Acting Deputy Secretary Daniel Davis Delivers Farewell Speech, Highlights Enduring Progress During Biden Harris Administration

Date: Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Contact: [email protected]

WASHINGTON - Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis today delivered remarks during a program at the Department of the Interior to celebrate the historic and enduring progress achieved during the Biden-Harris administration.

Over the past four years, the Biden-Harris administration has made unprecedented progress for our shared public lands, waters, wildlife and the communities they sustain. Under Secretary Deb Haaland and Acting Deputy Secretary Daniel-Davis's leadership, the Department has taken bold action to protect sacred spaces, lands, waters and wildlife, and has forever changed what it means to honor the nation-to-nation relationship with Tribes. The Department and its bureaus have expanded what support for locally led conservation and restoration looks like. Through collaborative work, dedicated public servants have unleashed the science and advanced a clean energy economy that will power millions of homes and businesses across the country. And thanks to the President's Investing in America agenda, the Department has invested billions of dollars into critical infrastructure projects and in communities that have been historically marginalized.

Acting Deputy Secretary Daniel-Davis's remarks as prepared for delivery are below:

Hello everyone! Thank you, Rachael, for those kind words and for your partnership these past four years. It's an understatement to say that this job - and serving in this powerhouse Administration - has been the honor of my lifetime.

But to be clear, our Administration has only been as strong as our colleagues. All of you have been the real drivers of the change that our public lands, waters and current and future generations have needed for so long.

I've been at the Department for several years and have worked with several Secretaries. And a thing I've noticed over all those years, is that we tend to bump up against the same issues over, and over, and over. Yes, that's the nature of the job, and it's the reality of federal service. But what I've admired most is that working together in the last several years, we have made lasting and historic progress on challenges this institution is used to confronting every single day.

And what's even better, is that we have accomplished this work while striking the balance we need to ensure that our progress is durable and serves us long into the future.

Because that's the mission of our Department. Not solving for one industry or community over another; but finding balance among our many stakeholders and balance in resolving thorny, complicated issues - and ultimately, doing our work well and accomplishing the goals that Secretary Haaland set for us.

I know so many of you, like me, take the long view and understand our accomplishments are measured in things like connecting generations to the outdoors, in sustaining cultural traditions, in ensuring we have places where we can find moments of solitude and reflection in nature. And those are the results of doing our work together in this way.

And so, I'm going to take up the first of the goals Rachael laid out: to make significant, enduring progress to tackle the climate and biodiversity crises.

To start, we established and restored protections for public lands and waters. A lot of public lands and waters. In fact, our Administration has protected a stunning 670 million acres - from the newly established Chuckwalla National Monument in California, to the Everglades to Gulf Conservation Area in Florida. In total, President Biden has established, expanded, or restored an incredible 15 national monuments that more completely tell the story of who we are as a nation.

Secretary Haaland also created six new national wildlife refuges and significantly expanded the boundaries of five more. Now with more than 570 refuges in the National Wildlife Refuge System, we are protecting iconic species and providing some of the best wildlife viewing opportunities on Earth. That includes in urban wildlife refuges, where visitors can explore beautiful landscapes, free of charge.

But we didn't just make history in our work to protect our lands and waters - we also embraced the overdue transition to a clean energy future - because the climate crisis demands that we meet this moment with the urgency it requires. That transition requires putting the most suitable public lands to good use and with balance in mind. We have been given a false choice that suggests we cannot be committed to conservation and a clean energy future. In fact, we have proven just the opposite.

Under the Biden-Harris administration, the Bureau of Land Management approved 46 onshore renewable projects - from solar to wind to geothermal. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved 11 offshore wind projects on the Atlantic Coast, the nation's first commercial-scale projects in federal waters. And thanks to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, we have a new offshore wind safety and inspection program to ensure this new industry is doing everything with the highest safety protocol. In total, our renewable energy programs have permitted enough projects to power more than 21 million American homes.

These projects, and as importantly the thoughtful, collaborative processes we have implemented to get there, show that we can balance our responsibilities. We can refine project boundaries to protect threatened species. We can work with Tribes to respect their ancestral lands. We can protect our planet together.

Part of meeting the moment is recognizing that when there are millions of leased and unused acres available for oil and gas development, we don't need more. We are so grateful to the President for using his authority to protect more than 625 million acres of the U.S. Ocean and our fragile coasts from offshore drilling.

On our public lands, where there are many thousands of unused permits to drill, we've focused on high potential, low conflict areas. We made informed and balanced decisions about critical swaths of land that benefit our entire country.

We rejected flawed proposals like the Ambler Road, protecting over 200 miles along the iconic Brooks Range of Alaska that are ecologically vibrant and provide vital subsistence resources for so many Alaska Native communities.

We finalized administrative withdrawals for places that support local communities, honor sacred sites, and strengthen outdoor recreation economies. The Boundary Waters in Minnesota...Chaco Canyon in New Mexico...the Thompson Divide in Colorado. These are places that are too special and sacred to allow for oil, gas or mining activities.

But we didn't just protect places. We invested heavily in them and the people who steward them every day.

With $16 billion from the President's Investing in America agenda, we began the long, overdue project of cleaning up legacy pollution like orphaned oil and gas wells through a new office at the Department and abandoned coal mines through the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. These toxic sites aren't just an eyesore - they pollute air and waterways, litter the ground with debris, and harm wildlife and local communities.

We also addressed one of the West's biggest challenges - the historic drought that jeopardizes the future of the Colorado River. Because when you collaborate - you can do hard things! In 2021, historic drought along the river brought the communities it serves - more than 40 million people - to a near crisis. A 23-year megadrought diminished the river's largest reservoirs - Lake Mead and Lake Powell - to critically low elevations, which threatened water deliveries and power production. The Department and Bureau of Reclamation jumped into action. Through the President's Investing in America agenda, Reclamation is leveraging nearly $13 billion in critical investments across the west through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. For the first time, we brought all stakeholders to the decision making table - Tribes, states, and the federal government. And thanks to that unprecedented consultation, coordination, and historic funding, we staved off the immediate threat and charted a path for future discussions.

And the investment in our future isn't limited to the Colorado River. In fact, with over $2 billion through the Investing in America agenda, we developed nine place-based priorities - Keystone Initiatives - under the banner of our Restoration and Resilience Framework. From salmon in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, to the iconic Prairie grasslands and the bison that roam there, we invested in locally led conservation that put wildlife and their habitats and communities first. These are enduring investments in the people and wildlife that call these ecosystems home.

What has been foundational to all of these efforts is that we resolved to do business differently. To bring balance and transparency to the Department's work so that our successes live on, even after we leave our posts.

We connected early and often with local communities and Tribes and actually listened to what we were hearing.

We unleashed the science and leveraged tools like the U.S. Geological Survey's LANDSAT program - a science-based resource that helps ensure we're doing the right work, in the right places.

We worked closely with Tribes that have long sought to return values like Indigenous Knowledge to the landscape and to decision making. That included prioritizing co-stewardship agreements that empower Tribes to play a role in how their homelands are stewarded. Our Administration successfully entered in 400 of these agreements, connecting Tribes, Alaska Native Villages and Corporations, and Native Hawaiian Organizations with the agencies tasked with stewarding their lands.

One of the last accomplishments I want to talk about is our team's diligence to codify the work we've accomplished through rulemaking - updates to the rules of the road for how we do our work.

We finalized the Public Lands Rule, which brings conservation in line with development to ensure that lands are first and foremost healthy and productive. We will hold oil and gas industries accountable through a new rule that leverages tools like financial assurances and bonding requirements to ensure companies perform their work responsibly and don't pass the cleanup burden to the American taxpayer. We crafted an updated Renewable Energy Rule that makes solar and wind project authorization more comprehensive and predictable as these industries continue to grow. And we made revisions to the Endangered Species Act that enhance voluntary conservation programs. Our team at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has celebrated major ESA wins in the past four years - including the removal of species like the Snail Darter and the Apache Trout from the Endangered Species list.

That's what balance looks like.

When I look back on the last four years, I often have to catch my breath, because it's truly astonishing how much this team has made possible in such a short amount of time.

Earlier, I mentioned that we often bump up against the same issues over and over here at Interior. And that's true. But I think what is inherent to the work we do, is that even when we find a solution or a path forward, the work is never truly over.

Our work continues with each of you. It continues in protecting the accomplishments I just laid out, and in advancing the priorities that remain.

We are counting on you. We are counting on you for the implementation of the Western Solar Plan and the responsible exploration for the critical minerals we need to continue the clean energy economy's momentum. We are counting on you as states, Tribes, conservation organizations and the federal government work to ensure that critical and delicate resources like the Colorado River Basin continue to be managed with the West's long-term future in mind. And we are counting on you to continue to foster our inclusive DOI culture that values partnership and collaboration. Because what we do, and how we do it, has never been more important.

Thank you all so much for being on this journey with me, as true partners. It has been the honor and a privilege of my lifetime to be your colleague.

I'll now hand the mic back over to Rachael, who will introduce our next speaker.

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