President Biden's Last Push to Cement His Conservation Legacy

New monuments, drilling restrictions, and species protections could have lasting benefits

By Ethan Freedman

January 19, 2025

President Joe Biden smiles at a podium

Photo by Susan Walsh/AP File

In the past few weeks, the Biden administration put the finishing touches on some big conservation and public lands projects—from decisions on offshore oil drilling and endangered species to new protections for a suite of landscapes. Many of these actions are big wins for the conservation movement and could help protect wild places, endangered species, and the climate for years to come.

That said, some big questions about the future of American conservation policy remain, including how many of these recent actions could be undone by President-elect Trump. Here’s a quick recap of what the Biden administration has been up to in the past few weeks, what these actions mean for conservation goals, and what the coming weeks, months, and years might bring.

Protecting new lands

Under the 1906 Antiquities Act, presidents can set aside existing public land as national monuments—and earlier this month, the White House announced the creation of two new national monuments in California. The first, the Chuckwalla National Monument, will protect over 600,000 acres of desert habitat, home to species like bighorn sheep and chuckwalla lizards. The Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, covering more than 200,000 acres in Northern California, will protect wildlife like the Cascades frog and long-toed salamander. Both monuments also contain sites sacred to Indigenous peoples of the West Coast.

Lydia Weiss, senior director of government relations with the nonprofit Wilderness Society, told Sierra that these two national monuments add to an “incredible legacy of conservation from this administration.” But national monuments could be a flashpoint in the coming years. During his first term, Trump dramatically reduced the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in Utah. Those moves were challenged in court, but Biden reinstated the original boundaries after taking office. 

Daniel Rohlf, an environmental law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, told Sierra that there has not been a “definitive ruling” on whether a president can use the Antiquities Act to reduce the size of existing monuments. But he also noted that Chief Justice Roberts has previously appeared to question whether the president has the authority to designate large, ecosystem-scale monuments under the Antiquities Act. In addition, Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint, has proposed repealing the Antiquities Act—and some GOP members of Congress have introduced legislation that would require congressional approval of any new monuments.

A sweeping offshore drilling ban

The Biden administration also recently made headlines with a permanent ban on new offshore drilling in the vast majority of the country’s coastal waters. This action prohibits future oil or gas leases across the East Coast; the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington; the eastern Gulf of Mexico; and parts of Alaska’s Bering Sea. Many conservation and climate groups celebrated the move. But this ban was also not as dramatic as it might seem, as nearly all the country’s existing offshore oil and gas drilling occurs in the western and central Gulf of Mexico.

Trump has already promised to reverse the ban. But it’s possible that Biden’s move could keep drilling out of these coastal waters for the long haul. Biden withdrew this area from drilling using powers granted to the president via the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act—and Rohlf said that when Trump attempted to reverse a similar ban in Alaska coastal waters that had been enacted by former President Obama, a district court judge ruled that the president does not have the authority to revoke a prior withdrawal.

Grizzly bears stay protected

Last week, the US Fish and Wildlife Service chose to keep grizzly bears across the northwest protected under the Endangered Species Act. The state governments of Montana and Wyoming had previously asked the agency to remove protections for the species in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems, citing the bears’ recovery in those specific areas. Idaho had also asked the agency to remove protections for the species in all the lower 48 states.

Instead, the USFWS will manage all grizzlies in the northwest as one population. This decision, the agency said, will help the bears recover across the entire region. A recent species status assessment published by the agency notes that while the bears are doing well in both the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems, they are still missing from other parts of the northwest, including the North Cascades. With this new decision, the agency also amended a rule on “take,” or killing of bears, to “give management agencies and landowners greater flexibility and tools to take bears in the context of research and conflict management.”

The incoming Trump administration could try to change grizzly bear protections. But this recent decision from the Biden administration could complicate that, Rohlf said. “The Fish and Wildlife Service would have to come up with some sort of biological justification for changing course,” he said. “And I think that would be more challenging.”

What comes next?

The past couple of months have also seen the finalization of the Western Solar Plan, a new strategy for how to build solar farms on public lands in the West, and the signing of the EXPLORE Act, which will improve recreation on public lands. Weiss, from the Wilderness Society, also noted that an oil and gas leasing sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge recently ended with no bids to drill on these ecologically sensitive lands. It hasn’t all been good news for conservation: Last week, the US Forest Service dropped plans for new protections in old-growth forests (though Science reports that some experts weren’t too impressed with how the plan was shaping up anyway).

But, according to Rohlf, one of the most savvy moves the Biden administration may have made in these final weeks is taking no action at all. A law called the Congressional Review Act gives Congress the power to revoke recently adopted rules and stipulate that the agency cannot adopt similar rules in the future. So, by leaving some regulations unfinished, the Biden administration may have actually prevented the new Congress from hampering future regulation efforts, Rohlf said. (The Congressional Review Act does not apply to executive actions such as the drilling ban or monument declarations.)

That said, the country’s conservation goals and programs are far from secure. In the coming years, a Trump presidency, full GOP control of Congress, and a conservative-leaning Supreme Court could change the basic calculus of American conservation policy. But even as the federal government changes hands this month, the country’s lands, waters, and wildlife will stay much the same—chuckwallas will be skittering across the Southern California deserts, halibut will be hiding among the sands of the Pacific coast, and grizzly bears will be waiting out the long, cold months in the northwestern forests.

The government’s only choice is to decide how, or whether, to keep it that way.