The Bureau of Land Management just proposed a rule that would essentially codify the oil and gas reforms in the Inflation Reduction Act as well as make a few other important changes to the federal leasing program. The proposed rule would fundamentally change the way oil and gas leasing occurs on public lands, putting the federal government in the driver’s seat instead of the oil and gas companies that have driven the process for far too long. Kate and Aaron are joined by Taxpayers for Common Sense Vice President Autumn Hanna and Center for Western Priorities Policy Director Rachael Hamby to talk about it.

Hosts: Kate Groetzinger & Aaron Weiss 

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Music: Purple Planet

Featured image: BLM California/Flickr

The post New oil and gas rule just dropped. What’s in it? appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Kate and Aaron are joined by Lori Faeth, senior director of government relations at the Land Trust Alliance, to discuss the Farm Bill and private land conservation.

The Farm Bill conservation programs are the largest single federal source of funding for private land conservation. Farm Bill programs create significant opportunities for land trusts to protect high-priority farm and ranch lands, grasslands, wetlands and forests. The programs provide matching funds to conservation partners, helping local investments go further to protect America’s working lands

Hosts: Kate Groetzinger & Aaron Weiss 

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Featured image: NRCS Oregon, Flickr

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Kate and Aaron are joined by Dr. Dominick DellaSala, Chief Scientist at Wild Heritage, a project of the Earth Island Institute, to talk about the Biden administration’s efforts to protect old growth and mature forests. They also touch on reducing wildfire risk through forest management. Dr. DellaSala is the author of over 300 science papers on forest and fire ecology, conservation biology, endangered species management, and landscape ecology.

Hosts: Kate Groetzinger & Aaron Weiss 

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Music: Purple Planet

Featured image: Western Hemlock, USDA

The post What’s going on with old growth forests? appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Kate and Aaron are joined by James Kenna, a 40-year Interior Department veteran who wore a number of hats over his decades of public service, including a stint as the California state director at Bureau of Land Management. That gave him a front row seat to land management decisions that would shape America’s energy future. Now he’s weighing in on one of the most important proposals to come from the Biden administration: the public lands rule that would put conservation on equal footing with mining, drilling, grazing, and other uses of federal lands.

Submit a comment on the BLM’s proposed Conservation and Landscape Health rule

Learn more about the BLM’s proposed Conservation and Landscape Health rule

Hosts: Kate Groetzinger & Aaron Weiss 

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Music: Purple Planet

Featured image: Pecos River drainage, Bureau of Land Management/Flickr

The post A BLM veteran weighs in on the agency’s proposed conservation leasing rule appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Kate and Aaron are joined by filmmaker John De Graaf to talk about his new documentary Stewart Udall and the Politics of Beauty. De Graaf has been producing and directing PBS documentaries for 45 years, 32 of which he spent at KCTS, the Seattle PBS affiliate. His new film recounts former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall’s life and illustrates the impact he had on conservation in the West. 

Lady Bird Johnson and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall at Grand Teton National Park

Hosts: Kate Groetzinger & Aaron Weiss 

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Music: Purple Planet

Featured image: Grand Canyon National Park/Flickr

The post Stewart Udall and the politics of beauty appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Aaron and Kate are joined by Grace Wu, an assistant professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, to talk about her research on balancing renewable energy development and conservation in the West. The study examined the potential habitat loss and land use impacts of developing the complete set of onshore wind, offshore wind, large-scale solar, distributed solar, transmission, and bioenergy resources needed to reach economy-wide net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 for the 11 western US states.

Hosts: Kate Groetzinger & Aaron Weiss 

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Featured image: Bureau of Land Management/Flickr 

The post Can renewable energy and conservation coexist? appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Kate and Aaron are joined by journalist Danielle Prokop and photographer Diana Cervantes to talk about their recent series documenting drought on the Rio Grande River, which runs from Colorado, through New Mexico, to Texas. Danielle and Diana produced the series for Source New Mexico, a statewide non-profit journalism outlet.

Hosts: Kate Groetzinger & Aaron Weiss

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Featured image: Rio Grande River, Asaavedra32/Wikimedia Commons

The post Why you should care about the Rio Grande River appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Kate and Aaron are joined by Alli Henderson, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, and Blaine Miller-McFeeley, a senior legislative representative at Earthjustice, to talk about the recently-introduced Mining Regulatory Clarity Act—or, as Miller-McFeeley has renamed it, the Dirty Mining Trumps All Other Uses Act.

They talk about what prompted Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto of Nevada to file the bill, what makes it so bad, what good mining reform looks like, and how it can be accomplished. For a backgrounder on the bill, check out our recent Westwise blog.

Hosts: Kate Groetzinger & Aaron Weiss

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Music: Purple Planet

Featured image: Bureau of Land Management

The post A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mining bill appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Kate and Aaron are joined by clean energy consultant Rob Gramlich, founder and president of Grid Strategies LLC, to talk about the need to ramp up renewable transmission capacity in the U.S. Gramlich tells us what the Inflation Reduction Act did and didn’t do when it comes to transmission, as well as how Congress can incentivize the construction of transmission lines to meet the growing need—without weakening America’s bedrock environmental laws.

Hosts: Kate Groetzinger & Aaron Weiss

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Music: Purple Planet

Featured image: Chris Hunkeler, Flickr

The post What’s really holding up renewable energy transmission construction appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Kate and Aaron are joined by the co-chairs of the America the Beautiful for All Coalition, a new group that came together to ensure conservation benefits marginalized and overly burdened communities. Nse Witherspoon, executive director of the Children’s Environmental Health Network, and Mark Magaña, founder and CEO of GreenLatinos, talk about their coalition’s 2023 policy agenda as well as funding opportunities for groups that are working toward a more just and equitable conservation movement.

Hosts: Kate Groetzinger & Aaron Weiss

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(Featured image: Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, California; BLM, Flickr)

The post Making conservation more inclusive appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.