The Assault on America’s Public Lands: Project 2025 and the Conservative Crusade to Dismantle Federal Stewardship

February 18, 2025
12:08 pm

In the summer of 2024, the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise—a 920-page blueprint for a second Trump administration known as “Project 2025”—laid bare a radical vision for America’s public lands. Framed as a corrective to “big government overreach,” the plan seeks nothing less than the dismantling of federal environmental protections, the privatization of critical ecosystems, and the transfer of stewardship from public to corporate hands. At its core, Project 2025 represents the culmination of a decades-long conservative campaign to redefine the relationship between the American people and the landscapes they collectively own—a campaign now turbocharged by allies like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Vice President JD Vance.

The Historical Backdrop: From Conservation to Extraction

The modern conservation movement traces its roots to Theodore Roosevelt, who established the U.S. Forest Service and signed the Antiquities Act of 1906, granting presidents the authority to protect federal lands as national monuments. Over the next century, bipartisan consensus held that public lands—national parks, forests, and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) territories—should be managed for the “greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.” This ethos underpinned iconic policies like the Wilderness Act (1964) and the Endangered Species Act (1973), which prioritized ecological integrity over short-term profit.

But the rise of the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1970s marked a turning point. Western states and corporate interests began framing federal land management as a form of “tyranny,” arguing that states or private entities could better exploit these territories for mining, logging, and fossil fuel extraction. Project 2025 is the ideological heir to this movement, amplified by the financial and political muscle of tech billionaires and far-right ideologues.

Project 2025’s Roadmap: Dismantling Protections, Expanding Exploitation

The plan’s authors—including William Perry Pendley, a former Trump-era Bureau of Land Management (BLM) acting director who once advocated selling federal lands—outline a multi-pronged strategy:

Abolishing the Antiquities Act:
Project 2025 explicitly targets the Antiquities Act, the legal bedrock for national monuments like Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. Pendley’s chapter calls for reversing protections for monuments such as Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou and Maine’s Katahdin Woods and Waters, arguing these designations “lock up resources”. The plan also directs a future president to review all monuments established since 1996, aiming to shrink boundaries and reopen lands to drilling and mining.
Gutting the Endangered Species Act (ESA):
The blueprint seeks to strip protections for species like the gray wolf and sage grouse, labeling the ESA a “weapon against economic growth”. By reclassifying species as “non-essential” and ending reintroduction programs, the plan prioritizes oil, gas, and mineral leases over biodiversity.
Privatizing Management and Defunding Stewardship:
Project 2025 proposes transferring federal land management to states or private contractors, a move critics warn would enable “a fire sale to corporate interests”. The plan also slashes budgets for the National Park Service (NPS) and BLM while redirecting funds toward fossil fuel infrastructure. For example, the NPS’s 2025 budget request includes a $5 million cut to cyclic maintenance, exacerbating a $23 billion backlog.
Expanding Extraction on Public Lands:
The document mandates “energy dominance,” directing agencies to fast-track permits for drilling in sensitive areas like Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Colorado’s Thompson Divide, and Minnesota’s Boundary Waters. Pendley boasts that fossil fuel lobbyists “wrote the energy section in its entirety.

Key Architects and Allies: Musk, Thiel, Vance, and the Privatization Agenda

Project 2025’s vision aligns with the interests of tech oligarchs and libertarians who view public lands as untapped markets.

Elon Musk:
Musk, appointed by Trump to lead the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), has spearheaded efforts to defund environmental agencies. In February 2025, DOGE slashed the National Park Service’s seasonal staffing budget by 40%, canceled wildfire prevention grants, and locked employees out of personnel systems Musk has also advocated privatizing NOAA’s climate research, calling it “alarmist,” and proposed selling “underutilized” BLM lands for housing—a policy critics warn would spur luxury developments, not affordability.
Peter Thiel:
The PayPal co-founder and Trump ally has long championed “network states”—privatized enclaves governed by tech elites. Thiel’s associates, including venture capitalist David Sacks, have lobbied to deregulate public lands for data centers and resource extraction. In 2025, Thiel-backed lawmakers introduced the “Make Greenland Great Again Act,” a bid to pressure Denmark into selling the island for U.S. mining interests.
JD Vance:
Trump’s vice president has echoed Project 2025’s rhetoric, dismissing federal stewardship as “obstruction.” During the 2024 campaign, Vance argued that BLM lands “not designated for parks” should be sold for housing, ignoring their role in hunting, grazing, and watershed protection. As vice president, he has defended Musk’s DOGE cuts, stating, “Judges shouldn’t control executive power” when courts block fossil fuel permits.
Donald Trump:
Trump’s first term set the stage: he reduced Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante by 85%, revoked methane emission rules, and leased 5 million acres to oil companies In 2025, he pledged to establish “low-tax zones” on federal lands to attract mining firms, vowing to “end the climate hoax” by dismantling the EPA.

Case Studies: The Human and Ecological Toll

Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument:
This Oregon monument, protecting biodiversity at the convergence of three mountain ranges, faces renewed threats. Project 2025 calls for revoking its status to allow logging, citing a 19th-century mining agreemen. Local conservationist Dave Willis warns, “They’re trading ancient forests for short-term profit”
Chaco Culture National Historical Park:
The Biden administration’s 10-mile buffer zone blocking oil drilling near sacred Puebloan sites is slated for repeal. Pendley claims the zone “stifles energy independence,” despite protests from Navajo leaders.
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:
Project 2025 mandates leasing the refuge’s coastal plain to oil companies, reversing a 2023 Biden moratorium. Gwich’in activists, who rely on the region’s caribou herds, call it “cultural genocide”.

The Bigger Picture: Democracy and the Public Trust

The assault on public lands is inseparable from Project 2025’s broader goals: centralizing power, defanging regulatory agencies, and transferring public wealth to private hands. By dismantling the NPS, BLM, and EPA, the plan undermines the very idea that natural resources should benefit all citizens—not just shareholders.

Historians note parallels to the Gilded Age, when industrial barons treated landscapes as disposable commodities. As Duke University’s Nancy MacLean warns, “Project 2025 isn’t just about parks—it’s about breaking the government’s ability to protect the commons”.

Conclusion: A Crossroads for Conservation

The 2025 election has delivered a stark choice: preserve the legacy of Roosevelt and Muir or surrender to a vision of privatized plunder. While Project 2025’s proponents frame their agenda as “freedom,” its outcomes—polluted waterways, extinct species, and landscapes scarred by drilling—reveal a darker truth. As climate disasters intensify and communities mobilize to defend their public lands, the fight over Project 2025 is not merely political. It is a battle for the soul of American democracy.

Sources

National Park Service FY 2025 Budget Justifications
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