On Monday, the Biden administration rescinded a Trump administration plan that would have permitted the government to lease more than two-thirds of the country’s greatest tract of public property to oil and gas drilling.

The decision by the Bureau of Land Management will reduce the amount of land available for lease in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, a roughly 23 million-acre zone home to species such as caribou and polar bears.

The decision reverts to an Obama administration plan that allowed for fossil fuel development in up to 52% of the reserve, unlike the Trump administration’s desire to open up 82 percent of the land to drilling. It will also restore certain environmental safeguards for specific portions of the reserve, such as Teshekpuk Lake, a wetland complex with a unique species population.

The action comes after the Bureau of Land Management awarded the fewest oil and gas permits for drilling on public lands under the Biden administration earlier this year.

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