and] want to attack humans,” says Jeremy Breitenstein, a wildlife photographer who’s been taking pictures of bears in the lower 48 and Alaska for several years. “But it’s just another wild animal that survives off vegetation. As long as you go into their territory prepared, you’ll be OK.”

Breitenstein did have a bad encounter with a grizzly in Alaska that tore into his tent. He didn’t have food with him, but neither had he erected a portable electric fence, as is standard procedure in Alaska’s backcountry, to protect himself. “It was my error,” he says. “The bear was just curious. I talked to it calmly in a loud voice, and it backed away. Yes, accidents happen. Bears can be dangerous. But they’re more scared of us than we should be of them.”

Bears are just one member of the animal kingdom you want to be prepared to see when you’re spending time in our national parks, which protect the most dramatic landscapes—and the most abundant, diverse, and dangerous animals—in North America. This country’s park system boasts giant reptiles in the south, big grizzlies up north, and stealthy cats in between.

These are nine of the most dangerous animals in our national parks and the best ways to stay safe while visiting their homes. These animals are amazing, and we need to respect them. When we work to keep ourselves safe, we’re actually keeping the wildlife safe too, because when humans screw up, it’s the animals that ultimately suffer.

Alligators and Crocodiles

Found: in Everglades National Park, coastal park units in Georgia and South Carolina, and throughout Gulf Coast states.

After appearing on the endangered-species list as recently as the 1980s, alligators have bounded back, and are now more than a million strong in Florida alone. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission notes that there have been 442 unprovoked attacks, including two dozen deaths, between 1948 and 2021. In the last decade, there have been an average of 10 alligator attacks a year, but according to the only 4 percent are fatal.

Still, their size is intimidating—adults can be 12 feet long and 500 pounds—and their jaws are loaded with 80 teeth, able to bite down with awesome force. And they look like dinosaurs. So yeah, terrifying.

But your chances of survival are good if you run into an alligator in Everglades National Park, where an estimated 200,000 are living and hunting in the rivers and wetlands. In fact, a couple of recent survival stories from the Everglades serve as cautionary yet encouraging tales.

In the fall of 2022, a man survived three days in the swamp after losing his arm to an alligator in Lake Manatee, north of the park. In 2020, a college student was bitten by an alligator near the Pahayokee Trail inside Everglades Park after swimming in a stagnant swamp with thick vegetation—prime gator habitat. She escaped with two puncture wounds and took herself to the hospital.

Staying safe in gator country is pretty straightforward, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Don’t feed them and don’t swim in alligator habitat. The animals prefer slow-moving rivers and still swamps and ponds, preying on fish, frogs, and small animals. They typically feed at night, but are active during the day as well.�� If you’re on land and a gator charges you, run as fast as you can. If you’re bitten, fight back, aiming for the gator’s eyes. If that fails, try to jam an object down its throat to induce a gag reflex.

In the Everglades, you also have the potential to run into an American crocodile, a saltwater-living species that can be found in the park’s coastal waters. Crocodiles and alligators look similar (the croc snout is more pointed than a gator’s) and behave similarly. There are far fewer crocs than gators—the park only has an estimated 2,000 of them)—but the Everglades is the only place in America where you’ll find both species. Safety wise, the advice is the same: don’t feed them, don’t swim in their habitat, and if one charges you, run like hell.��

Mountain Lions

Found: in national parks from California to Texas, essentially all those in the American West, including Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado; North Cascades National Park, Mount Rainier National Park, and Olympic National Park, Washington; Lassen Volcanic National Park, Sequoia National Park, and Yosemite National Park, California; Yellowstone National Park, in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho; and Everglades National Park, Florida.

Panther, cougar, mountain lions…these are all different names for the same beautiful, big cat that mainly prowls the mountains and deserts of the Western U.S. There was a time when mountain lions roamed every state, but after overzealous hunting and habitat loss, they’re relegated to 14 western states and a small population in Florida. Still they enjoy an almost mythical “boogeyman” status.

“I think big cats get to something deep down in our ape DNA, triggering an instinctual fear response,” says Josh Rosenau, conservation associate with the Mountain Lion Foundation.

Tales of mountain lion encounters haunt our national park system, from the 10-year-old boy who was killed in Rocky Mountain National Park in 1997 to the trail runner who was attacked in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in September 2022.

Still, there have only been 24 human fatalities from lions in the last 100 years, far fewer than the majority of other animals on this list.

“These cats are so elusive, and try so hard to avoid people, that a hiker would be lucky to even see a single mountain lion once in their entire life, let alone have a scary encounter,” Rosenau says.

When attacks occur, he adds, it’s usually because a hiker surprises a cat that’s hiding close to a trail. The best avoidance is to hike in groups, and try to keep your dogs and children close to the group if possible. Most of all, talk to each other while you hike. “Human voices are an effective deterrent,” Rosenau says. “One researcher even found that playing talk radio near livestock kept cats away.” (Read a story about someone who found success with Metallica to deter a mountain lion.)

If you encounter a mountain lion in the wild, don’t run. That just triggers their chase gene. Instead, stand tall, maintain eye contact, and let the animal know you’re willing to defend yourself. Make yourself big, wave your hands, and make noise.

“On the rare occasion that a mountain lion attacks, you usually only have to scream at it,” Rosenau says, “and it flees.”

Great White and Tiger Sharks

Great Whites found: in Channel Islands National Park, Point Reyes National Park…basically any park in California that touches the Pacific, also Cape Cod National Seashore, and Acadia National Park

Tiger Sharks Found: in Biscayne National Park, Dry Tortugas National Park, and in the waters surrounding Hawaii’s national parks.

Last winter, a swimmer was snorkeling off the coast of Dry Tortugas National Park, a cluster of protected islands south of the Florida Keys, when a six-foot lemon shark attacked, biting her left foot. The shark tugged at her leg and she reacted immediately, kicking at its face with her good leg, then punching it in the face with her fists until she broke free and swam to shore. This is the way most shark attacks go, according to Gavin Naylor, director of the International Shark Attack Report, which gathers and studies incidents from all over the world.

“Most shark attacks are quick. A shark bites an ankle or arm, doesn’t like what it’s bitten, and moves on,” Naylor says, adding that statistically speaking, you’re most likely to be bitten by a requiem shark, a classification that include blacktip and lemon sharks—both of which are commonly found near beaches. But great-white and tiger-shark bites are more likely to be fatal, simply because of the size of the animals.

“Tiger sharks are huge, like 1,000 pounds, so a bite can remove a limb,” Taylor says. “They also tend to stick around after a bite, circling.”

As for white sharks, they’re often twice as big. “They’re so explosive, coming up from below,” he says. “It’s unlikely you could be stitched up after a white shark attack.”

In terms of the ratio of fatality per attack, the white shark is the king, according to multiple sources.

White sharks are fond of cold waters and can be found off the coast of California and New England, though they’ve been recorded in the warmer waters around Florida, too. Tiger sharks stick to warmer temps and are common around Hawaii and Florida. Safety measures are mostly common sense—don’t swim alone, try not to swim at twilight hours, avoid water where people are actively fishing, and don’t swim with an open wound.

Taylor insists that shark attacks be put in context. There were only 57 attacks confirmed worldwide last year; Florida had the most, with 16 attacks in 2022, mainly because of an abundance of opportunity.

“Florida has a lot of beaches, with a lot of tourists, and it’s warm all year,” Naylor says. “But sharks aren’t dangerous at all, really. You’re between 100 and 200 times more likely to drown than be bitten by a shark.”

Grizzly Bears, aka Brown Bears

Found: throughout Alaska including in Katmai National Park, Kenai Fjords National Park, Glacier Bay National Park, Denali National Park, Kobuk Valley National Park, Wrangell-St. Elias, and Lake Clark National Park; in the lower 48, Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park have populations.

Alaska’s Katmai National Park is ground zero for brown bears. The park was actually established in 1918 to protect the species and now boasts 2,000 of them, the largest population in the United States. Katmai is also home to the very popular Brooks Falls webcam, where you can watch grizzlies fishing for salmon from the comfort of your home.

Alaska is the only state that supports all three species of bear, and it sees the most bear attacks in the U.S. Probably the most famous happened in Katmai National Park, when Timothy Treadwell, a filmmaker who made a name for himself by interacting with the species in uncomfortable ways, and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were attacked and killed while sleeping in a tent in 2003.

In the lower 48, Yellowstone has its own population, with an estimated 150 brown bears living inside its borders. According to Yellowstone’s , only 44 people have been injured inside the park out of 118 million visits since 1979. The park says venturing into the backcountry increases your risk of grizzly attack, with 1 in 232,613 backcountry hikers attacked as opposed to 1 in 59.5 million visitors in the front-country developed areas.

Since 1872, when the park was established, only eight people have been killed by grizzlies inside the park. Compare that to the park’s 125 drowning victims, 23 deaths from falling into hot springs, or seven killed by falling trees. The last death inside the park was in August 2015 when a solo day hiker was killed by an adult female grizzly with two cubs near Elephant Back Loop Trail.

In July 2021, a 65-year-old cyclist, Leah Lokan, was killed by a grizzly while camping in the small town of Ovando, Montana, near Flathead National Forest. While Lokan was an experienced outdoors person and armed herself with bear spray and removed the most obvious sources of food smell from her tent, something can be learned from the accident (which did not occur in a national park). She was awakened early in the morning by a 400-pound grizzly sniffing around her tent. She yelled, “Bear!” to warn two other cyclists who were also camping, and the grizzly fled.

Lokan removed food from her tent and re-entered it. The bear returned an hour later, killing her. According to a of the incident by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, bags that once contained dried blueberries were found inside the tent and retained some aroma, and food had been left inside saddlebags on her bike, which was roughly 10 feet away. Wildlife officials determined the bear had developed a “predatory instinct” that was likely triggered by the food in the bike bags as well as the lingering smell of food cooked at a picnic during the day. The main mistake, according to wildlife officials, was returning to the tent after the first bear encounter.

The National Park Service recommends a handful of clear practices to stay safe in bear country. One is never to hike alone. Instead, hike in groups of three or more, and talk during your hike. That alone gives you the best chance of avoiding a grizzly encounter in the wild. Carry bear spray, never leave your pack unattended (bears that find human food in packs can get habituated to it and become problem bears in the future), and stay on maintained trails.

Research in Yellowstone suggests people are more likely to encounter bears when off-trail. But the golden rule of traveling in bear country is to store food, and anything that smells like food, away from your tent. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, you should cook and store food at least 100 yards from your tent if possible.

“We want to prevent bears from associating humans as a food source, so food storage while hiking and camping is very important,” says Leslie Skora, a wildlife biologist with Katmai National Park, in an email. “It’s a good idea to store all scented items in a bear-resistant container while camping. Other precautions while camping are to keep a separate cooking area away from the sleeping area. Electric fences are another option to help deter bears from investigating camps.”

Mojave Rattlesnakes

Found: in national parks in California; Death Valley, Nevada; Big Bend National Park, Texas; Grand Canyon and Saguaro national parks, Arizona; and Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and other New Mexico parks.

We have a lot of rattlesnakes in North America. There are more than 20 different�� species found in so many states across the country, it’s easier to list those that have none: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and Rhode Island, though they are rare and endangered in a number of others.

While the Mojave rattler is found in the parks many western national parks parks, other rattlesnake species are found in parks including Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, Everglades, Badlands, Theodore Roosevelt, Yellowstone (but not Glacier), Great Basin, Zion, and Rocky Mountain.

The variety of rattlesnakes in the U.S. is vast, from the Eastern Diamondback, which loves the long pine forests of the Southeast and can be found in parks throughout the region, from the Everglades to Cumberland Island National Seashore, to the sidewinder, found in the deserts of the Southwest. Rattlers look to be one of the few species poised to handle our changing climate. According to a recent by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and the University of Michigan, the seven species of rattlesnakes found in California are set to experience population growth thanks to climate change; the warmer climate will make it easier for the snakes to reach optimal internal temperatures for eating and reproducing, and to stay active through more of the year. Awesome.

Given the numbers of rattlers in the wild, encounters are inevitable (read about one here). According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, roughly 8,000 people are bitten by venomous snakes (including rattlers) annually, with 10 to 15 deaths per year.

In 2020, were recorded in Yosemite National Park within the span of three days, and both required helicopter evacuations. The most dramatic involved a backpacker who was bitten while fishing barefoot in the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River. The man and his wife tried hiking out together, but he was unable. She pinned his location on her phone and hiked through most of the night until she found another backpacker, who had a satellite device and called for a rescue. The bite victim was helicoptered to a nearby hospital, given two doses of antivenom, and discharged.

Fortunately for that backpacker, Yosemite is home to only one kind of rattlesnake, the Northern Pacific rattler, a relatively mild species, especially compared to the Mojave rattlesnake, which is considered the most deadly snake in North America, with venom as toxic as a cobra’s. A bite from a Mojave rattlesnake can cause breathing problems, blurred vision, weakness, and even cardiac arrest.

“They’re 10 times more venomous than any other rattlesnake,” says Jason Wallace, program director for the Desert Studies Center, just outside of the Mojave National Preserve, San Bernardino County, California, which has a thriving population of Mojave rattlers. “It actually has two types of venom; one messes with your nervous system and respiratory system, and the other destroys tissue cells.”

There are legends about aggressive Mojave rattlesnakes, with stories of people being chased by them, but Wallace calls that folklore. “They’ll get aggressive if you corner them, but they don’t want to mess with you. Usually, you won’t even see them because they’re nocturnal, and they hide when they feel the vibrations from your feet.”

To avoid a rattlesnake, try to be aware of your surroundings. Wear thick hiking boots and long pants and watch where you put your hands and feet. Use trekking poles and always zip tents up. If you are bitten, stay calm and forget everything you’ve ever heard about snake bites. Do not apply a tourniquet, do not try to suck the venom out, and don’t bother with a rattlesnake kit. “It’s a fun souvenir, but worthless,” Wallace says.

Instead, call for help from the site if you can. Getting a picture of the snake will help the doctors determine the course of action. Walk calmly toward your car if it’s nearby. Wash the site with soap and water if possible and remove any jewelry, because your extremities are likely to swell. The key, according to Wallace, is not to panic. “Freaking out moves the venom through your system faster. Keep in mind that getting bit by a rattlesnake is not a death sentence. There’s antivenom out there.”

Polar Bears

Found: in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Polar bears have also been known to roam into the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and Cape Krusenstern National Monument.

Polar bears thrive in the frigid, wet conditions that most humans avoid, living in the coldest coastal parts of Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia, and the United States. They’re great swimmers, clocking sustained speeds of 6 miles per hour in the water, and spend most of their time hanging out on ice sheets hunting for seals.

Polar-bear attacks on humans are rare: according to between 1870 and 2014 there were 73 confirmed polar-bear attacks on people. That’s a low number, but attacks seem to be increasing in frequency, according to research performed by Polar Bears International. Scientists believe it might be the result of climate change and melting sea ice, forcing bears beyond their typical territory in search of food.

This past January saw the first reported human death by a polar bear in 30 years, when one charged through a small village on the tip of the Seward Peninsula in western Alaska and killed a woman and her child.

The polar bear is the top predator in the arctic, weighing in at 2,000 pounds, with 42 razor-sharp teeth and a top land speed of 25 miles per hour. Michael Wald, owner of a guide service leading trips through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, told us in an email that the best defense is avoidance. “We almost never see them on our guided camping trips and work to make sure we are not in areas where they are likely to be,” he wrote. “In particular, we avoid camping on the Arctic Coast in August, when there tend to be lots of polar bears” hunting seals, in preparation for winter.

Still, Wald likes seeing polar bears in the wild as much as anyone. “They are beautiful animals and their power is evident. Even seeing polar-bear tracks is thrilling.”

While avoidance is the best tactic, if you are traveling along the coast of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, the recommends developing a safety plan that includes 24-hour bear monitoring (continually scoping your intended terrain), and carrying bear-resistant storage containers, binoculars, pepper spray, noise makers, and electric fences. Camp at least a mile inland to reduce potential for contact. Travel in groups, have a designated bear spotter, and have specific plans for encountering bears at different distances. Sleeping in shifts is a good idea, too.

“If you understand and respect bears, you can avoid most problems with them,” Wald says. “Don’t invade their space and surprise them, and don’t give them a reason to be curious about you or your camp. Peaceful coexistence is achievable.”

If you don’t run. Pull your bear spray out, remove the safety clip, and be patient. If the animal is unaware of you, wait until it’s safe to move. If the bear approaches you, defend yourself using your bear deterrent as soon as it’s in range (within 25 feet). If that fails, fight back, aiming your fists at the bear’s nose.

Box Jellyfish

Found: off the coast of Hawaii’s National Parks and occasionally the U.S. Virgin Islands National Park.

Getting stung by a jellyfish sucks. The burning sensation is immediate. Your friend offers to pee on your leg to make it better. This is a myth: urine may exacerbate the stinging.

But getting stung by a box jellyfish, as can happen in Hawaii’s parks and the U.S. Virgin Islands, is far worse. This particular species is different from other jellyfish in that they have eyes and can actively swim instead of floating with the currents. They also have tentacles up to nine feet long, which are covered with tiny poisonous darts that can cause paralysis and cardiac arrest in victims. In fact, the box jellyfish is the most venomous marine animal on the planet.

Scientists can’t agree on the exact mechanism that causes the cardiac arrest, but the venom targets the nervous system, red-blood cells, and ultimately the heart. Still, deaths from box jellyfish are rare—only 79 have been reported since the late 1800s, when scientists began keeping records. Children are at the highest risk.

Fortunately, avoiding box jellyfish is pretty straightforward. They tend to appear close to Hawaii’s coastline 10 days after a full moon each month, and safety officials issue regular public warnings. Stay out of the water during these times and you should be fine. If you do get stung by a box jelly and are having a severe reaction, go immediately to the emergency room. Treatment could include CPR and antivenom. Milder stings can be soaked in warm water to ease the pain.

Black Bears

Found: in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina and Tennessee; Shenandoah National Park, Virginia; Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho; Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming; Glacier National Park, Montana; Mount Rainier National Park, Washington; Big Bend National Park, Texas; Denali National Park, Alaska; Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado; Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota; Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Redwood National Park, and Yosemite, California. There are a few in Acadia, Maine. Really, they are in just about every mountainous park with trees.

Grizzly bears might be the scariest species of bear in the lower 48, but you’re more likely to encounter a black bear, because they are so prevalent. An estimated 750,000 black bears live in the forests of 32 states, stretching from Florida into Canada, and coast to coast. An estimated 1,900 bears live in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which works out to two bears per square mile.

Black bears are no pushovers. They can grow up to six feet long, and weigh between 200 and 600 pounds. There were 48 fatal bear attacks in North America between 2000 and 2017, and black bears were responsible for 25. They eat whatever they can find, mostly berries and nuts, but will chow down on insects and small animals, too. They have a keen sense of smell, can climb trees, and are easily addicted to cocaine (just ).

Bear encounters are rare inside the parks, usually non-fatal, and occasionally comedic. In 2019, a bear was caught on camera sitting in a hot tub on a cabin’s porch in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on the Great Smoky Mountains park border.

But in a serious encounter last June, a family of five was camping in Elkmont Campground, when a bear tore into their tent at 5 A.M., attacking a three-year-old girl and her mother. The bear was large—around 350 pounds—which park biologists believe suggests it had regular access to non-natural food sources. Rangers think the bear was attracted to food smells in the campground, particularly dog food left out at the site.

The father was able to scare the bear from the tent, and the victims suffered superficial lacerations to their heads. Rangers closed the campground, set traps, and the area. A male bear was captured and euthanized, which leads us back to what I said earlier on: most of the time human-wildlife encounters end up worse for the animal.

The number-one rule with black bears: don’t feed them. A subset of that rule is to secure your food if you’re camping in bear country. That means storing all your food and anything that smells like food in your car if you’re in the frontcountry, and using a bear-proof container in the backcountry. Black bears have the best sense of smell of any land animal in the U.S., so that toothpaste container or half-eaten protein bar in your pack, tucked into the corner of your tent, smells delicious.

If you on the trail, keep your distance. Black bears mostly attack when feeling defensive. If the bear charges, stand your ground. Do not run, as bears love a chase and are faster than you. Make yourself big and loud. Throw rocks if the bear persists. When the bear is within 20 yards, discharge your bear spray. If that doesn’t work, and the bear attacks, fight back. Aim for the nose, and punch like crazy.

Graham Averill is ���ܳٲ������’s national park’s columnist. He’s typically too loud a hiker to encounter wildlife on the trail, but does see quite a few black bears while biking gravel roads in Pisgah National Forest near the Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina. His healthy fear of sharks would keep him out of the ocean if he didn’t love surfing so much.��

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Recently, a few friends and I stood around a patio for a makeshift holiday party. We were outside and socially distancing again, and one friend had their new baby with them. Perhaps because there was a tiny human present, with her whole life in front of her, we got to talking about the future and how so many of the scary things we imagined about what climate change would look like became reality��in 2021.

From last January’s crippling freezes in Texas to last week’s , it feels like we’ve been hit with one disaster after another. And the systems that need to change to ensure our future viability have been too slow to respond. But as the new year commences, there are some opportunities to make real progress. Here’s where the climate and environment stand now, including the problems we most urgently need to address and the things already moving in the right direction.

The Bad:

Species Are in Decline

In September, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed 23 species from the endangered-species list and declared them . That came on the heels of a June ��announcing that human-caused climate change was making the biodiversity crisis worse. We’ve seen the decline of specific species, like the Florida manatees, which lost of their population to starvation in 2021 because they couldn’t find enough seagrass. We’ve also had to reckon with this sobering fact: a full 25 percent of what exists on earth, are at risk of extinction. And, as the UN report says, “Biodiversity loss and climate change are both driven by human economic activities and mutually reinforce each other. Neither will be successfully resolved unless both are tackled together.”

Natural Disasters Have Been Getting More Frequent and Intense

Every corner of the country has been hammered by unusually brutal weather events, which scientists say are exacerbated by . June heat domes in the Northwest killed hundreds, and August hurricanes in the Southeast flattened whole towns. ��touched down from Arkansas to Kentucky in December, and a California wildfire season that kicked off last January raged all year long. In of these natural disasters, we lost at least 500 people and endured more than $18 billion in damages. Weather and climate aren’t the , but the unusual number and force of these��deadly weather events indicate��the effects of a warming climate—and how much worse things could get in the future.

Our Energy Infrastructure Is More Vulnerable than Ever

Remember when the Texas electricity grid was clobbered by a winter storm��in February that cut off power to millions of residents? Well, Texans are today. And the other major grid systems (the U.S.��) are struggling to protect themselves against current ��and prepare for future storms.

We’ve also seen that our grids are not prepared for a range of crucial new renewable sources. While now encourage renewable energy, we don’t yet have the infrastructure to support��it. We need more that can link to solar and wind power, and we need to find ways to integrate small-scale renewables .

Fossil-Fuel Extraction Is Alive and Well

We know that rapidly retreating from fossil fuels is key to avoiding drastically rising temperatures, but drilling and leasing reform isn’t progressing very quickly on the federal level. The Biden administration has approved on public land than the previous administration,�� more than 80 million offshore acres for oil drilling. If we’re going to steer away from catastrophic temperatures, in the next year we need the president to make good on his to end , and we need the to curb drilling on public land and to reform leasing and permitting fees. Those two doable steps could push us in the right direction on emissions while helping the federal budget.

The West’s Water Supply Is in Dire Straits

If you want proof that it’s all connected, our energy system could soon be impacted by the megadrought that’s been frying most of the western U.S.��It and the��shrinking snowpack in the Rockies have sunk the two biggest reservoirs in the country, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, to their , triggering the first��. And those dropping water levels directly impact Lake Powell’s Glen Canyon Dam, a major energy source for five million people across the region. Water levels could drop low enough to impact the dam’s sometime this year.

The Better:

States Are Compromising on Water Use

When the Colorado River water shortage was declared, it triggered the first of a series of cutbacks that states dependent on the river agreed upon in 2019, starting with Arizona receiving less water after January 2022. These states also agreed upon the first-ever voluntary in December. It’s a sign of compromise and concession in a battle that’s usually contentious, because the reality is that there soon won’t be enough to go around.

We’ve Reentered International Climate Conversations

One of President Biden’s first actions in office was a much celebrated commitment to the Paris climate agreement and reduce U.S. emissions 25 percent by 2025. But we’re those targets. And unfortunately, international climate discussions have been milquetoast, particularly this year’s COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, where countries were supposed to revise the Paris agreement. Two of the biggest emitters, China and Russia, didn’t join, and the new emission-reduction targets aren’t even close to where we need them to be in order to avoid frying the planet. Plus, no one has been doing a great job of reaching the old goals anyway. Only is where it needs to be.

Congress Has Passed Some Legislation—but Stymied Significant Climate Progress

Speaking of milquetoast, Congress had the chance to pass legislation that could address the myriad threats to climate stability, food security, biodiversity, and the rest of our ecological health. But it’s been a grueling battle to get anything though a tightly locked, partisan Senate. In November, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which addresses issues like clean water and electricity. But West Virginia senator Joe Manchin the Build Back Better Act last month, which would have done most of the to cut back emissions, including tax credits for electric vehicles. Without it we’ll struggle to get anywhere close to the emission levels we need to in order to address warming. And the Biden administration is running out of time to act on climate, as the midterm election could change the balance of Congress.

The Promising:

Electric Vehicles Are Increasingly Popular

There’s nothing like consumerism to get people fired up about saving the planet. Global sales for electric vehicles are up 80 percent over last year. A group of auto manufacturers—including Ford, GM, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Land Rover, and Volvo—have�� for all their new cars to be zero emissions by 2040. And sales are projected to continue to boom in 2022, as car companies roll out an array of new models, from Rivian trucks to compact Chevys.

More People Are Riding Bikes

You know that boom in bike sales��that happened��early in the pandemic? People are riding those bikes. Bicycle traffic is across the country, and cities are building new bike lanes to allow for the two-wheeled traffic.

Biden’s Made Some Great Federal Appointments

Deb Haaland made history when she was appointed interior secretary, becoming the first Native American person to hold the office that oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, among many other departments. In less than a year, she’s overseen the creation of new solar farms, the restoration of Bears Ears National Monument��in Utah, and the renaming of culturally insensitive places.

There have been other notable nominations in the federal land-management agencies. In four years, the Trump administration failed to find a confirmable nominee to head the National Park Service. Biden’s nominee,��Chuck Sams,��has a long history in tribal-government and natural-resource management and was quickly confirmed as the head of the Park Service. In October, Tracy Stone-Manning was sworn in as the director of the Bureau of Land Management. She’s the first person to officially hold that office since the Obama administration, too. Both say that staffing the agencies is a priority. Sams also intends to address infrastructure and access issues, and Stone-Manning is eyeing crucial decarbonization.

Biden Is Rolling Back Much of Trump’s Dangerous Environmental Deregulation

President Biden reinstated crucial pieces of environmental policy��that President Trump had weakened or erased, like stringent National Environment Policy Act requirements and . Biden is now turning to the work of bringing back more than a hundred regulations that Trump rolled back, a project that could to accomplish.

Public Lands and Natural Resources Are Regaining Protection

The best news of the last year came in the form of landscape protection. In Utah, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monuments were restored, Alaska’s was protected from a proposed mine. Oil leases were suspended in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and old-growth trees were protected in British Columbia. The Biden administration’s America the Beautiful Initiative�� to conserve 30 percent of the country by 2030, a target that scientists say is important for slowing down climate change. This year we need to continue the momentum for conservation. That will happen via sweeping federal designations, local park preservation, and private-land conservation.

This year feels like a tipping point. The groundwork is in place and we know what we have to do. Now we have to do it.��

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Regulatory uncertainty. It’s a tidy phrase that sums up the problem that the Trump administration ran into while working in favor of the oil and gas administration at the expense of all else.��And��just like we predicted, that uncertainty cost them their signature drilling project.��What sunk Republicans’ plans was simply the rushed, incomplete nature of the process and paperwork involved.��On June 1, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland��suspended activity at oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, undoing some of the damage implemented by the previous administration.

First, some context:��at , ANWR is the largest unit in our country’s National Wildlife Refuge system. Located in the northeast corner of Alaska, it’s one of the last unspoiled stretches of land left on this continent, and is home to 250 species of animals, including the imperiled southern Beaufort Sea polar bear population��and��migratory birds.��ANWR also provides calving grounds for one of the largest remaining herds of caribou. The Gwich’in Nation relies on those caribou, and other natural resources in ANWR, to support their way of life.

President Eisenhower protected��ANWR in 1960, and President Carter enlarged it to its current size��in 1980. Crucially, Carter left��ANWR’s 1.5 million-acre coastal plane,��available for oil exploration, but only with congressional approval.��

A survey conducted in 1984 and 1985 concluded that as many as could lie beneath the coastal plane’s tundra. Republicans have been pushing to drill there since at least 1977. They came close in March 1989, when a Senate committee approved drilling the coastal plane. But that was just ten days before the Exxon Valdez disaster. They came close again in 1995, when the party controlled both houses of Congress. But President Clinton vetoed the measure. They thought they had approval��during the George W. Bush administration, only to lose out to a filibuster.

Over the last 40 years, drilling in ANWR transformed from a financial issue��into a symbolic one. Falling oil prices meant that oil extraction there would no longer be profitable. As the public learned what the oil and gas industries knew about climate change, and as it became clear that oil exploration in the refuge would threaten keystone species like the polar bear, drilling there also became . Still, winning this symbolic argument mattered so much to Republicans that they wrote it into the only significant legislative achievement they managed to pass during the Trump administration: the 2017 corporate tax cuts, which on the sale of oil and gas leases in ANWR.

Trump’s Department of the Interior, managed first by scandal-plagued Ryan Zinke, then by the even more corrupt David Bernhardt, got down to business. Despite the flagrantly illegal nature of much of the work conducted at the department during the tenure of those two secretaries, the standard process��still had to be followed. The biggest hurdle for Trump’s DOI��was the requisite Environmental Impact Statement, a required document that outlines how a proposed project will affect the planet.

As an aside, that EIS was approved��during the illegal tenure of William Perry Pendley (an openly racist, homophobic, xenophobe who’s been working to steal public lands from the American people for at least 40 years) as the acting director��of the Bureau of Land Management from 2019 until 2020. The fallout from��Pendley’s work has yet to fully shake out in court, but adds an additional risk factor for the future of oil exploration in ANWR.

But the Trump administration failed to complete the mandated EIS until late 2019, after the 2017 tax cut law.��Basically, they flunked their homework assignment.

On Tuesday, Haaland signed��, which��reads:

In light of the alleged legal deficiencies underlying the program, including the inadequacy of the environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act, the Secretary of the Interior shall, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, place a temporary moratorium on all activities ofthe Federal Government relating to the implementation of the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program, as established by the Record of Decision signed August 17, 2020, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Secretary shall review the program and, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, conduct a new, comprehensive analysis of the potential environmental impacts of the oil and gas program.

The writing was on the wall long before this, though. Last year, all major banks announced they wouldn’t provide financial support for any drilling projects in ANWR, due to the transparently rushed nature of the EIS, along with the general unpopularity of the project.��So when Trump’s DOI rushed through a lease sale on January 6 (yes, that January 6), no major oil companies participated. Only about half of the available lease areas were sold, all at their minimum rate of $25 per-acre—which only��raised about $14.4 million, well short of the $1.8 billion Republicans had forecasted. It wasn’t even clear if any of the lease buyers had the financial ability to conduct oil exploration operations.

Now, with Interior Secretary Haaland ordering a new environmental review—when conducted properly, the��process��should and take several years —and President Biden proposing��a budget��to address climate change, pollution, and public lands, it seems like the Republican dream of drilling for oil in ANWR may finally be over. In the end, it wasn’t public opinion, overwhelming scientific evidence, or even economic factors that killed it. It was simply competence.

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As we head into another big summer for public lands, consider visiting one of these recently��preserved areas in favor of tried-and-true destinations. Each��offers up the best of their locales.

Ioway Tribal National Park, Ioway Reservation, Kansas and Nebraska

The Midwest just got a little more adventurous with of Ioway Tribal National Park. There are 444 acres of Great Plains prairie and forest overlooking the Missouri River inside the reservation, which straddles the border. The tract has been designated by the tribe for hiking, camping, and bird-watching, and also houses the , which has 2,000-year-old burial mounds. Access to the park is currently by tribal permission only, with a full opening expected in 2025.

Cobscook Shores, Maine��

The state’s Down East region is anchored by its rugged coast, and the new Cobscook Shores wilderness area protects 13 miles of it through 11 distinct preserves. There are 14 miles of hiking and biking trails, while three boat launches give kayakers access to islands and beaches in Cobscook Bay. The preserves will reopen in May, with three additional parklands added by mid-July.

Fishers Peak State Park, Colorado��

Fishers Peak is slated to be Colorado’s second-largest state park, protecting 19,200 acres of high-elevation prairie, old-growth forest, and mesas near the town of Trinidad, just north of New Mexico. There are 250 acres currently open, including two miles of hiking and a picnic site, with more infrastructure and outdoor activities expected�� to be in place by 2024.

What Should our 64th ­National Park be?

���ϳԹ��� staffers share their picks for sites that deserve an upgrade

Roy, New Mexico

Set among the ranches and grasslands of northeastern New Mexico, Roy is perhaps one of the best bouldering destinations in the country. Sure, locals will be pissed about the publicity, but Roy is no longer a hidden gem. The word is out, and its infrastructure can’t keep up with the crowds. Making Roy an official park would (hopefully) lead to the installation of toilets, a parking lot, and other amenities the area needs to remain the climbing paradise it is. —Abigail Wise

Catskill Forest ­Preserve, New York��

This 287,000-acre expanse doesn’t have the cachet of a national park, but for wilderness-starved New Yorkers, it holds the same attraction. When I lived in the city, it was my lifeline to the outdoors. But not having a car meant either shelling out for a rental or taking the bus or a train, followed by an Uber. The new designation could mean increased accessibility through shuttle services. —Erin Riley

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska��

I’d love to see all 19.6 million acres of this refuge enshrined, if only to stop the conversation about drilling there once and for all. The In­digenous Gwich’in people call this land home, and their way of life depends on the health of the ecosystems around them, including species like the Grant caribou. Put Gwich’in folks in charge of overseeing the park and leave this place be. —Abigail Barronian

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On April 16, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland issued her first two secretarial orders. The first establishes a climate task force, coordinating Department of the Interior efforts to address climate change. The second revokes a dozen��orders issued by both of Haaland’s Trump administration predecessors that were inconsistent with the DOI’s legal obligation to protect public health, make science-based decisions, and protect natural resources.��

“At the Department of the Interior, I believe we have a unique opportunity to make our communities more resilient to climate change and to help lead the transition to a clean energy economy,” Haaland said��in a statement accompanying the action. “These steps will align the Interior Department with the President’s priorities and better position the team to be a part of the climate solution.”

The orders Haaland is revoking include:��

• ��(March 29, 2017)��
• ��(March 29, 2017)��
• ��(May 1, 2017)��
• ��(May 1, 2017)��
• ��(May 31, 2017)��
• ��(July 6, 2017)��
• ��(August��31, 2017)��
• ��(October��25, 2017)��
• ��(December��22, 2017)��
• ��(March 10, 2020)��
• ��(September��14, 2020)��
• ��(December��22, 2020)��

All that adds up to a thorough undoing of the Trump-era DOI’s heavy pivot toward��policies skewed in favor of the oil and gas industries—everything from a rule that lifted public health regulations on fracking��to one that prioritized energy development in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

“The previous orders unfairly tilted the balance of public land and ocean management toward extractive uses, without regard for climate change, equity or community engagement,” Haaland said.��

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental organization, indicating that��Haaland’s action��will mean consultation��with tribal nations; reviews of��environmental impacts of major federal actions such as fossil fuel leasing will include analysis of indirect and cumulative effects, like the social cost of carbon; and greater scrunity for new��coal leasing.

Haaland does not have the authority to rescind the oil leases in ANWR that the Trump administration sold in its 11th hour, nor the orders to address the reductions that administration made to the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. It’s expected that the ANWR leases will be litigated in federal court, while Haaland has already visited the two monuments in Utah��and is consulting with local stakeholders��ahead of recommending actions there to the president later this year.��

“Today’s Secretarial Orders are another important step toward restoring scientific integrity, meaningful public process, and the longstanding stewardship responsibilities for America’s public lands and waters at the Department of��Interior,” said Kristen Miller, conservation director at the , in a statement. “This is the type of bold and visionary leadership we need if we’re to effectively fight climate change, tackle the extinction crisis, and prioritize environmental justice and tribal consultation.”

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On January 20, during the first few moments of his first day in office, standing at a podium, President Biden asserted his commitment to protecting our planet, acknowledging its cry for survival “that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear.”

With a��, Biden was able to undo many of the executive orders that his predecessor had enacted, including putting a temporary moratorium on oil and natural-gas leases in Alaska’s��Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, stopping construction on a border wall that might have����in Texas, reviewing the reduced boundaries for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monuments in Utah, and ceasing commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the New England coast.

However, executive orders are just the low-hanging fruit. In��June, in a landmark bipartisan effort, Congress passed the��Great American Outdoors Act, securing permanent financing for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and allocating $9.5 billion over the next five years for the National Park Service and other federal land-management agencies to address their mounting maintenance backlogs. The NPS alone has nearly $12 billion in deferred maintenance requests, and the former president’s Department of the Interior failed to meet the deadline to designate these funds. If Biden wants to cement his legacy within the parks system, proper distribution of those dollars will be key.

“The moon shot was the Great American Outdoors Act, honestly,” said Will Shafroth, president and CEO of the��. “If I were betting a year ago, I wouldn’t have predicted that it was going to happen at the scale that it happened. The challenge right now is that we have to execute effectively. We have to make sure that these dollars are invested intelligently and strategically to make the biggest impact that they can, as soon as they can. So��that’s the hard work, and it’s not as sexy as ‘Let’s pass this giant bill.’”

Phil Francis, chair of the executive council for the��, heads a group of over 1,800 mostly retired NPS employees, with a laundry list of requests that they’re urging the incoming administration to act on immediately. “The first item on our list is to make sure that there’s a permanent director selected for the National Park Service. For the first time in the Park Service’s history, we went through an entire administration, all four years, without a permanent director,” said��Francis. His council would also like to see a��mask mandate within the national parks and personal protective equipment provided to all staff to help ensure their safety.

According to Francis, the Biden team needs to focus on two things: “Undo what was done over the past four years. Then��accomplish the new agenda.”

Perhaps the best way for the new administration to enact��a bold new agenda will be via��the�� initiative that Biden campaigned on. More than just a snappy name, this plan to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and 30 percent of its water by the year 2030 is based on�� stating that this level of conservation is critical to slow climate change and avoid catastrophic species loss.

Shafroth believes that the National Park Service could play an integral part in accomplishing this ambitious goal. “The Park Service has, fundamentally, a conservation mission, so��they are already manifesting this,” he said. “What I see as an opportunity is the connectivity between and among public and protected private lands to ensure that we maintain the integrity of ecosystems. We can’t just think about the parks as islands of protected places.”

With huge bipartisan and public support, and an ability to make personal the importance of conservation ( visited the parks in 2019), the NPS��could see itself as a figurehead for larger efforts like 30 by 30, drumming up support for more protected land by fostering deep connections with entities of natural spaces, making new stewards out of , and managing huge swaths of preserved wilderness between safeguarded private lands.

The path to get from our present to that future is complicated and will take years. At the moment, 26 percent of U.S. ocean waters are protected, but only 12 percent of the land .

A��, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, lobbied President Biden to create 25 new national monuments and 50 new national wildlife preserves to accelerate the process, but a modern conservation policy to meet such an objective will also require the support of private landowners, through tax incentives like conservation easements��and tribal leadership. With��Representative Deb Haaland tapped to head the Department of the Interior, it seems apparent��that Biden is serious about giving voice to historically excluded communities and listening��to tribal priorities. The NPS currently manages 84 of 129 national monuments, so a push for more protected lands would likely be a big boon for the organization.

Though there’s still much work to be done, parks lovers should be able to sleep a little easier knowing there’s a new administration in the White House already introducing many of the policies needed to protect the wild spaces and species we love. Francis, of the��Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, said he’s certainly looking forward to a break from the legislative chaos of the past four years. “Five years ago, we took 20 different actions. This past year, it was over 260,” he said. “We hope to become a little less busy.”

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In a sweeping series of executive orders signed immediately after his inauguration on Wednesday, President Biden began undoing much of the harm the Trump administration tried to��carry out on our country’s clean air and water, wildlife, natural heritage, and public lands. This is an encouraging start for an administration with goals that extend well beyond simply repairing damage.��

“The clearest mandate President Biden has is to save our planet for the future and offer good paying jobs that sustain our world rather than destroy it, and these first orders put us on our way to building a truly pro-worker, pro-family, pro-environment economy,” said House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl Grijalva in an emailed statement.��

Because President Biden’s predecessor was unable to build legislative consensus, despite enjoying Republican control of both houses of Congress during the first two years of his single term in office, many of his most harmful policies were achieved through executive orders. Plus, several of them are still being challenged in court. That gives Biden the ability to eliminate most of those polices and actions by simple proclamation, and the chance to enact permanent protections during his next��four years in office.��

Take the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, for example. There, the Trump administration pushed hard to open up the area’s most ecologically sensitive area—denning habitat for the world’s most threatened population of polar bears—to oil drilling. Ignoring��science, public comment, and backlash from Alaska Native groups, it conducted a flawed environmental impact assessment and rushed through a shambolic lease sale. The auction was boycotted by all major financial institutions, and no significant energy companies chose to participate in it. Just hours after being sworn in, Biden putting a moratorium on the implementation of those leases��and mandating that a proper assessment be conducted. Not only will that process take years, but the proclamation also orders that the��impacts of and on climate change be factored into assessments of all federal projects. The new assessment��will also consider in that mandate. It’s science, democracy, and environmental justice all wrapped up in couple paragraphs of competent, humane governance.��

“The President acknowledges our voices, our human rights, and our identity,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the ,��in an emailed statement. The Gwichʼin Nation relies��on ANWR’s healthy caribou population and is��opposed to extraction in the refuge. Biden’s order ensures��they��will have a say in future decisions made about ANWR��and that the scientific assessment of the impacts of any proposed project that affects the Nation will also be included.��

That statement stands in stark contrast to the last one��Demientieff issued about the Trump administration, in which she used words like “cowardly,” “disgraceful,” and “unlawful,” to describe its actions.��

Biden is taking a similar approach to overturning Trump’s other destructive��polices. The impact��of these first-day executive orders is��going to continue to play out for years, but for a simple overview, here’s��a list of the various projects and policies that he’s enacting:

• Assess all��Trump administration actions for impacts to climate change, pollution, environmental justice
• Restore methane emissions limits for oil and gas industries
• Restore Obama-era fuel economy standards; work with car industry to establish even better numbers
• Restore appliance energy efficiency standards
• Restore Clean Air Act emissions regulations
• Create��National Climate Advisor oversight office
• Create stronger emissions standards for oil and gas industries
• Include the input��of scientists, labor unions, environmental advocates, environmental justice,��and state, local, tribal, and territorial officials, organizations in all environmental policy decisions
• Restore Bears Ears, Grand Staircase Escalante, Northeast Canyons, Seamount National Monuments
• Restore Waters of the United States rule, protecting 50 percent of American water supplies
• Restore Obama-era ban on offshore drilling in the Arctic
• Account for global impacts of all greenhouse gas emissions in all federal permitting, including social costs
• Cancel Keystone XL Pipeline
• End COVID-19-related ��
• End water rights giveaway to industry in California

Perhaps the��most important part of these executive orders, though, is the repeated inclusion of two simple words: . The effects of pollution and climate change are disproportionately felt by low-income, marginalized, and communities of color. Acknowledging this disparity so prominently is more than just a symbol that the Biden administration intends to work in the interest of all Americans; it also makes a strong, practical argument for��why climate change needs to be addressed—and why it needs to be addressed now.��

One of the few things Trump administration officials were good at doing was finding creative ways to work around bedrock conservation and environmental laws, or to bend those laws in the interest of polluters. Former Secretary of the Interior��David Bernhardt, for instance, successfully argued that because the impacts of a specific point source of emissions (a single power plant, for example) couldn’t be explicitly connected to a threat felt by an individual��animal,��climate change-causing emissions couldn’t be regulated under the Endangered Species Act. But, factor in human lives, create data around financial costs, and all of a sudden you have an argument involving constituents, budgets, and even plaintiffs, defendants, and liability. A polar bear can’t sue; human beings��with��evidence of financial harm created and vetted by the federal government��can.��

If Biden’s time in office is to be judged a success, he’ll need to achieve more than governing by proclamation, and simply returning the country to Obama-era pollution standards. Biden’s legacy hinges on his ability to achieve major, lasting action on the climate crisis. And environmental justice could be one of the tools by which he convinces other branches of government to help him achieve it. If he succeeds, the true cost of pollution and climate change will never be denied again.��

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The Trump administration dumped news of two harmful policy decisions late Friday night: budget restrictions for the Land and Water Conservation Fund��(LWCF) that make the Great American Outdoors Act��(GAOA) nearly unworkable and an effort to rush through oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge��before Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021.��

The two policies have a lot in common. Both were orchestrated by Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt. Both were written in favor of the oil and gas industries, for which Bernhardt is a lobbyist, at the expense of the American people. Both have the potential to damage the environment��and worsen the effects of climate change. And��while both will likely be reversed by the incoming administration, both��policies seem designed to make the first few months of that administration more difficult, tying up political capital and man hours that could be better spent working in benefit of voters and the environment—rather than simply undoing the harm caused by Bernhardt’s tenure.

The assault on the GAOA��was previewed the day before the election, when DOI missed a deadline to file a list of projects that would receive LWCF funding in fiscal year 2021. In addition to partially addressing the multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog on public lands, the main accomplishment of the GAOA is that it permanently funds the LWCF with an amount of money that’s currently one quarter of the total budget that program was intended to receive, when adjusted for inflation. The fear was��that missing the deadline indicated Bernhardt was up to something. Turns out he was.��

The LWCF uses revenue generated by offshore oil and gas leases to fund projects that increase public access and recreational opportunities on public lands��and to protect vulnerable ecosystems. With the passage of the GAOA, Congress devoted $900 million per��year to the LWCF, all of which comes without cost to taxpayers.��

What was announced on Friday is giving both state and local governments veto power over the use of those funds within their borders. “A written expression of support by both the affected Governor and local county or county government-equivalent (e.g. parish, borough) is required for the acquisition of land, water, or an interest in land or water under the Federal LWCF program,” the order reads.��

The order also allows��DOI’s agencies to direct LWCF funds in accordance with a budget established by the president, not Congress, in contravention of how the GAOA is written.��

Together, both directives in the order effectively rewrite the GAOA��and undermine the authority of Congress. As you’d expect, lawmakers are pissed.��

“It’s disappointing that the Secretary of the Interior is attempting to circumvent congressional intent by adding unwanted new restrictions,” Sam Runyon, spokesperson for Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV),��. “Congress, which is not bound by the secretarial order, will determine the final list of projects that will receive federal funding from the Land and Water Conservation Fund.”��

When I spoke to Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM) shortly after the election, he told me that Congress may need to directly appropriate LWCF funds in order to circumvent Bernhardt’s meddling.��

Let’s talk about Bernhardt’s shenanigans in Alaska.

Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is a large, complicated topic that can be boiled down to this: , it’ll be unprofitable, and it’s going to kill baby polar bears. Opening it up for oil exploitation seems to be about creating an incredibly harmful��but largely symbolic victory for Republican lawmakers.��

So, Bernhardt’s DOI has announced plans to , just ahead of Biden’s nomination. On Monday, a “” was posted on the Federal Register, which allows oil companies to specify which areas of ANWR land they would like to lease. That process will continue for 30 days, at which point DOI has another 30 days before it can issue a final notice of lease sales. Sixty days from today is January 15—five days before Biden takes office.��

Typically, this process wouldn’t be conducted in the minimum amount of time. Doing so likely precludes scientific analysis for the impact of proposed activities in lease areas��and likely does not allow time for public input to be adequately assessed, as a variety of laws require. And that could give the next administration the ability to easily cancel these sales.��

Given the likelihood that both the LWCF order and the ANWR lease sales are going to be overturned next year, why is Bernhardt putting in the effort? (DOI did not respond to�����ܳٲ������’s request for comment.)

It’s not about jobs. While one of the arguments for ANWR drilling is that it may generate some oilfield jobs in northern Alaska, the speed of developing infrastructure in such a remote, austere place is much slower than the speed of permitting. The New York Times estimates that��even if work does begin in ANWR next year, it before the first oil is extracted from the region. In contrast, by monkeying with LWCF budgets, Bernhardt is threatening in the outdoor recreation industry right now, in the middle of the worst economic recession in living memory.��

It’s not about revenue. Developing ANWR will be expensive. To turn a profit from drilling, . Yet, right now, oil is hovering around $40 a barrel. As oil subsidies come to an end��and renewable energy is given greater priority, that break-even point is only going to go up. Meanwhile, LWCF funding has a proven track record as a sound investment, especially when it comes to the land acquisition Bernhardt’s order seeks to prevent. When DOI invested $214 million in land in 2010, by 2015, along with 3,000 jobs.��

It’s not about local input in decision-making on public lands, either. It’s counterintuitive on the surface, but a variety of high-profile conservation laws, like , , and , not only mandate significant local input��but also provide the tools for it. In contrast, state management of land requires no such mechanisms. And Bernhardt and the Trump administration have spent the past four years , not for them. Giving state and local governments��veto power over the LWCF is an attempt to subvert, not facilitate, the public’s voice.��

So, why do this? And why now, so close to the end of this administration? Maybe it’s because Bernhardt and his cronies are exactly the corrupt, immoral pawns of the fossil fuel industry we’ve been saying they are��all along.��

“This administration is ending as it began, with a desperate push for oil drilling regardless of the human or environmental costs,” says Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ), chairperson of the House Natural Resources Committee. “It’s fitting that President Trump is going out with one last try to score political points by destroying our environment, and that he’s being replaced by someone who understands the much greater stakes involved in these decisions.”

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Earlier this month, The Conservation Alliance announced that it would end its association with Bank of America over concerns about the institution’s commitment to environmental protection, abruptly severing a partnership that has lasted for years.

“Today, we are announcing our decision to divest all assets from our longtime bank and financial partner, Bank of America, in order to align our investments with our values,” the organization wrote in a public statement on October 10.

The Conservation Alliance announced that it would transfer its business to Bank of the West immediately.

“No bank is perfect, but we are impressed with [Bank of the West’s] move away from fossil fuels and support of groups like The Conservation Alliance, 1 percent for the Planet, and Protect Our Winters. We will regularly assess the financial institutions we work with to ensure our investments support our vision of a planet where wild places, wildlife, and people thrive together,” the organization wrote.

This week, OBJ spoke with The Conservation Alliance’s executive director, Brady Robinson, about the reasoning behind the decision.

Why has The Conservation Alliance decided to sever ties with Bank of America?

Our initial concerns had to do with protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We’ve been funding the Alaskan Wilderness League on this work for nearly 20 years, and we’ve been with Bank of America for nearly as long. A number of other banks over the years have taken public stands not to fund oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but there was one that didn’t, and it was the one we happened to bank with.

It just didn’t look or feel good. We respectfully but forcefully engaged with Bank of America, and they listened to us. I think the fact that we represent a coalition of over 200 businesses got their attention. We had discussions with them, and some of our member companies had discussions with them as well, but ultimately they elected not to change their public stance. That’s when��we decided it was time for us to leave.

Can any company truly call itself sustainable without taking a close look at its banking?

Maybe not. It’s time we all examined the issue more closely. A lot of companies have been taking a hard look at their supply chains from a sustainability and��human rights��perspective, and I think financial institutions have, for the most part, been conveniently excluded from that scrutiny. We’re interested in drawing attention to the financial sector in this way. Who you bank with should be included in your supply chain analysis, because banking with a certain institution is a tacit��endorsement of their business activities and who they’re investing with.

It’s also a good way to call attention to issues you care about. For us specifically, the decision helped us draw attention to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, apply some pressure on Bank of America, educate our membership a little bit, and generally elevate the issue.

How hard is it to change banks?

We’re relatively small, so for us it’s easier than for larger groups. But to be clear, even for us it was still a pain in the ass. Banks are sticky. You get used to your checking account and you have all your automatic withdrawals set up. You have all your credit cards tied to various expenses. Banks use that to their advantage.

Obviously, it’s a lot harder for bigger companies. If you’re a big international corporation, the number of banks that can meet your business needs is probably small. We literally could have gone to a credit union in Bend, Oregon, after leaving Bank of America. The big players in the outdoor industry can’t do that. I think it’s important to note that we’re not trying to pass judgment on our bigger member companies. We’re just encouraging them to ask themselves this question. We are not telling them what the answer is because they have to balance their business needs with their sustainability goals. We’re just calling attention to the issue. And we’re hopeful that our member companies and the industry at large will give this consideration.

Why did you choose Bank of the West as your new financial partner?

We shopped around a little, but ultimately we decided on Bank of the West because we already had a relationship with them—they’re a Pinnacle Member of The Conservation Alliance.��They’re really sincere in their support of us and groups like 1 percent for the Planet and Protect Our Winters.

A group like Bank of the West proves that good conservation practices can also be good business practices. They’re making a big stand in this area. They’ve walked away from some lucrative business as a function of their principles. If we can support that by moving our business to them,��that’s great for us.

To be clear, we’re not saying everybody should use Bank of the West. But for us, because we already had a relationship and their commitments align with ours, it was a pretty easy choice.

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The newest miniseries from the environmental podcast��, which launched on November 5, opens with shouting. A man chants, “Drill, baby, drill,” as a crowd roars. Then��a woman leads a call-and-response: “Whose lives? Our lives! Whose planet? Our planet!” In the middle of the brawl? The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a South Carolina–size��chunk of northeast Alaska that was opened to drilling by the November 2017 tax bill. The legislation, along with cutting the taxes of��corporations and some individuals, included a number of such deal sweeteners for skeptical lawmakers.

As , Threshold’s host, says early on in the series, the refuge is public land, and so the decision to drill there��belongs to all of us.��(No extraction has actually taken place yet, and��the Trump administration recently����that will delay any drilling there��by at least another year.)��“There is something about a place that you haven’t been to, and that you may never go to, that opens itself for imaginary power,” Martin says. As a symbol, whether for American energy independence or unspoiled wilderness, ANWR��has been at the center of national political debate for decades.��Martin and her team set out to “inject some light into that heat,” as she says in the first episode.

Threshold, which is produced independently out of Montana��and��funded by the and , has spent the last two and a half years unraveling contentious environmental questions through on-the-ground reporting and interviews with stakeholders whose voices don’t often make it into the national media. Its , released in 2017, looked at the politics of bison restoration in the American West, talking to skeptical ranchers, indigenous hunters, and federal conservation biologists. In , Martin and producer visited every country��in the Arctic to understand how climate change touches lives across the region.

In the course of that reporting, Martin told me, she struggled to fold ANWR into the larger story of the Arctic. While the issues—questions of cultural preservation and who benefits from resource extraction—are largely the same as those across the Arctic, ANWR has taken on such an outsize role in current political debates that she felt it deserved its own place under the microscope.

Hence the new miniseries, whose��reporting��circles around the refuge, from the��anti-drilling interior town of Arctic Village to the more drilling-friendly��city of��Kaktovik on the North Slope. Rather than pursue one unifying story, the podcast digs into a string of personal, intersecting ones that span a range of attitudes toward��ANWR. First��the producers take a trip led by Kaktovik-born polar bear guide Vebjorn Reitan. Reitan opposes drilling in the refuge, but his opinion is tempered by the recognition that his Norwegian citizenship and overseas education give him unusual job opportunities. For him, the oil industry isn’t an economic lifeline like it is for many of his neighbors, who we meet in following episodes.��His story leads into the history of the refuge��and that of the conservationists who have fought to protect it, with pit stops in oil towns along the way. In later episodes, Martin says, Threshold will��explore Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski’s complicated role as a pro-drilling, climate-change-affirming Republican.

Martin says that pushing back against the romanticized��Arctic��and diving into its intricacies doesn’t mean taking its beauty and symbolism for granted.��“I’m not trying to take away the power of the place or say that we shouldn’t find it magical and wonderful,” she says. “I don’t think being there has made it one bit less fascinating to me.” Indeed, when she and Mott first arrive at the shoreline of ANWR’s��coastal plain, where drilling would occur,��after��a long boat ride from Kaktovik, Martin compares the scene to a Rothko:��huge, gray expanses of sky and water��separated by a line of green that happens to be the center of this controversy.

However, she does think that getting beyond the��headlines about the area is important.��Newcomers arrive at��the refuge feeling��as though they already��understand the place, she says, because “the Arctic in general has often served as this giant projection screen.”��But that’s what’s so easily lost when we imagine a place like Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or even Bears Ears in Utah: the places we’re fighting over at a distance are also homes, full of people working to shape their own futures. Plenty of people��in Kaktovik and Arctic Village are familiar with national reporters; some have even chatted with President Obama or testified before Congress. “That flipping of the script is a way to bring some humility to the conversation,” Martin says, “whether you’re passionately pro oil or passionately anti oil, to understand that the people who live closest to it have something to teach, just in the fact that they know more about the rest of the world than we know about them.”

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