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Congress uses little-known law to roll back Biden-era BLM public lands lockup
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Approved, Commentary, National

Congress uses little-known law to roll back Biden-era BLM public lands lockup

By Greg Walcher | Commentary, GregWalcher.com Last week, the Senate passed three Congressional Review Act resolutions overturning BLM resource management plans. What would have been called an earth-shattering precedent not so long ago was this time hardly noticed except by those who closely follow Interior and energy issues. The Biden-era resource management plans were designed to lock up millions of acres of public lands from the “multiple uses” required by law. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) was part of a small business package signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. It provided a tool Congress sometimes uses to overturn federal regulatory agency actions. It requires agencies to report any new rules to Congress and provides special procedures under which Congress can...
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Colorado’s “wildlife threat” plan could threaten agriculture instead
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado’s “wildlife threat” plan could threaten agriculture instead

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project I smell a Rosmarino I had a couple readers bring a recent US Forest Service (USFS) draft assessment about the Comanche National Grasslands (SE Colorado) to my attention. I didn’t have time to get to it, but I was happy to see that Rachel Gabel of the FencePost did. The reality is that she did a better job than I could have hoped to. Her lengthy rundown on the issue is linked below and is well worth reading. This is particularly the case if you are worried about efforts at conservation and species restoration spilling over into (or being used intentionally for) a way to stop other uses of public lands. I’ll leave it to you to get the details, but from what I read, this assessment smacks of the kinds of rewilding/co...
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La Jara land deal raises questions about public access and state priorities
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

La Jara land deal raises questions about public access and state priorities

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Selling La Jara to conservation groups and the Feds, including a swap with CPW? I had a reader send me a heads up on the State Land Board’s (SLB) La Jara land deal. The reader had heard about it in a CPW meeting because CPW could be involved in the land swap. I wanted to push this out quick so you have a chance to sign up and speak (or email) prior to the October 15th State Land Board meeting. As such, I can’t go into huge amounts of depth or summarize. I can give you the information that’s publicly out there so you can look and decide for yourself. As a quick overview, the SLB is charged with management and leasing of the state’s publicly-owned lands with the mission of getting as much revenue from them as the...
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A Seat at the Table, Not Just a Chair in the Room
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American Policy, Approved, Commentary, State

A Seat at the Table, Not Just a Chair in the Room

By Aimee Tooker | Commentary, American Policy Center Coordination is the key to harmonizing land management plans and the strategies of the communities that live and work on federal public lands From the San Juan Mountains in Southwest Colorado the Dolores River flows through Montezuma, Dolores, San Miguel, Montrose and Mesa counties until the state line with Utah.  National and local environmental and rewilding advocates had pushed for almost 50 years for a Wild and Scenic designation on the Dolores River.  It never went through because over the course of the years it was decided by the generational locals, municipalities and tax districts that that was not the correct way to manage the river. The talk of Wild and Scenic designation (most restrictive designation for a river) cau...
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Public Land Policy Should Serve All Users Not Just One Vision
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Approved, Commentary, National, The Denver Gazette

Public Land Policy Should Serve All Users Not Just One Vision

By Rachel Gabel | Commentary, The Denver Gazette The Bureau of Land Management is proposing to rescind the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, which was issued as a final rule last May. The rule, which puts conservation at the same level as other multiple uses like recreation, mineral extraction, grazing, and energy development, came out of the Joe Biden administration and earned fierce opposition. It would have allowed the well-funded who are opposed to, for example, grazing, to gather BLM leases and “conserve” the land by rejecting all other multiple uses. This flies in the face of the statute set forth by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, FLPMA, that charges the BLM with regulating the “use, occupancy, and development” of public lands in accordance with the p...
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State school trust lands were meant to fund education, not environmental agendas
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GregWalcher.com, Approved, Commentary, State

State school trust lands were meant to fund education, not environmental agendas

By Greg Walcher | GregWalcher.com A land ownership checkerboard exists in nearly every state because of an oddity called “state school trust lands.” The federal government granted those lands at the time of statehood, under the Land Ordinance of 1785. Thomas Jefferson’s system divides and records land into townships, each with 36 one-square-mile sections. New states entering the union were each given 2 sections per township, to be held in trust to fund public schools. State Land Boards were created to manage those lands – in my state of Colorado it’s 4 million acres. The Board was charged with administering the lands “in such a manner as will secure the maximum possible amount” for the school fund. The Lincoln Institute of Public Lands explains, “That singularity of purpose continues...
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From hunting to fitness: How MAHA unites unlikely allies in Colorado
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The Colorado Sun, Approved, Commentary, State

From hunting to fitness: How MAHA unites unlikely allies in Colorado

By Gary Wockner | Commentary, The Colorado Sun Make America Healthy Again rings true to Coloradans across the political spectrum and can accelerate other conversations Amid the toxic partisan chaos dragging down the American political system, I’ve definitely moved toward the middle. Like me, the vast majority of Coloradans are registered to vote as “unaffiliated” with either party, and for whatever reason, likely hold values that are independent and varied, rather than strictly holding to one party’s line. It’s been fascinating to watch the growth of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, or MAHA, nationally and here in Colorado, which seems to cross all over political boundaries as well. On Aug. 11, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal&nb...
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Colorado’s rural-urban divide revealed: 10 takeaways from the Rural Reckoning series
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The Gazette, Approved, State

Colorado’s rural-urban divide revealed: 10 takeaways from the Rural Reckoning series

By Vince Bzdek | The Gazette How bad is the rural/urban divide in Colorado? That’s what a team of reporters at Colorado Politics and The Colorado Network, our statewide collective of freelancers, set out to measure and understand. Through extensive interviews, data analysis and community voices, our journalists have documented the yawning gap between what rural areas contribute to the state through agriculture, energy production, tourism and outdoor recreation, and the attention, money and support they receive in the halls of the Capitol and the governor’s mansion. That gap has resulted in a host of unaddressed problems unique to rural Colorado. Our reporters also have found that culturally, the polarization between rural and urban has deepened so much that when it comes to pol...
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Permits denied, leases lost: Inside the MOU reshaping oil and gas production in Colorado
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Approved, State, Top Stories

Permits denied, leases lost: Inside the MOU reshaping oil and gas production in Colorado

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado’s 2024 MOU with BLM is being used to block drilling on federal land, reroute energy dollars and shift authority from Washington to regulators aligned with the Polis anti-fossil fuels agenda. In September 2024, a document quietly signed by BLM Colorado Director Doug Vilsack just eight weeks before the Presidential election may have done more than establish interagency cooperation. Critics say it handed away federal power. The document—a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC)—opened the door for Colorado to impose sweeping restrictions on oil and gas production.  Those restrictions now apply even to federally controlled minera...
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