Public record · established from primary sources
A Registry of Threatened American Public Lands
Public land changes hands in documents — a proclamation, a waiver, a comment period that closes in seven days. Those documents are public, but scattered across agencies and effective long before most people hear about them. This registry collects them, one case file per threat, and states plainly what each one does.
- Primary sources
- Every claim traces to a document you can open yourself.
- No editorializing
- No page assigns motive, predicts, or uses moral language.
- Conflicts preserved
- Where sources disagree, both figures are stated.
- Corrections in public
- Errors are logged and dated, never quietly edited away.
- Case files
- 14
- Place files
- 10
- System-wide
- 3
- Last verified
- 2026-08-17
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Markers colored by threat category — click a marker to open its case file. System-wide files have no coordinates and are listed separately.
Place files 10 a specific parcel of public land
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — Coastal Plain
First of four mandatory Coastal Plain lease sales held June 2026; only two bidders, about $3.7 million in high bids.
/bears-ears2026-08-17Bears Ears National Monument
Monument cut by over 90% in July 2026; excluded land reopens to mining after 60 days.
/big-bend2026-08-17Big Bend National Park
111+ miles of border barrier contracted through Big Bend under waived environmental law.
/boundary-waters2026-08-17Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (Superior National Forest watershed)
Congress overturned a 20-year mining ban near the BWCAW; Twin Metals' leases are advancing toward reinstatement.
/chaco-culture2026-08-17Chaco Culture National Historical Park (Greater Chaco Landscape)
BLM proposes revoking the 10-mile, 336,404-acre drilling buffer around Chaco Canyon.
/grand-canyon-pinyon-plain2026-08-17Pinyon Plain Uranium Mine (Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni National Monument, Grand Canyon region)
Active uranium mine 6 miles from the Grand Canyon has pumped 80+ million gallons of groundwater since 2016; EPA finds contamination potential.
/grand-staircase-escalante2026-08-17Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Monument cut from approximately 1.87 million to 181,541 acres on the same day as the Bears Ears cut.
/pacific-marine-monuments2026-08-17Pacific Marine National Monuments (Papahānaumokuākea, Pacific Islands Heritage, Mariana Trench, Rose Atoll)
Two 2026 proclamations opened portions of four Pacific marine monuments to commercial fishing; litigation ongoing.
/red-desert-rock-springs2026-08-17Red Desert / Rock Springs Resource Management Plan
A finalized 2024 conservation-oriented land plan for 3.6 million acres is being unwound just 9 months after completion.
/tongass-roadless-rule2026-08-17Tongass National Forest (2001 Roadless Rule Rescission)
USDA proposes rescinding roadless protections on ~44.7 million acres nationwide, including ~9.3 million roadless acres of the Tongass.
System-wide files 3 policy reaching every site at once
Federal decisions with no single location — agency funding, leasing programs, the standard for environmental review. Same schema and sourcing rules as every other file, but they cannot honestly be pinned to a map. Why they are shelved separately →
Artificial Intelligence as a Driver of Public-Lands Threats
Federal orders tie AI data-center power demand to coal leasing, critical minerals, and compressed environmental review.
/federal-coal-leasing2026-08-17Federal Coal Lands — Nationwide Leasing Expansion
Interior opened 13.1 million acres to coal leasing and cut the royalty rate to 7% under an order that ties coal to AI data-center demand.
/nps-budget-staffing-cuts2026-08-17National Park Service — Nationwide Budget & Staffing Cuts
NPS has lost 24% of its permanent staff since January 2025; a further $736M operations cut is proposed for FY27.
Watching 1 documented, not yet a full case file
These meet the standard for a real, active threat but not the full new-site checklist in Contribute — their Section 01 cannot yet be completed from the sources on hand. They are listed so the gap in the record is visible rather than hidden.
No case file matches that search. Try a site name, a state, a named company, or a threat type.
Get involved
Check a file against its sources
The most useful thing anyone can do here is try to break a claim. Follow a citation to the primary document and tell us if the page overstates what the document says. Every Corrections Log on this site exists because a claim did not survive that check.
Fill a documented gap
Every file states what it could not find: a missing Federal Register citation, an unretrieved council resolution, a contract value not confirmed against procurement records. Those gaps are listed as gaps on purpose.
Watch a deadline
Comment periods, effective dates, and lease-sale dates are collected on the Patterns page and published to the RSS feed as they change.
Contribution process Sourcing standards Data (JSON) Data (CSV)