Today, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission unanimously passed a resolution defending public lands, which are essential for wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation including hunting and fishing, and many other uses. And by extension, the resolution supports the federal employees in the agencies that manage those lands in the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture. This is especially pertinent to the most threatened public lands, which are the multiple-use lands held by the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service.

Our public lands, the health of those lands, and our access to them are the foundation of our western way of life.

The Bureau of Land Management’s 2024 Public Lands Rule on Conservation and Landscape Health, now proposed for rescission, is a small, important, and oddly controversial step in implementing the agency’s mission under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA), which as the BLM’s organic act effectively mandated conservation in terms of multiple use and sustained yield nearly half a century ago. FLPMA required public lands to meet the “present and future needs of the American people,” and mandated management to prevent “permanent impairment of the productivity of the land and the quality of the environment.”