The Wins We Almost Missed
2025 Year in Review - Quiet Wins for Public Lands, Access & the Energy Transition
Sometimes the best wins whisper
If you only read the loud headlines this year, you’d think public lands were one long clearance sale and the grid was one spark away from collapse. Rules rolled back. New extraction pushed. Transmission lines marching across everything that still looks wild from the air.
But underneath that noise, a quieter story has been unfolding. Courts have drawn lines. States have stitched habitat back together. Engineers and planners have started putting steel and solar on scars instead of on sagebrush.
This is not to undermine the tidal waves of attack on public lands and clean energy.
It is simply an acknowledgement that fighting back makes a difference.
This is that story: the good news you probably missed.
I’ve grouped it the way the map feels in my head now. Federal wins, state wins, and energy wins, because all three shape where we walk, where wildlife moves, and where the wires run.
Federal wins: The map didn’t flip
1. The land-grab that wasn’t
Early this year, Utah tried a legal Hail Mary: a lawsuit arguing the federal government is basically obligated to “dispose” of 18.5 million acres of BLM land, more than a third of the state. If that theory flew, it would hand a blueprint to any other state itching to privatize public ground.
The Supreme Court quietly refused to take the case. Just a short order that left the lower court’s rejection standing.
On paper, nothing changed. In reality, 18.5 million acres stayed in the national family, open to hunters, hikers, anglers, Tribes, climbers, and yes, all of us who worry about what happens when that land gets carved up.
Later in 2025 a proposal spearheaded by Sen. Mike Lee to force the sale of up to 3.3 million acres of federal public lands (managed by Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service) was ruled out of order and removed from the Senate’s budget reconciliation bill in June 2025.
Sometimes “no” is a conservation win. These are two of those times.
2. Two new national monuments in California (848,000+ acres)
On January 7th, the administration designated Chuckwalla National Monument (~624k acres) and the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument (~224k acres). Desert canyons, cultural landscapes, Joshua-tree highlands. The kind of places that expand your lungs on sight.
Big, bold protection moves still happen. (And yes, these monuments explicitly coordinate with nearby energy infrastructure, smart conservation, not blanket prohibition.)
3. Expansion of hunting & fishing access (87,000+ acres, 11 states)
US Fish and Wildlife opened or expanded hunting and fishing opportunities across 87,000+ acres for the 2025–26 season. Think prairies, wetlands, bottomlands, forests, new doorstep access for millions.
Access is conservation. More boots on the ground = more stewardship, more monitoring, more people invested in wild places.
4. Fixing what’s already ours
While Congress screams about almost everything, one bipartisan experiment keeps quietly working: the Great American Outdoors Act’s Legacy Restoration Fund.
Since 2020, that fund has pushed billions into fixing rotting culverts, crumbling park roads, unsafe campgrounds, and fragile water systems across national parks and public lands. It’s not sexy to replace a century-old wastewater line at a campground, but that’s what keeps us from tearing new roads into fresh ground when old infrastructure fails.
Now there’s a push to extend and expand that funding beyond its 2025 sunset. If it passes, we get more of the most underrated kind of conservation: taking care of what we already have, so we don’t have to keep expanding deeper into the wild just to keep the lights on and the toilets flushing.
5. Corner-crossing goes legit (10th Circuit)
In March, the Tenth Circuit ruled that corner-crossing (that little diagonal step between two touching public parcels) is legal under the 1885 Unlawful Inclosures Act.
The Supreme Court ultimately declined to take up the appeal on October 20, 2025, leaving the lower-court ruling intact.
For anyone who’s ever stared longingly at public land hidden behind checkerboard private parcels, this is huge.
Access isn’t always about buying new land. Sometimes it’s about unlocking what we already own.
6. Conservation = economy (finally quantified)
A 2025 national report found that $55.3B in direct conservation spending supports a $1.1T outdoor economy, contributing $76.6B to GDP and $16B in tax revenue.
Conservation jobs are real jobs. Stewardship is infrastructure.
7. EXPLORE Act Becomes Law
On January 4 2025 the EXPLORE Act became law, a bipartisan package designed to boost outdoor recreation on federal lands, expanding access, modernizing infrastructure, streamlining permitting.
Access is often the under-celebrated side of conservation. This law means more people, more communities, more economic opportunity tied to public lands. It reframes public lands not just as set-aside nature, but as recreation and community assets.
Conservation isn’t just about land locked away, it’s about land used well.
8. BLM’s Conservation Lands turn 25 (38 million acres)
The National Conservation Lands quietly celebrated their 25th anniversary. That’s 38 million acres of monuments, wilderness, historic trails, and national conservation areas.
Public lands aren’t just held. They’re curated.
State wins: Corridors, crossings, new acres
9. Texas adds a new patch of green to the map
Texas doesn’t exactly scream “public land state.” But this year, the Trinity River Wildlife Management Area added roughly 6,900 acres of bottomland hardwood forest and wetlands along 11 miles of the river.
It’s not just a new place to hunt, bird, or paddle. The new WMA:
links up more than 21,000 contiguous acres of conserved floodplain,
gives wildlife a real corridor through a fast-developing region,
and acts as a sponge when the river runs high—slowing floods, trapping sediment, improving water quality downstream.
In a booming, mostly private-land state, carving out new state public ground is a statement: we’re not done adding to the map.
10. Tribal land return in the Sierra (10,274 acres)
The Wášiw-šiw Land Trust received a $5.5M grant to help purchase 10,274 acres of ancestral Washoe land east of Tahoe.
Stewardship, habitat, cultural connection, public access, this one checks every box.
Land-back is climate and conservation strategy, not just justice.
11. A wildlife bridge bigger than your Costco
Between Denver and the Springs, a 6-lane interstate has long been a barrier to wildlife. Enter the Greenland Wildlife Overpass—a 200-foot-wide vegetated bridge reconnecting 39,000 acres to over a million acres of Pike National Forest.
Conservation can be concrete. Literally.
12. New forest-conservation easements in New York (9 small-but-mighty projects)
New York’s DEC funded $1.72M in grants for land trusts to secure forest easements. Modest acreages, high-impact pockets for wildlife, water, and air.
Not all wins need to be 100,000 acres. Leverage matters.
13. A micro-win in Connecticut (14 acres of river habitat)
The Killingworth Land Conservation Trust picked up 14 acres along the Hammonasset River, protecting wildlife habitat and opening new hiking access.
Tiny parcels become big buffers when you stitch enough of them together.
14. National Wildlife Refuge access expansions (16+ units)
Throughout 2025, USFWS greenlit new or expanded hunting/fishing access across 16+ refuges, opening more gates and aligning rules with state seasons.
Most notably plans to expand the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in Georgia by 22,000 acres, setting up against a possible buy-out of private land intended for a mining project near the refuge.
Sometimes the conservation win isn’t new land, it’s better access to the land we already steward.
Energy wins: Brownfield > backcountry
15. Laying the foundation for a cleaner energy future
Starting with funding in 2022 the administration started a push toward nuclear power. This year momentum increased with pilot programs for 10 companies to come up with designs for small modular reactors. In addition to this program, on November 19th, the US provided funding to the company in charge of Three Mile Island, to restart its operations by 2027.
A May 2025 presidential executive order set a target for the U.S. to grow nuclear capacity from ~100 GW to ~400 GW by 2050.
That’s a bold ambition, signaling nuclear is back in the “major player” zone, not just legacy infrastructure. Nuclear is relatively cleaner than fossil fuels and provides better base load consistent power.
16. A smarter solar map for public lands
The West is under pressure to build out solar at a scale that, on paper, looks terrifying for public lands. Panels the size of cities. New high-voltage lines crossing everything.
But the updated Western Solar Plan landed with a twist: BLM basically said, We’re going to steer solar toward places that are already beat up and close to the wires.
The plan still technically leaves tens of millions of acres “open” on the map, but the practical filters matter more:
priority to sites near existing or proposed transmission,
preference for previously disturbed lands,
more guardrails around high-conflict habitat and cultural sites.
Layer that on top of recent national lab work showing we can meet federal clean-energy goals by using well under 1% of federal land, and the story shifts:
If we’re disciplined, we don’t have to pave the West to power it.
17. The math is on our side
Here’s the hopeful part that almost no one talks about: the math.
When the National Renewable Energy Laboratory added up rooftop solar, smarter demand, batteries, storage at substations, and well-sited big renewables on disturbed land, the actual land footprint we need for the energy transition is small compared to the federal estate.
Not painless. Not impact-free. But orders of magnitude smaller than the doom scenarios where every ridge sprouts turbines and every valley becomes panel country.
Which means the real fight isn’t “energy vs. land.”
It’s where and how we build,
and whether we’re willing to let public lands stay wild in the places that matter most, while we redo our messier corners first.
18. Domestic solar manufacturing surges
As of October 2025, U.S. solar module production capacity surpassed 60 GW, a 37 % increase from December 2024. Solar-cell production more than tripled (from ~1 GW to ~3.2 GW).
Strengthening the supply chain means less vulnerability to overseas shocks.
19. Massive solar-capacity buildout
In the United States, about 16 GW of solar generation capacity had been added by July 2025, representing nearly 75% of all new electric generation capacity through that period.
Solar is clearly driving the build-out, not just a niche add-on. The momentum is real and large-scale.
20. Superfund to solar: building on the scars
In Massachusetts, a new community solar project just came online atop a former chemical site that spent decades on EPA’s Superfund list. Locals now get clean power and storage from land that used to be a synonym for “don’t go there.”
Zoom out and this is part of a pattern:
solar farms on capped landfills,
panels on old mine lands,
small-scale renewables on industrial scars that already paid an environmental price.
Every megawatt we squeeze out of these places is a megawatt we don’t have to site in the middle of sagebrush, or next to a desert spring, or on winter range that mule deer are already struggling to hold onto.
That’s the brownfield-over-backcountry ethic made real.
Reading the year differently
If you string these wins together, a different story about 2025 emerges:
The courts held the line on a massive land grab.
Big access wins.
Some places actually became public for the first time.
Fresh acres protected.
Tribes reclaiming land.
States stitching wildlife corridors back together.
Energy planners learning to build on scars instead of on sagebrush.
In a year of rollback headlines and grid anxiety, that’s not nothing. That’s a reminder. The fight to protect is ongoing and alive.
The map is still alive.
We are still adding green.
And if we keep pushing, on siting, on brownfields, on corridors and crossings, we can transition energy and keep public lands feeling like places, not just “resource units” under wire.
That’s the version of the year I want The Conservation Current to carry forward: not denial of the threats, but proof that when we fight for the details, for where the line goes, where the panels go, where the elk cross, the wins add up.
Thank you for reading! I highlight threats to public lands and the energy industry’s impact. I believe clean energy is the future, and ALL energy projects should prioritize private land first to keep wild places wild. When energy extraction is needed on public lands all projects must restore the land after extraction. Public lands are unique and once lost, they’re gone forever.