Interior Coal Leasing Plan Ropes in Land Near National Parks

Land surrounding North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park and near Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park is included in the Interior Department’s plan to open 13.1 million acres of federal land to coal leasing.

The acreage targeted for coal leasing includes vast swaths of western North Dakota, eastern Montana, and northeast Wyoming—regions that have already seen intense oil and gas or coal development, according to a Bureau of Land Management map seen by Bloomberg Law.

The map is not yet public but will be published when the plan appears in the Federal Register, an Interior Department spokesperson said. The department did ...