Trump has ambitious plans for federal land use. This is why he may not be able to accomplish them all.

President-elect Donald Trump has ambitious plans to use US federal lands to extract natural resources.

But Trump – which he promised at the Republican National Convention in July “Dig Baby Dig” if re-elected, most of his plans may be impossible to implement because of existing protections and the way federal lands are defined, environmental law experts told ABC News.

Trump won’t be able to “just raise the bar” for new oil and gas drilling on the first day of his administration, Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s Land Protection Program, told ABC News.

“It comes down to where every administration has to distinguish between the rhetoric they use on the campaign trail and the real challenges of actually governing,” said Stan Meiburg, executive director of Wake Forest University’s Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability. said ABC News.

National parkswilderness areas, wildlife refuges, military reservations, and public lands are owned and managed by the federal government.

Public land is meant to be used for the public good, but over the past century or so, that definition has sometimes included the extraction of natural resources, such as oil, gas, minerals and timber, according to director Peter Colohan. Federal strategies at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a nonpartisan think tank.

Federal lands are for “the benefit and enjoyment of all people,” Colohan told ABC News, recalling former President Teddy Roosevelt’s famous phrase inscribed on the archway at Yellowstone National Park’s north entrance.

Trump did what environmentalists generally believed he did against the environment the political regime in its first term, Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement When he took office in 2016 to fight climate change – he said he intended to do it again, reversing the January 20, 2021 action by President Biden. rejoin the agreement – removing clear water and air pollution protections, and expedited environmental reviews of dozens of major energy and infrastructure projects, such as drilling and fuel pipelines, which Trump said would help boost U.S. energy production and the economy.

In his next term, Trump has also promised to significantly increase the production of fossil fuels in the US, even though the US already produces and exports them. record amount of crude oil Under the Biden administration.

“I think it’s an absolute certainty that Trump will push for the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a 19.3 million-acre area in northeastern Alaska that provides critical habitat for many species, unimpeded oil drilling, as well as areas outside the refuge. Along the coast of Alaska,” he said. says Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, to ABC News. “He’s been shooting for it for years.”

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment for this story.

Regulatory challenges

The president and the executive branch may have “great discretion” over control of public lands and monuments, but existing laws protecting lands like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will be difficult to overturn, Suckling said.

Since the 1970s, many environmental regulations have been enacted to protect the US landscape, such as the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, and subsequent Clean Water Act in 1972 and Endangered Species Act in 1973 Clean Air Act It was created in 1963 and since then it has changed several times, the first time in 1970.

Because of that legal environmental infrastructure, it would be nearly impossible for Trump to easily or unilaterally change those protections, experts said. In order for the Trump administration to overturn regulations against the use of protected lands for energy production, it would have to present evidence to show that the proposed actions would not violate existing environmental laws, Suckling said.

“You have to use the best available science and if the science doesn’t support your policy, the law won’t allow you to do that,” Suckling said.

The day after Trump won re-election, President Joe Biden attended reduce the scope In 2017, Trump signed the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge contract to limit oil drilling. Colohan found “legal deficiencies” in the leases that the Biden administration would allow the Trump administration to expand fossil fuel production.

The biggest challenge to drilling on Trump-protected lands is whether those areas are economically competitive compared to where people are drilling on private land using hydraulic fracturing or fracking, Meiburg said.

However, most federal lands are not protected, Drew Caputo, Earthjustice’s vice president of litigation, told ABC News. For unprotected land, it is possible that Trump will issue an executive order to lease it for energy production. However, any time a decision is made to lease public lands, “there’s bound to be a legal battle,” Colohan said, adding that executive orders are “more reversible” than an existing regulation.

Environmental activist resistance

For Trump to open up federal lands to leases, his administration is required by law to notify the public, and environmental lawyers will be ready to challenge it.

“Environmental laws have been carefully designed to achieve a stable, democratic and scientific outcome,” Suckling said. “You can’t just come in and jump in and do whatever you want, and that’s why the United States has one of the best-protected environments — one of the cleanest, healthiest environments of any nation on earth.”

During Trump’s first term, the Center for Biological Diversity sued his administration 266 times and won about 90 percent of those actions, Suckling said. Earthjustice filed about 200 lawsuits against the Trump administration and won about 85 percent of them, according to Caputo.

“We’re going to have to sue the pants off them whenever we can,” said the Sierra Club’s Manuel.

The Trump administration will likely face opposition from other stakeholders, such as Native American tribes, which could affect whether federal lands are leased for energy extraction, Meiburg said.

Trump’s loss in the 2020 election could be the momentum needed to thwart his agenda for federal lands, some experts said. Since he was re-elected four years later, he is essentially a one-term president and many of the proposed actions could be tied up in litigation for years, Suckling said.

Conversely, if Trump had been in office for eight consecutive years, he may have provided the continuity to make more sweeping changes to federal land use, Caputo said. If the House or Senate were to shift to Democratic control after the midterm elections, it would likely further undermine Trump’s agenda, Manuel said.

However, it’s also a challenge for land managers and environmental agencies when there’s constant turnover in the regulatory environment because it can slow progress on environmental protection, Colohan said.

All land is under pressure: for development, resource extraction, agricultural use, climate change or biodiversity loss, Colohan said. But federal lands hold the ideal of conservation for public benefit, recreation, cultural purposes, and climate mitigation and resilience, he added.

“Those things are better, the longer-term benefits come from conservation,” Colohan said. “And so that’s really a choice that every administration makes.”