She noted Washington Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell worked with her on the lands package bill for several years

Andrew Wheeler, as head of the EPA.

But Trump's signing of the bill was partially overshadowed by environmentalist groups angered that his proposed federal budget cuts funding by 31 percent for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA.

President Barack Obama signed legislation which designated 2 million acres of new protected wilderness across the Sierra Nevada and California desert regions.

The bill expands federally protected land, where there can be no logging, drilling, mining or road construction, and establishes 375,000 new acres of wilderness across California, Oregon, New Mexico and Utah

is opposed by 70 percent of Americans.”

The extinction of scores of bird species could happen “with or without oil leasing and development.”

there could possibly be “catastrophic consequences” for birds as well as the extinction of 69 of the 157 bird species on the coastal plain over an 85-year period, according to an earlier report by Energy and Environment News.

Climate change has made the area more delicate as melting ice has driven threatened polar bears to spend more time in dens along the refuge’s coastal plain.

1.6 million-acre coastal plain, which is part of the 19.3 million-acre ANWR.

The Trump administration on Thursday said it would seek to open up the entire coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration

Epstein,