Pulse of the Land - 11/10/2025
A weekly brief for conservation and cleaner energy
This Week’s Take
Permitting and policy are in a tug-of-war. On one end: a new nomination to marshal the Bureau of Land Management that signals more extraction, scrapping resource management plan and a public land rule rollback, plus a shutdown that is grinding up national parks. On the other: states and regulators are erecting smart guardrails for very large electricity users, there is overwhelming pushback on the rule rollback, and Texas-scale solar-plus-storage. The through-line for conservation is siting: if we keep steering big loads and big builds to disturbed ground and existing electric corridors, and keep conservation as a co-equal use, public lands can stay wild even as the grid grows.
The State of Public Lands and Energy Relationship
November 10 — Lawmakers urge Interior to keep conservation rule that guides energy siting on federal land.
Comment period closes on rescinding the Public Lands Rule; overwhelming opposition recorded. Dozens of members of Congress asked the Interior Secretary to keep the Bureau of Land Management’s “Public Lands Rule,” which puts conservation on the same footing as extraction and recreation when planning across two hundred forty-five million acres.
Why it matters: This rule shapes day-to-day decisions on where oil, gas, wind, solar, and transmission lines are allowed and when habitats and cultural landscapes are involved, they get a hard “no.”
November 3 — Congress uses the Congressional Review Act to overturn multiple land-use decisions that limited drilling.
The Senate advanced resolutions to vacate Bureau of Land Management actions that had closed large areas in Alaska and the northern Plains to new oil and gas leasing.
Why it matters: Nullifying those protections re-opens federal acreage to energy development and resets the balance between habitat safeguards and extraction, especially in caribou and bird migration country. I wrote about these resource management plans in the article below.
November 5–6 — President nominates Steve Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management.
Former New Mexico congressman Steve Pearce, long aligned with expanded fossil energy and reduced federal land protections, was nominated to marshal the agency that oversees two hundred forty-five million acres and seven hundred million acres of subsurface minerals.
Why it matters: leadership will shape lease policy, conservation planning, and the fate of the Public Lands Rule, directly affecting where energy development and habitat protections advance or retreat.
November 4 — Interior considers shrinking the no-drilling buffer around Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
The Interior Department began consultations on whether to revoke or reduce a twenty-year ban on new oil and gas drilling within ten miles of the park’s boundary.
Why it matters: Rolling back the buffer could reopen culturally sacred and archaeologically rich federal lands to new leasing—an immediate test of how energy priorities weigh against tribal heritage and conservation.
November 5 — Greater Chaco lease sale draws protests at Bureau of Land Management offices.
Community and tribal advocates rallied in Santa Fe as the agency moved ahead with a scheduled sale of oil-and-gas parcels in New Mexico and Oklahoma.
Why it matters: These sales translate planning rules into wells and roads on the ground, determining whether drilling footprints expand toward sensitive landscapes—or get steered elsewhere.
Government Spotlight Public Lands
October 2 — Border security pretext for a backdoor land grab.
Sen. Mike Lee’s Border Lands Conservation Act would let Homeland Security and the Defense Department build roads, barriers, air access, and surveillance inside designated wilderness within 100 miles of the borders. About 9.5 million acres of wilderness area. This creates permanent corridors in places meant to stay roadless. It could affect millions of acres from the Southwest deserts to Alaska to the Boundary Waters; supporters call it border security, critics call it a border pretext for a backdoor land grab. The bill remains in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee with no hearing scheduled, as fresh coverage, especially in Minnesota, has sharpened opposition.
November 7–10 — Shutdown damage grows across parks and public lands.
With thousands of National Park Service staff furloughed, reports detail vandalism and unmanaged crowds, from graffiti at Arches to illegal parachuting in Yosemite.
Why it matters: degraded on-the-ground stewardship erodes resources and public trust.
Clean Energy in the News
November 10 — Bechtel to build Texas solar-plus-storage plant.
The Cold Creek project pairs roughly four hundred thirty megawatts of solar with a three-hundred-forty megawatt-hour battery.
Why it matters: large projects with storage firm up solar output for the evening hours—cutting gas burn and easing peak stress that often drives calls for new rights-of-way.
November 6 — Kansas signs off on cost-shielding rules for very large power users.
The Kansas Corporation Commission approved a plan that locks in long-term commitments, minimum monthly bills, and grid-upgrade payments for facilities over seventy-five megawatts.
Why it matters: clearer rules reduce the chance that households subsidize industrial growth and encourage very large users to build on disturbed ground with existing wires.
November 4 — New data center megaprojects announced.
Industry reporting highlights a joint artificial-intelligence capacity campus planned in Wisconsin and additional “hyperscale” builds in Indiana and Texas.
Why it matters: the scale and geography of these facilities dictate where firm power, transmission, and storage will be needed, raising the stakes for steering builds to brownfields and keeping high-value public lands out of the blast radius.
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.