Obama flexes muscles on resources with eye on legacy

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

President Obama has quickly built a hefty portfolio on natural resource issues.

In the last two years, Obama has designated or expanded a dozen national monuments, preserved more than 1.1 million acres in the West and moved to permanently ban drilling in the oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge...

If history is any indication, Obama's pace of executive actions on lands and waters could accelerate.
Consider that President Clinton in his last year in office designated or expanded 18 of his 19 national monuments, permanently setting aside more than 3.3 million acres, according to National Park Service data.

Obama last week designated three new monuments covering 22,000 acres in Illinois, Colorado and Hawaii, calling parks, monuments and waters the "birthright of all Americans."
Other major land and energy decisions are fast approaching:

• The administration will decide in coming months whether to permit Royal Dutch Shell PLC to drill in the relatively pristine Chukchi Sea off Alaska's North Slope, where there are an estimated 15 billion barrels of oil.

• The Bureau of Land Management will write or finalize major rules governing hydraulic fracturing, methane venting and flaring, and royalties.

• And BLM will finalize unprecedented new protections for sage grouse across tens of millions of acres of Western rangelands, an effort some conservationists are comparing to Clinton's sweeping 2001 roadless rule.

 "What Obama is doing is setting a platform for action over the next two years," said Bill Meadows, former president of the Wilderness Society. "There's so much more that can be done, and I think he's enjoying it."

Green groups are also seeking protections of 1.7 million acres surrounding the Grand Canyon, more than 1 million acres in the Southern California desert and 350,000 acres of Nevada's Gold Butte, a vast desert of multihued rocks, petroglyphs and slot canyons.

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