Investigative Report: Why Republicans Are At War With Public Lands And Wildlife

There’s no denying the Trump administration and its army of House and Senate Republican lackies are at full-on war with our public lands, wildlife, and bedrock environmental laws. In just 18 months, they have wrought unimaginable damage, including, but not limited to, forcing a huge industrial mine in the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area, gutting the Endangered Species Act, demanding the bulldozing of the Ambler road through pristine Alaska wilderness, shredding protections for our sacred national monuments, and opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling.

I’ve alerted you to these travesties in past dispatches, and many of you have sent me heartfelt responses; my favorites include wonderfully woven tapestries of blue-streaked swearing that would make sailors cower from embarrassment. I must admit I treasure every single one, often repeating the best throughout the day like an earwormed song you just can’t quit. But the most common response to the woeful news is not a rant, it’s a simple, exasperated, forlorn question from distraught public land owners across America:

“Why are they doing this?”

Given the incredible damage and likely criminal implications, you might guess the answer would be shrouded in a complex, hard-to-prove web of conspiracies. But no, it turns out that just a modicum of sleuthing uncovers the simple, easily discoverable reasons for it all, and we need only examine the backstories of three recent high-profile disasters to arrive at the inescapable answers to this important question.

1. Forcing Industrial Mining That Will Pollute The Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) - America’s Most Visited Wilderness

   How it happened: This story centers on Chilean-owned Twin Metals Mining, its billionaire owner and CEO Andronico Luksic, and his multi-year effort to overturn the nearly 30-year prohibition on mining around the BWCA. This story takes shape in early 2017, just as Trump’s first administration was ramping up.

   Just before Donald Trump took his first oath of office that year, Luksic, who controlled the huge international mining conglomerate that owned a controversial and therefore useless mining lease on protected public land bordering the BWCA, rightly sensed that the new administration could be bought and that his mining lease asset could become much more valuable.

   In January of that year, Luksic, the man who would eventually spend millions “lobbying” to reverse the mining ban in Minnesota, added a seemingly unrelated asset to his books: a highly sought-after $5.5 million home in D.C. Within days, he also signed a sweet little “rental” agreement at that very address for two very specific tenants: Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.1 And so began a burgeoning relationship of corruption, payoffs, and exploding personal wealth at the expense of the BWCA.

   

   The only hiccup in his plan happened when the Biden administration successfully blocked that mine and stalled the corruption for four years, but after Trump’s 2024 win, the corruption game was back on. By then, Kushner had enlisted others to help, like former Trump Interior officials Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt, both of whom played pivotal roles in what was to follow.

   

   In April of this year, nine years after that first sweetheart Javanka D.C. lease, it all paid off when the House of Representatives and Senate finally caved to Kushner and Trump’s pressure, approving the mine on a contentious, nearly entirely party-line votes. Twin Metals’ value subsequently increased 1688%, from less than $151 million in 2019 to more than $2.7 billion today.

   And that ain’t the only thing that increased, Republican corruption has also been on a rocket ship the past few years, and so it’s reasonable to expect that Kushner’s initial rental payoff has grown into a lucrative criminal enterprise, including crypto for Trump, God-knows-what for his bumbling sons, and payoffs for buffoons like Zinke (whose officially-reported personal wealth has multiplied by nearly 20x since he first entered office). They all did it for the same reasons: to make a couple of bucks by polluting the sacred wild landscape where children learn to fish, and more than 20% of the freshwater in all wilderness areas is found.
   

   Verdict/Why They Are Doing It: Corruption, bribery, and corporate greed

2. Bulldozing the Ambler mining road through Alaska’s most pristine and unspoiled wilderness

   How it happened: Prior to 2016, the massive 211-mile Ambler road project was mostly considered a dangerous, pipe dream of rape-and-pillage speculators. It was risky, expensive, opposed by a dozen Native American tribes, and reliant on unproven, highly speculative mineral deposits that would probably never pay off, or copper that would have to be shipped to China if it was actually there.

   Nonetheless, in a foreshadowing decision, Trump hastily demanded the road be approved just months before he (begrudgingly) left office in 2020. Soon after, and just like in the BWCA decision above, the Biden administration reversed Trump’s insanity and barred consideration of an industrial project that would punch a road through some of the most stunning remaining wilderness on the planet; landscapes that included sacred native sites, more than 3000 river, stream, and wetland crossings, and construction directly within the Gates of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.2

   

   Given those hurdles, one might assume this project was dead, but just like the BWCA disaster, the Ambler road had inside help from a man who knew how to wield corruption long and hard enough that he would eventually get what he wanted. This time, it was a billionaire hedge fund bro and huge Trump donor, named John Paulson. In 2015, Paulson bought shares in a little-known Canadian company, Trilogy Metals, for what was a song because Trilogy was a shaky bet, since any increase in value rested on long-shot guesses about iffy deposits deep in the Alaskan wilderness and an industrial access road that no sane person thought should be built.

   Paulson, who contributed huge sums to Trump’s campaign slush funds, knew that only bribery and corruption could solve those problems, and he knew he had a willing audience in Trump. And he was right, because in October of last year, the Trump administration overruled the Biden decree and demanded that the Ambler road be constructed, over the vehement opposition of native Alaskan groups, almost every environmental organization in America, hunters and anglers across the country, and decent people everywhere.

   

   Paulson, who had also somehow convinced Trump to officially invest nearly $ 40 million of your U.S. Taxpayer money in Trilogy, was jubilant. Just weeks after the Ambler decision, he sold his entire interest in the formerly sleepy foreign company and personally profited tens of millions.

   Paulson, by the way, is still happily spending millions of dollars in campaign funds (aka political bribes) to Trump and his Republican allies today in anticipation of his next escapade.3

   Verdict/Why They Are Doing It: Corruption, bribery, and corporate greed

3. Gutting the Endangered Species Act and Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Oil and Gas Drilling

   Nothing slows the habitat destruction from oil and gas development like pesky citizen-demanded laws, such as the Endangered Species Act or prohibitions on federal leasing in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. These policies, enacted by the representatives of millions of Americans, require that careful review must precede any description of critical habitats lest it “harm” the things we care to conserve.

   But no President has ever - literally ever - been so overtly and actively invested in that same industry while in office.

   And so perhaps it’s true that we could have seen these decisions coming; Trump did, after all, promise to deliver a plethora of favors to the industry in exchange for a billion in industry-generated campaign funds, a public quid pro quo almost too honest to believe.4

   

   Nonetheless, the recent “harm” policy announcement from the administration is still shocking because it informs the oil industry that no measure of destroying critical habitat of any endangered or threatened creature will be considered “harm.” It’s a blank check for an industry that delivered several literal checks to Trump and his Republican allies, and the impacts are detailed in my recent piece here. They plan to destroy habitats and kill endangered species, plain and simple.

   

   Likewise, the Trump administration’s decision to open up the Arctic to industrial development is part of the same scheme. And like so much of what Trump does, these actions are linked to his personal greed. On this one, you don’t have to guess at the motives; he goes so far as to officially report his personal stake in companies like Conoco and Exxon. In other words, he is personally making billions for oil and gas CEOs while making huge sums for himself and his cronies. AND HE’S NOT HIDING ANY OF IT. These people are literally waving the corruption in your face. They are selling your last and most wild places, your clean water, your wildlife, so that a small group of them can become more insanely wealthy.

   Verdict/Why They Are Doing It: Corruption, bribery, and corporate greed

   If you sense a trend, congratulations. Yes, every reason for every decision is the same. Nothing is complex or obscure. Greed and corruption are at the heart of everything this administration is doing. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

   The midterms are coming, but perhaps it’s also time to read up on the French Revolution.

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