Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation, would strip away this essential tool for ocean conservation and endanger these areas of national importance. The document provides a policy blueprint for a far-right presidential administration to pause designating new national marine sanctuaries, consider opportunities for mineral extraction in existing sanctuaries, and radically restructure the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). New analysis from the Center for American Progress finds that Project 2025 puts 1,370,350 square miles of ocean and freshwater habitat at risk: an area more than twice the size of Alaska.

Project 2025’s proposed actions consistently prioritize extractive industry and giveaways to the oil and gas industry, including through attacks on marine sanctuaries. This extreme agenda would reinstate a 2017 Trump-era mandate that: 1) directed the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to stop the establishment of any new sanctuaries; and 2) directed the DOI to examine national marine sanctuaries established in the past decade for energy and mineral potential. As a result of this executive order, the U.S. Department of Commerce suggested changing the boundaries of 11 national marine sanctuaries in 2017 to prioritize oil and gas drilling.

The national marine sanctuary system currently generates about $8 billion annually in local coastal and ocean-dependent economies by supporting activities such as commercial fishing, research, tourism, and recreation.

Under current law, National Marine Sanctuaries prohibit oil drilling and exploration.  Please help us tell Congress to keep our most treasured public waters safe.