Department of Interior’s “Emergency Declaration” Suppresses Public Input and Strips Safeguards for Endangered Species

Last night, the Trump administration announced emergency procedures to fast-track oil, gas, and mining projects on national lands. The emergency procedures remove opportunities for meaningful public engagement and notification and bypass protections for threatened and endangered species.

“This so-called “emergency” declaration is an illegal power grab designed to allow unfettered energy development behind closed doors,” said Andrew Bowman, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife. “The American people have a right to be informed of, and involved in, government decisions that impact our public lands and endangered species, instead they are being shut out by this administration.”  

The “Declaring a National Energy Emergency” executive order (EO 14156) enables the Department of the Interior to bypass key provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, fast-tracking energy development projects under the guise of a made-up energy emergency. Notably, the order slashes environmental review to just 28 days for extraction projects with substantial environmental impacts and to only 14 days for those with lesser impacts, removing opportunities for meaningful public comment and public notification.

This move aligns with DOI’s broader agenda to expedite development. In the department’s strategic plan — leaked to Public Domain Media on April 23 — the agency outlines its intent to not only ramp up fossil fuel development but also logging, grazing, and mining while removing regulations designed to protect wildlife and other resources.  

The draft strategic plan intends to:  

• Sell off public lands or turn them over to local governments that historically have been more likely to commit them to industrialization.
• Use rights-of-way and land exchanges to facilitate development on otherwise protected lands.
• Streamline permitting for oil, gas, and coal development through deregulation.
• Review and “right size” national monuments – code for eliminating or shrinking them and otherwise reducing protections.  
  • Interior has already launched this strategy: on April 17th, the Trump Administration “unleashed commercial fishing” in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.
• Delist endangered wildlife supposedly deemed “recovered,” putting imperiled species in the crosshairs.

The DOI is the steward of 20% of the nation’s lands. It is responsible for administering revered national parks, national wildlife refuges and the national system of public lands; migratory bird and wildlife conservation; and the recovery of threatened and endangered species.  

“National lands are home to hundreds of listed species and thousands of unlisted at-risk species – some that live nowhere else on earth,” Bowman said.  “We will not sit idly by while this administration rides roughshod over the conservation laws put in place to protect imperiled wildlife and the lands they call home.”