In the News

On Friday morning, June 13, U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, who represents Colorado, assembled a legislative public lands roundtable attended by the media. It’s objective: to highlight the threat to the West’s public lands contained within President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Budget Bill”, which, having passed the House by a single vote, is now in the hands of the Senate.

To put it bluntly, that budget bill includes a provision, to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, that would sell off between 2.2 and 2.4 million acres of public lands in the West. That is, except in Montana, where a dead-of-night, Republican back room deal made to secure House votes for the bill, has exempted Montana’s public lands.

But it didn’t stop at the steps taken by the House. Utah Senator Mike Lee introduced an amendment to the Senate reconciliation bill that proposes to sell off vast areas of the U.S. West, including a big chunk of public lands in Chaffee County. His reason: to “capitalize the lands that aren’t doing anything for us.”

Legislative Roundtable Outlines the Threat to Public Lands

The roundtable included Bennet, Rep. Joe Neguse, Rep. Jason Crow, Rep. Brittany Pettersen, Colorado State Senator Dylan Roberts, and representatives of outdoor recreation, sportsmen, and ranching.

Bennet began by describing the need: for champions of public land to find their voices. “It’s an amazing thing that there are people in the Senate that are even more radical than in the House, about selling public lands … they tried to slip this in hoping no one would notice it.”

“This would threaten some of the most treasured lands in the West … places to hunt and fish, places closest to our towns and cities. It is particularly offensive that they cut a deal with the senators from Montana to leave Montana out of this, so it would come from the rest of the western states,” Bennet continued …  Public lands make Colorado  –  Colorado. They make the West – the West. Public lands are the treasured parts of our culture and identity… It’s an important part of our obligation to protect the work that our parents and grandparents did for us, much less the impacts for our kids and grandkids.

"This is deeply unpopular here,” he concluded. “The state legislature declared earlier this year that our public lands are not for sale. Auctioning off our children’s inheritance is not going to happen — we can’t let it.”

Rep. Joe Neguse sits on the Natural Resource Committee, and worked with Bennet to get Camp Hale and Camp Amache named as National Monuments.

“These are our crown jewels — public lands are important to our ethos and life of Colorado,” he began.” We have to get the word out about how integral these public lands are and how important it is to prevent them from being sold off to the highest bidder. Just three weeks ago in the house we defeated a proposal that would have sold 100,000 of acres of land in Utah and Nevada. Now, we build a coalition with [Rep. Jeff] Hurd and Hinke to defeat that.”

“We now know that Senate Republicans have doubled down to sell off from two to three million acres of BLM and U.S. Forest Service lands across several western states This is a five-alarm fire for ranchers, hunters, hikers, fishermen; for every Coloradan.”

“They’re trying to auction off the lands to pay for Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires. We will have to use every tool we can. We don’t want this revision ever to become law.”

He didn’t identify what those tools might be, but we suspect that public awareness — not just among Coloradans but those who love to visit us, fish in our streams, raft our rivers, climb our peaks, revel in the scenic wonder — is going to be a big part of the effort. A large share of the public lands of America are here in the West, not back in the East, so tourists may not realize the impacts of the sale of these precious public lands.

“Westerners know one of our greatest resources is our public lands,” said Crow. They are our lands, and the idea that we’re going to sell those lands off to pay for tax breaks — a one-time tax break for millionaires and billionaires is beyond the pale. Past generations made sacrifices for those lands to belong to all of us.”

Brittany Pettersen made the point that the press briefing we attended was “well-attended by press because you know how important this is to make sure that voters understand what is happening and what stakes we have in this fight, reiterating the importance of raising awareness of this amendment.

“What the Senate is attempting to do will be terrible for the rural parts of my district and how much of their economies rely on tourism … we’re trying to protect the state for the next generation, but also have to think of the current needs,” she added. “We took out some of the worst parts [in the House], but we were unable to get back the $300 million for forest services to protect our public lands … the consequences of not having enough staff to protect these lands is real; people want to visit places that are safe, clean.”

“We have a lot of work to do to get the word out about this,” she concluded. “The work of the press listening to us is important to tell the public.”

Bennet pointed out the work that has been done in the Colorado Legislature to protect public lands from attack. “What we passed in the legislature here to highlight from a state perspective was bipartisan,” noted Roberts. “My district is full of beautiful public lands, and they are important to the character of the state. Joint Resolution 9 from the legislative session states unequivocally that Colorado supports our public lands and we are against ANY effort to dispose of our public lands.”

“There is nothing like this issue that will fire up people like me to get involved politically … I understand this bill supersedes existing pathways, around me, there are several BLM parcels that were sold off and that money goes back into the protection of the lands,” said Tony Prendergast, who is a back country hunter, Crawford rancher and angler. “Every rancher knows that if you start whittling away at the ranch to pay bills, you soon won’t have a ranch. You don’t use the land sales to pay off bills ….  every hunter and rancher knows that public lands are wildlife habitat, riparian corridors, and critical range.”

Bennet pointed out how important the public lands are to our water here in the West. These aren’t just land and trees – they are watersheds. Those watersheds feed four main rivers of the West: the Colorado, the Arkansas, the Platte, and the Rio Grande.  What would this country be without that water — and what would these rivers be like without their protected watersheds?

Just this past year, Ark Valley Voice joined Senator Bennet and representatives of Chaffee and Saguache counties at the top of Poncha Pass to review a forest health project where the pass is the dividing line between the watersheds of the Rio Grande and the Arkansas rivers.

Neguse added, “We were able to defeat the Utah public lands bill in the House after they snuck it in, in the dead of night. It was a diversion to divert water out of Lake Mead — it gave us grist to convince our colleagues from the [Colorado River] lower basin states to join us to object. They have worked with Republican senators, Montana in particular, to buy them off.”

Bennet’s final message for the people: “Make your voices heard about opposition to the sale of our public lands.”