DENVER – Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Thursday that president-elect Donald Trump’s transition team hasn’t contacted her department and she doesn’t know what his policy will be on managing public lands – a contentious issue in the West that has boiled over into armed confrontation in Nevada and Oregon.
Jewell was in Denver to announce that the federal government had canceled 25 leases for oil and gas drilling on pristine federal land in western Colorado, saying recreation was a better use for the land. No drilling had begun on the sites.
Jewell said she expects the decision to stand once Trump takes office because it came after years of consultation with industry and other parties.
She said she couldn’t predict what Trump’s public land policy will be because she has not heard from his transition team in the nine days since the election.
“I can’t pre-judge what kind of approach they may take or the people they put in place may take,” she said.
Trump has promised to increase oil and gas drilling on federal land, open up offshore drilling and undo some environmental and energy polices of President Barack Obama’s administration.
