What Does the Election Mean for Our Public Lands?

November 7th, 2024

Wilderness Workshop has a proven track record of protecting public lands and waters from threats and creating durable new protections. Specifically, here’s what we’re recommitting ourselves to in light of the recent Presidential election:

• Stopping industrial extraction on high-value public lands – from roadless areas to critical wildlife habitat, Wilderness Workshop will be the first line of defense against development that threatens wildlife, our climate and wild places.
• Advocating for new wild land protections – we will continue to advance a proactive conservation vision, from advocating for interim protections like Recommended Wilderness in a new Forest Plan to laying the groundwork for future legislative protections like Wilderness and Wild and Scenic designations.
• Protecting the public’s voice – working alongside national partners like Earthjustice and The Wilderness Society we’ll be defending fundamental environmental laws, ensuring all voices are listened to in the decisions that affect our public lands and waters and continuing to make our public lands more equitable and accessible.

Will Roush, Executive Director

There’s no sugar coating it. The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency, along with an anti-conservation majority in the US Senate and possibly the House as well, is disheartening. It will translate to repeated attacks on public lands, climate, and wildlife. The implications are severe of having a climate denier in the White House who is committed to abolishing critical environmental laws and policies that protect people and the planet. We must recognize the gravity of the situation and be clear-eyed about the potential negative impacts to our shared goal of protecting biodiversity, conserving public lands, and ensuring a livable climate for future generations. Next, we must get to work to defend that which we hold dear and needs our perseverance and commitment.

Along with our partners throughout the environmental movement, that is exactly what we’ve already started to do at Wilderness Workshop.

This election is a wake-up call and a call to action.

Over the coming years, we will be working even harder to protect public lands, wildlife, and our climate. As a local group with deep and authentic relationships with our public land managers, state and local elected officials, Colorado’s two Senators, and our community, we are uniquely positioned to be effective: both in the defensive work critical in the immediate future and the continued work to advance conservation. This ensures we’re ready whenever the next political opportunity arises. Lest it be forgotten, it was our grassroots organizing and legal and policy advocacy, day in and day out, through both friendly and hostile administrations, which ultimately led to the protection of the Thompson Divide. With your support, we will keep up that work and build on it.

I asked a few of the amazing folks here at WW to share how this election will affect our work, our shared vision for a better planet. You can read their full responses below. I also invite you to join us in this crucial work by donating to Wilderness Workshop and by becoming a member and fellow advocate.

Peter Hart, Legal Director

During the Bush Administration (2001-2009), we experienced a surge in oil and gas leasing on local public lands, including places like Thompson Divide and the Roan Plateau. We refer to the era as the “lease before you look years” because an expedited push to privatize public lands often shortchanged public process and environmental review mandated by law. Those years required all hands on deck, reviewing proposed lease sales and challenging leases issued improperly. During the Obama Administration, agency officials worked to remediate some of the illegal decisions made during the Bush years. That is when the illegally issued leases were canceled in the Thompson Divide.

We expect a Trump-Vance Administration will look similar to what we saw between 2017 and 2021. During that time, extraction and development of public lands was prioritized over all other values and often at the expense of ecological values, wildlife, and the public trust. There was an effort to eliminate thoughtful, science-based decision-making and weaken land management agencies through actions like moving the BLM headquarters out of Washington D.C. In this second Trump administration we anticipate more efforts to reduce the efficacy of federal land management agencies, and a focus on maximizing profit from public lands. There will likely be an increase in oil and gas leasing on public lands, as well as logging and other resource extraction. We expect an immediate effort to reverse or revise recently implemented regulations governing oil and gas leasing and development, as well as rules intended to protect mature and old growth forests. We also expect efforts to reverse monument designations, mineral withdrawals, and other conservation-oriented decisions.

All of this means that our workload will shift to include more diligent efforts to defend public lands and the tools we use to protect them in addition to proactively laying the foundation for future conservation wins. The good news is: we’ve done it before. We’re ready to do it again.

Michael Gorman, Campaign Director

Regardless of who is in the Whitehouse, our work to permanently protect places like the Crystal River, Homestake Valley and other wildlands in Colorado still need the same key elements to be successful. Campaigns like these to protect public lands like these are built on organized, durable, and lasting community support, strong relationships, coalitions of stakeholders, and constant public engagement. Regardless of who is in power in Washington, Wilderness Workshop and our partners will continue building momentum by cultivating diverse grassroots movements based on our shared love for the public wildlands and waters that make up our home in western Colorado.

The campaign to protect the Thompson Divide has persevered through Democratic and Republican presidential administrations and Congresses, and it wouldn’t have garnered the attention and eventual action of President Biden in 2022 if it hadn’t been for all the engagement and advocacy from people like you throughout all those years.

Even though the new administration presents our community with many uphill battles and setbacks, I am still dedicated to building strong community movements as WW’s Campaign Director and I’m excited to dig into some new opportunities for doing so in the coming year.

Erin Riccio, Advocacy Director

A second Trump administration presents very real and lasting threats to both our public lands and the communities they serve. We must be very clear-eyed about that. We’ll see a return to an energy dominance agenda on our public lands, rollbacks to conservation-minded rules and regulations, and even attempts to reverse monument designations and mineral withdrawals, which could jeopardize places that our community has worked so hard to protect like the Thompson Divide.

Facing the prospect of having so much meaningful public lands and climate progress halted or reversed can be disillusioning. But this is all the more reason to stay engaged. We must raise our collective voices to defend and protect the places we love.

Wilderness Workshop will remain vigilant and ensure we are holding the Trump administration accountable at every opportunity. We will continue to educate and keep our community informed about the very real threats western Colorado’s public lands now face and how our community can best advocate in their defense. Our community’s power and ability to achieve conservation wins for our public lands will be just as effective (and important!) when we need to defend those wins. This year we protected the Thompson Divide and got the BLM to recognize and prioritize conservation in their local management plan. Hundreds of our community members wrote letters to the editor, showed up to public meetings, and rallied friends and family to the cause. Over the coming years, your voice will continue to be a critical part of how we’ll protect these and other beloved places

Above all else, we’re going to fight like hell the next four years and we hope you’ll join us! Our wild places need our advocacy now more than ever.