By Sean Pond | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
The Gunnison Outdoor Resources Protection Act GORP is being advertised as a community driven conservation success story. It’s not. It’s a federal land grab wrapped in pretty paper, designed to sell the illusion of balance while slowly destroying everything that makes Western Colorado worth living in.
This bill doesn’t protect the land. It strangles it.
They’ll tell you grazing is still allowed. Sure. But what good is a grazing permit if you can’t access your cows? If you can’t get there to fix fences, build a pond, haul salt, or rescue a sick calf? If you can’t use a pickup or a UTV or bring in the tools you need to survive?
When you strip away access, you strip away use.
It’s like giving you the right to own a car but not the keys or the road to drive on. Eventually, it becomes worthless, and you’re forced to give it up.
That’s the real strategy behind GORP, slow attrition. Death by a thousand rules.
They claim this doesn’t affect oil and gas. What they mean is, there’s not much drilling happening right now. But there are oil and gas deposits here. There are critical minerals in these hills. GORP locks it all up forever. precludes it. so the next generation can never use it.
That’s the goal. It’s not about keeping the land safe. It’s about keeping us out. This bill is about control of resources. Land, minerals, and water, not about protecting them.
Look at who wrote this bill. It wasn’t ranchers or miners or outfitters. It wasn’t ATV clubs or water managers. It was environmental activists. Funded by dark money. Supported by the same national groups that have been trying for decades to turn rural Colorado into a no go zone for working people.
Now they’ve dragged Jeff Hurd into the mix to slap a conservative label on it and pretend it’s bipartisan. It’s not. It’s betrayal.
They want control of the land, and they want control of the water. Don’t let the language fool you. Even though GORP says it doesn’t change existing water rights, it federalizes control of the land surrounding those watersheds. And that’s where the real danger begins.
When the federal government designates wilderness or conservation lands, it can trigger federal reserved water rights. That means they can come back years down the road and claim the right to keep a certain amount of water in those streams and drainages to “fulfill the purpose” of the land designation, like protecting scenery, habitat, or recreation. And those federal claims often jump ahead of local water users, threatening ranchers, municipalities, and existing ag rights.
If GORP doesn’t specifically waive those rights, they’ve opened the door. A door to court. And once the feds are in charge of the water, you don’t get to negotiate, you get told.
But it gets worse. By locking up hundreds of thousands of acres into new federal designations, GORP doesn’t just block water access. It also blocks fire mitigation. Try thinning timber in a wilderness area. Try clearing beetle kill. Try cutting a fire line or doing proactive fuel management when federal policy says you can’t touch the land.
GORP doesn’t reduce wildfire risk. It turns the entire Gunnison Basin into a tinderbox.
And when these massive fires come. and they will, it’s not just trees that burn. It’s watersheds. It’s grazing allotments. It’s homes, livestock, and entire local economies.
Uncontrolled wildfires don’t stop at county lines. They torch everything in their path and flood downstream communities with ash, debris, and runoff that chokes out fish, destroys irrigation systems, and pollutes water supplies for counties that weren’t even part of the conversation. That’s what GORP ignores.
You can’t protect a forest by locking the gate and throwing away the key. That’s not conservation. That’s negligence.
Water access becomes a permit battle. Water improvements get tied up in red tape. Every shovel of dirt needs a federal blessing. And when Denver or Aurora runs dry, guess where they’ll look? Gunnison. Montrose. Delta. Our side of the divide.
This is how they position themselves for a future water grab. Not through one big announcement, but by putting federal boots on the land today and locking the gates behind them.
And what do we get in return? Loss. Loss of jobs. Loss of grazing. Loss of access. Loss of local control. Loss of our way of life. This bill shuts the door on energy. It ties up minerals. It makes ranching unworkable. It drives young families out of small towns. All while paving the way for more tourists, more Front Range transplants, and more government control.
This is the playbook. They take our land, lock it up, and then rebrand our towns as tourist attractions. And the only jobs left are seasonal, minimum wage tourist work. No industry, no opportunity, no future. Just a scenic backdrop for people who don’t live here to take pictures.
This is the real battle in Colorado right now, and across the West. And we can’t afford to sit it out. You’re looking at the playbook in real time. This is it. This is the line in the sand. And we either stand here, or we lose everything that makes rural Colorado worth fighting for.
This isn’t just about GORP. It’s the same story we saw with the proposed Dolores River National Conservation Area and Special Management Area. 68,000 acres in Dolores, San Miguel, and Montezuma counties. Different counties, same playbook.
And for anyone out there who thinks this won’t affect Montrose County. Ask yourself why the bill conveniently stops at the county line.
That wasn’t by accident. That was a calculated move. They knew we’d oppose it. And none of these so-called supportive commissioners or conservation partners ever came and talked to any of us in Montrose. Not once. We were completely shut out of the process, like always. Because they knew we wouldn’t play along.
Let’s take a step back and ask how something like this even gets traction. The truth is, most of the counties supporting GORP are being represented by people who don’t live off the land anymore.
Many are well meaning, some are well connected, but very few are rooted in the industries that actually make rural Colorado work.
This is what happens when the people who are closest to the land, the ranchers, the welders, the outfitters, the heavy equipment operators. are too busy working 12-hour days to sit in policy meetings. And meanwhile, those who have the time and connections fill the vacuum. That’s not a jab. That’s reality.
I’m not here to attack other elected officials. But I’ll say this clearly: if you believe in land and liberty, you have to start paying attention to who’s being elected to speak for you. Because when we don’t engage, decisions get made without us. And before you know it, rural counties start backing legislation that locks us out of our own backyard.
This is how inner city policy creeps into rural life, not with a bang, but with a ballot. Elections have consequences. And silence is not an option anymore.
We talk a lot about compromise in politics. How it’s noble, how it’s necessary. But I’ll say what no one else will.
Compromise is how liberty dies.
The biggest threat to this Republic isn’t the radical left. It’s the moderate politician who always wants a seat at the table, even when that table is carving up our Constitution.
They say, “Let’s find middle ground,” like there’s some middle ground between freedom and control, between God given rights and government permission.
How many tables will they sit at before there’s nothing left to negotiate?
The Constitution was never meant to be compromised. The Bill of Rights doesn’t say maybe.
Liberty is not a bargaining chip, it’s the foundation of this country.
And if we keep electing people who are willing to negotiate away our freedoms one meeting at a time, then we’re not losing this country, we’re giving it away.
And I’m not going to be part of that surrender.
https://www.change.org/p/halt-gorp-defend-our-land-rights
Sean Pond serves as Montrose County Commissioner for District 3. Appointed in February 2025 after the passing of Commissioner Rick Dunlap, Pond is the first West End resident to hold the seat in over 20 years. A Nucla native and leader of the ‘Halt the Dolores’ initiative, he brings a strong focus on local collaboration, economic resilience, and protecting the region’s way of life. He and his wife are proud parents of five and grandparents of seven. When he’s not working, you’ll likely find him outdoors—hiking, fishing, or hunting.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.