Opinion: Wildlife habitat, hunting on public lands hit hard by Trump’s budget bill giveaways to industry

As nearly everyone who hunts, hikes, camps, climbs, paddles or otherwise recreates on public lands knows well, during the first half of 2025 we fended off repeated attempts to put public lands on the chopping block, selling them off to the highest bidder. In the words of American Hunters & Anglers co chair Land Tawney, “You spoke up. You showed up. You stopped this disaster — for now. Round One goes to the people.”

A mandate to sell millions of acres of federal land did not make it into President Donald Trump’s mega tax bill signed during July after a wide range of opponents, including environmentalists, ranchers, hunters, anglers, right-wing influences and business leaders rallied against the proposal from Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican. Members and supporters of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, for example, sent 33,000 communications to U.S. senators on June 25 — dubbed “Flood the Lines Day” — urging them to reject the measure.

Despite our collective efforts, Congress still passed a bill that ransacks public lands. We knew whatever passed was likely going to be bad for public lands habitat and, hence, hunters and anglers, but to use a hunting term, the reconciliation bill passed by Congress “gutted” public lands habitat protections in favor of resource extraction.

In a November 2024 Backcountry Hunters & Anglers blog post, the group’s president and CEO, Patrick Berry, explains that throughout our history land barons and developers have endeavored to swipe public lands right out from underneath us.

“Now these long-time swindlers have a growing roster of accomplices in the form of politicians who have zero shame cutting Americans out of our own public lands legacy,” he wrote.

By February 2025 we had a sense of what was coming after former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum was confirmed as secretary of the Interior and made it clear that he was hellbent on implementing an “energy dominance” agenda. Burgum went on to issue a slate of new secretarial orders directing Interior agencies to prioritize drilling and mining on our public lands.

“Conservation of fish and wildlife habitat and opportunities for hunters and anglers must be included as equal values,” Berry emphasized in February. “When the United States is currently producing more energy than any nation in history, these aggressive and uncompromising policies to expedite development on public lands only benefit one stakeholder group – private industry.”

Hunter Randy Newberg (host of “Fresh Tracks,” “On Your Own Adventures,” and “Hunt Talk Radio”) said on his July 18 Fresh Tracks episode, “The considerations previously given to wildlife and important habitat like wintering range, migration corridors, summer range in a lot of places … those protections just went …”

“We’re gonna see it, we’re talking about it from a hunting standpoint,” Newberg added. “We are going to see consequences to wildlife and wildlife herds because of these provisions. I don’t know how else to say it … it’s like let’s turn this into an industrial landscape wherever we can … it really opens the gates …”

The reconciliation bill was essentially a public lands giveaway in disguise.

The Trump administration has now implemented the statutory framework for their energy dominance agenda by directing that logging and mining along with oil, gas and coal extraction trump all other uses on our multiple-use public lands. Although the deed to our public lands may not have been handed over directly to private industry, the reconciliation bill ditched decades of balanced multiple-use public lands policy in favor of one group — billionaire buzzards.

For a summary of the reconciliation bill’s public lands provisions, see this July 11 post by Jim Pattiz on his More Than Just Parks substack. In Pattiz’s words, “Every single piece of this would be bad on its own. Together, it’s the most aggressive dismantling of public lands protection in American history.”

It’s a sucker punch to all Americans, but as military strategist Sun Tzu said, “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”

As America’s first conservationists, hunters have a century-old tradition of protecting public lands habitat and fighting those driven by myopic greed. The billionaire buzzards have overreached badly and underestimate our resolve.

We will not give up or give in. Join us!

Editor’s note: This opinion column first appeared on Colorado Newsline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com.