Pulse of the Land - 2/10/2026
AI Wants More Power. This Week, the Arctic and Our Parks Were Put on the Menu.
“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.” — Aldo Leopold
This Week’s Take
Artificial intelligence and industrial buildouts are now land-use decisions in disguise. The United States is racing to feed data centers and factories with new power while the federal government both turbocharges drilling on wild Arctic ground and quietly slows wind and solar on public lands. This week’s stories sit on that fault line: an enormous Arctic lease sale, a renewable “blockade,” a sacred-site controversy, and one of the biggest corporate solar deals ever signed. The question underneath all of it: do we meet this new demand on already-scarred ground, or carve up more of the last quiet places?
The State of Public Lands and Energy Relationship
February 5, 2026 — Federal government revives massive drilling sale in Arctic oil reserve
The Trump administration announced that the Bureau of Land Management will auction oil and gas leases across five and a half million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska on March 9, the first sale there since 2019 and one of at least five required by Congress under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Within days, officials quietly delayed the sale after a public notice error but kept the full footprint on the table.
Why it matters: This resets the default toward more drilling in a vast Arctic landscape that includes caribou habitat, wetlands around Teshekpuk Lake and other subsistence areas, locking in new fossil infrastructure on public land right as demand for cleaner power is exploding.
February 8 — California public lands targeted for expanded drilling under “energy security” banner
New reporting and analysis detailed how the administration has moved to open more than one million acres of public land in California—including nearly four hundred thousand acres overlapping parks, beaches, and ecological reserves—to new oil and gas leasing, framed as a push for energy security even as production grows elsewhere.
Why it matters: Pointing the drill bit at heavily used recreation and habitat corridors makes extraction the default use of some of the most visible public landscapes, rather than steering new energy build toward brownfields, existing fields, and other disturbed sites.
February 5 — Federal “blockade” slows dozens of wind and solar projects on public lands
Synthesis pieces this week pulled together agency data and records showing that President Donald Trump’s team has stalled or frozen more than sixty large wind and solar projects on public lands, and hundreds more on private land, through permitting pauses, rule rewrites, and staffing cuts, even as new oil and gas leases race ahead.
Why it matters: It undercuts the idea that this is an “all of the above” energy strategy and shows public land policy actively tilting the playing field toward fossil projects with long-term climate and land-use impacts while clean projects sit in limbo.
February 3 — Federal regulators approve a two-billion-dollar renewable project on Yakama sacred ground
The Washington State Standard reported that federal regulators green-lit a roughly two-billion-dollar renewable energy project on or near land that the Yakama Nation considers sacred, despite tribal concerns about cultural resources and treaty rights.
Why it matters: This is the clean-energy mirror of the Arctic drilling fight: even low-carbon projects can do real damage if they are pushed onto sacred or intact ground instead of built first on already-disturbed sites, and tribes are again being asked to carry the cost of everyone else’s power.
Government Spotlight Public Lands
February 10 — New rules muzzle what park rangers can say about climate and protest
An internal memo, sparked by Executive Order 14253, laid out sweeping new communications rules for the National Park Service, barring staff from using phrases like “climate crisis,” tightening references to environmental justice and protest, and directing some parks to scrub websites and signs that discuss climate change or racial history.
Why it matters: What rangers say at trailheads shapes how visitors see public lands; if climate, colonization, or protest are treated as off-limits, parks risk becoming pretty backdrops rather than places that spark stewardship and honest debate about what happens on the surrounding landscape. So much for free speech!
February 10 — House panel weighs bills that would chip away at federal land protections
The House Natural Resources Committee’s Federal Lands panel scheduled a legislative hearing on a bundle of bills, including proposals to adjust access around Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, convey Bureau of Land Management parcels to local governments, and alter how post-fire national forest lands are managed.
Why it matters: Each bill is small on its own, but together they keep moving the line on what counts as “disposable” federal land, shifting chunks of the shared estate into local or private hands and rewriting the rules on how forests and monuments bounce back after fires.
February 9 — Trump reopens a deep-sea national monument to industrial fishing
Ocean policy watchers reported that a new presidential proclamation reopens the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing, unwinding prior protections that had limited industrial harvest in a rare deep-sea canyon and seamount complex off New England.
Why it matters: Even small offshore monuments are key climate and biodiversity refuges. Rolling back protections signals that any protected status from desert to canyon to coral reef can be reversed when politics or industry pressure heat up.
February 10 — A bird gets its graduation diploma
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service finalized a rule removing the wood stork (Southeast United States population) from Endangered Species Act protections after recovery.
Why it matters: Delisting can be a conservation win and a management stress test. It shifts the burden from federal emergency protections to long-term habitat stewardship, often in fast-growing regions where water, wetlands, and development pressures collide.
Clean Energy in the News
February 9 — Google locks in one gigawatt of Texas solar to feed artificial intelligence data centers
French energy company TotalEnergies signed two fifteen-year contracts to build and operate one gigawatt of new solar projects in Texas that will deliver about twenty-eight terawatt hours of power to Google’s growing data centers, with construction on the Wichita and Mustang Creek sites due to start this spring.
Why it matters: It is one of the largest corporate solar deals ever in the United States, proof that data center growth can bankroll huge clean energy projects while also accelerating the scramble for flat, sunny land and new transmission in already crowded energy landscapes.
February 2 — Offshore wind keeps breathing (for now)
A federal judge rejected an effort to halt construction on the Revolution Wind offshore wind project after the administration paused offshore wind permits.
Why it matters: Every stop-start cycle increases cost and pushes developers toward “least resistance” siting which is not always the “least impact” siting. Stable rules are how you keep clean energy on the disturbance-first path instead of the frantic-anywhere path.
February 4 — Transmission policy is the land-use policy (even when it pretends not to be)
A coalition of state attorneys general filed in support of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission transmission planning and cost allocation rule, arguing it is needed to build and pay for long-distance lines.
Why it matters: Transmission decides where generation goes. Get planning right and we can lean on existing corridors and brownfields more often; get it wrong and we sprawl new lines (and new fights) across habitat, viewsheds, and cultural landscapes
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.
Sources:
Reuters - Rising US industrial load intensifies power generation need
Washington State Standard - Feds greenlight $2B renewable energy project on Yakama Nation sacred site
Reuters - TotalEnergies to provide solar power to Google’s Texas data centres
National Resource Committee - Legislative Hearing: Federal Lands | February 10th
Ocean Policy Insights from ESP Advisors - Appropriations Season Never Ends: FY26 Unfinished, FY27 Begins
Center for Western Priorities - Trump is delaying renewable projects on public and private land
Bureau of Ocean Energy Management - California Oil and Gas Leasing Activities
Reuters - US to auction drilling rights for Alaska reserve on March 9
US Fish and Wildlife - Wood Stork Delisted
Federal Register.gov - Call for Nominations and Comments for the 2026 Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Lease Sale
Environmental and Energy Law Program Harvard Law School - Federal Offshore Wind Deployment
Center for Biological Diversity - Federal Government Announces New Analysis of Nevada Transmission Line