Over the past several months, the administration has moved to bar drilling on 1.8 million acres of sagebrush steppe in Wyoming and on more than a million acres of public land in Colorado.
It insulated more than 336,400 acres of public land around Chaco Culture National Historical Park from new oil and gas leasing and mining claims for the next two decades.
And last month, it said it would remove about six million acres of potentially oil-rich areas from an upcoming federal lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico that is required by law.
The Bureau of Land Management also wants to change how it manages the 245 million acres under its control by allowing conservation leases, similar to the way the agency auctions off parcels for drilling and mining.
Administration officials said the conservation efforts were not new and many of the drilling restrictions had been underway for months.
Persons:
Biden’s
Organizations:
Chaco Culture, Interior Department, Land Management, Administration
Locations:
Wyoming, Colorado, Chaco, Gulf of Mexico