WASHINGTON— The Trump administration is continuing its anti-environment agenda by prioritizing fossil fuel production, border wall construction and other destructive programs during a government shutdown that has left hundreds of thousands of federal workers without pay.

While most government functions have stopped as the shutdown enters its fourth week, work continues to process oil and gas permits and advance logging in national forests. Meanwhile the Trump administration has laid off thousands of workers and is threatening to withhold back pay once the shutdown ends.

“From missed paychecks to missed flights, frustrated Americans are suffering the harms of a shuttered government while Trump tends to his planet-killing pet projects,” said Stephanie Kurose, deputy director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This shutdown has no end in sight and that’s how the president would like it. He’s taking advantage of the situation to allow more toxic pesticides and harmful drilling to devastate communities that were already enduring grave environmental injustice.”

Some of the environmentally harmful programs operating through the shutdown include:

• Logging in national forests continues as the U.S. Forest Service works to further timber sales. The agency recently approved a 5,000-acre logging project in Texas. In Oregon trees from three national forests are expected to be auctioned off by the end of the month.
• The Forest Service continues to approve mining projects, including an exploration permit in Montana.
• The Bureau of Land Management is processing oil and gas drilling permits and coal mining projects. In Montana the BLM received a bid to lease 167 million tons of coal on federal lands in the biggest U.S. coal sale in more than a decade. The BLM also approved a copper mine in Utah that will include a new open pit, waste rock storage area, process ponds, and in-situ recovery wells in a proposed 5,430 acres.
• The Environmental Protection Agency’s pesticides office remains open and work continues to expedite approval of the dangerous pesticide dicamba.
• Construction continues for a new segment of the border wall in Arizona, which would block an important wildlife corridor for endangered jaguars and ocelots.