By Miya King-Flaherty,
Rio Grande Chapter Program Manager
In the second Trump presidency, the administration is moving fast to dismantle the nation’s environmental protections. These range from suspending a wide range of rules and policies passed during the Biden administration to firing thousands of employees who manage our public lands to propping up the fossil fuel industry and ignoring all signs of the climate crisis.
In his short time in office, President Trump has issued a flood of executive actions threatening gains in climate policy, renewable energy development, and environmental protection. These threats are especially evident in Executive Order 14154, “Unleashing American Energy,” which directs federal agencies to suspend or rescind most of the policies adopted during the Biden administration aimed at balancing responsible resource development with a transition to a renewable energy future.
For example, newly nominated Interior Secretary Doug Burgman issued Secretarial Order 3418 which carries out elements of the “Unleashing American Energy” agenda by suspending parts of the Bureau of Land Management’s Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Rule adopted in 2024. This rule raised oil and gas royalty rates and minimum bids on parcels when companies expressed an interest in drilling on public lands, eliminated non-competitive oil and gas leasing that locks up lands from other uses like recreation or conservation, and increased the minimum bond amounts operators paid to cover clean-up costs on newly leased parcels.
The secretarial order also directs suspension of the BLM’s Public Lands Rule, also known as the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule. This rule, also issued in 2024, put conservation on equal footing with other uses like resource extraction and grazing that have long been prioritized by the BLM. These are just a couple of advances being dismantled under the secretarial order. More directives are attacking the expansion of renewable energy, protecting endangered species and using science to guide decision-making. The list goes on.
Executive Order 14154 has broad implications for our state as over 30% of New Mexico’s lands are federally managed. Already we are seeing lands in the Greater Chaco region in northwest New Mexico slated for auction at the November 2025 lease sale.
But we have been here before. Under the last Trump presidency, we protested every lease sale and were able to slow permit approvals and development. It won’t be easy, but collectively we can hold the line and protect our lands, communities, and climate.
For calls to action, please follow the Sierra Club Public Lands Action Team at https://www.facebook.com/groups/publiclandsactionteam.
Featured image: Horses grazing near an oil and gas well site in the Greater Chaco region near Counselor Chapter House. Photo credit Miya King- Flaherty
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