The Trump administration on 24 july said it would no longer require oil drillers, miners, and other industries to compensate for damage they cause to public lands under their permitted projects, in a bid to speed up development on federal lands.
The move, the latest effort by the administration to help businesses by rolling back environmental protections, was announced in a memo from the Department of Interior to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officials.
“The BLM must not require compensatory mitigation from public land users,” the memo said.