In Trump’s last days, a spree of environmental rollbacks

But Trump has managed to usher through an unusually large number of energy and environmental policies in just a single term, according to a Washington Post analysis, and has finalized more than two dozen since he lost the election in November.

“Trump is the most anti-nature president in U.S. history, so it comes as no surprise that his administration is doubling down by selling off anything and everything before they leave office,” said Jenny Rowland-Shea, a senior policy analyst for public lands at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “What we’re seeing right now is a last-ditch, desperate effort by the Trump administration to rubber-stamp as many permits, sign as many contracts and cut as many protected areas as it can to make a mess for the incoming Biden administration.”

In the past week, for example, the Interior Department overturned an Obama-era measure that increased royalties that oil, gas and coal companies pay the federal government; cut 3.4 million acres in critical habitat for the northern spotted owl, which faces extinction; expedited approvals to lease more than 550,000 acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for energy development; and approved a four-lane highway through Utah’s Red Cliffs National Conservation Area, which had been permanently protected as a wildlife reserve 25 years ago.