It has been two months since Doug Burgum, President Donald Trump’s new secretary of the interior and former governor of North Dakota, his staff to review protected federal lands with an eye toward increasing extractive activities such as oil, gas and uranium production. The review was supposed to conclude by Feb. 18, per Burgum’s order, but no results have been released to the public yet.
And it has been about three weeks since Trump signed an , titled “Immediate Measures to Increase Mineral Production,� instructing Burgum and other department heads to “identify as many sites as possible on Federal land� suitable for fast-tracked commercial mining. The results of that order are still pending.
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