Our public lands are under attack. Let’s do something about it.

Welcome to the Conservation Watchdog action center – we’re glad to have you with us in this fight. Our public lands are under attack, but you can get involved and make a difference. The Trump administration has made it clear that energy dominance is their priority above all else, jeopardizing our clean air, water, wild places and way of life in western Colorado. It’s time for our community to stand up to defend the places we love.

On this page, you’ll find information about national threats most likely to affect our local public lands and shared environment as well as tools to join us in the fight. This work is going to take all of us, and Wilderness Workshop will keep you in the loop on ways you can continue to speak up and push back.

Below we’ve compiled some helpful resources to help you get started.

Oil and Gas Leasing on our Public Lands

President Trump’s signature policy bill, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” curtails the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) ability to say “no” to making public lands available for oil and gas leasing, including in response to local concerns. The bill puts the oil and gas industry in the driver’s seat on our public lands, requiring the BLM to offer for sale every eligible parcel of public land the industry requests for oil and gas drilling. This includes lands that have conflicts with important public lands resources and values, such as wildlife habitat and recreation areas. This approach disregards the concerns of local communities, counties, states, hunters, anglers, recreationists and ranchers. Colorado is already seeing the impacts of this bill, with the BLM offering more than a quarter-million acres of public lands in our state to the oil and gas industry in the past year alone. Industry has already nominated hundreds of thousands of acres more in Colorado, so we can expect these lease sales to continue growing in size and conflict.

Dismantling our Federal Agencies

The Trump administration’s plan to shutter the Forest Service’s national headquarters, regional offices, and research and development facilities is a thinly veiled ploy to decimate our public lands by dismantling the agency that manages our national forests. “Relocating” the Forest Service headquarters to Utah will uproot, demoralize, and ultimately eliminate staff and expertise, as we saw when the first Trump administration employed the same ruthless strategy against the Bureau of Land Management. This sweeping and baseless reorganization will do real damage to our national forests, at a time when our public lands are already reeling from drastic funding and staffing cuts, especially here in Colorado where recent reporting from the Colorado Sun revealed that Colorado has lost nearly 1,800 federal land management positions—the largest loss of any state in the country—as a result of the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts in 2025.

Eliminating Conservation on Public Lands

The Trump administration is repealing key policies that enable conservation of our public lands and waters. The Administration has fully repealed the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule, which put conservation on equal footing with other multiple uses such as energy extraction and development. This rule established that land and water conservation, access to nature, protection of wildlife habitat and cultural resources, and addressing climate change are just as important as energy development and other industrial uses. Without the Public Lands Rule in place, the BLM will lose important tools for conserving our public lands for present and future generations.The Trump administration is also repealing the Roadless Rule, which protects millions of acres of wild national forest across the country from destructive development, and is removing “mineral withdrawals” from important landscapes such as Boundary Waters and Chaco Canyon, which protected those areas from mining and oil and gas drilling.

Attacks on the National Environmental Policy Act

The Trump administration has repealed almost all regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), our nation’s most important law for scrutinizing the environmental impacts of proposed actions and ensuring the public has opportunities to participate in decisions affecting our shared environment. Rolling back these regulations will drastically limit the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management’s ability to thoroughly assess the impacts of harmful projects on our public lands, take actions to protect wildlife, water and wilderness from those impacts, and include local communities in those decisions. For example, many projects on our local public lands, such as oil and gas drilling and timber harvest, can be exempted from public participation under the new procedures. Congress is also proposing legislation to significantly weaken NEPA under the guise of “permitting reform.” 

1) Contact your elected officials

One of the most important things you can do to push back against the Trump agenda is to contact your federal elected officials and remind them these initiatives are not in Colorado’s best interest. A quick phone call or short email, letting them know you want them to stand strong for public lands, can make a meaningful difference. If you live in western Colorado, we’ve compiled contact info for your members of Congress. If you do not live in western Colorado, please visit this link to find your members of Congress.

Senator Michael Bennet
(202)-224-5852
Send an email

Senator John Hickenlooper
(202)-224-5941
Send an email

Representative Joe Neguse (CO-2)
(202) 225-2161
Send an email

Representative Jeff Hurd (CO-3)
(202) 225-4676
Send an email

In addition to voicing your concerns with the issues described above, here are some important messages to emphasize when speaking with members of Congress or their staff:

  • Trump’s energy dominance agenda is out of step with public sentiment in Colorado. Nearly 78% of Coloradans prefer that leaders place more emphasis on protecting water, air, wildlife habitat and recreation opportunities over maximizing the amount of land available for drilling and mining (2026 Conservation in the West Polling).
  • Protected public lands are the backbone of Colorado’s economy and way of life. According to the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office, outdoor recreation contributes more than $62 billion to our state’s economy and supports over 500,000 jobs, or 18% of our workforce.
  • Colorado’s public lands are home to some of our state’s most important wildlife habitat, treasured recreation areas, wildlands that should be protected for future generations, critical water resources, famed Colorado scenery and Indigenous cultural sites. We shouldn’t sacrifice these values for short-term gain.

2) Write a letter to the editor

Writing letters to the editor is another important way to speak up for our public lands and get the attention of important decision makers like elected officials, including our members of Congress. These are letters that a community member writes to the editor of a paper to increase the public’s awareness of a specific issue, and they can make a big difference. Letters to the editor are also a great way to demonstrate where public sentiment lies.

For example, if you read an article about President Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce, you can write a letter to the editor in response voicing your perspective on why those actions are harmful to our public lands and communities. Typically, news outlets provide contact information for submitting a letter to the editor on their website under submissions.

When writing a letter to the editor, here are some tips to consider:

  • Be clear and concise. Many newspapers will have word counts you’ll need to follow, so make sure you’re effectively communicating your point within the parameters you have.
  • Personalize it. Our personal stories or connection to an issues will always be the most powerful persuaders
  • Make it timely and relevant. Can you connect this issue to anything else going on in the news? Can you draw a local connection to a national issue? That may increase your chances of publication.
  • Cite any relevant data or studies. Bolstering your argument with these lends credibility to you as the author.
  • End with an ask or call to action. This is a great way to inspire action and get more people involved in your cause.

If you would like additional support for writing a letter to the editor, reach out to Wilderness Workshop’s Advocacy Director Erin Riccio at erin@wildernessworkshop.org

Push back against the Trump administration’s proposed Forest Service re-organization!

  • National forests are essential to local communities across Colorado. The proposed reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service—including relocating its headquarters to Utah—could weaken the agency’s ability to manage these lands for recreation, conservation, and long-term stewardship. These changes risk further losses in staff and expertise. Tell Congress to ensure the Forest Service remains equipped to protect and manage our national forests.

Thank Senator Bennet for stepping up to defend our public lands from privatization and sell-off!

  • Senator Bennet, alongside Senator Heinrich, Senator Wyden, and Senator Merkley, introduced the Public Lands Integrity Act to stop backdoor attempts to sell off public lands through budget reconciliation. Take a moment today to thank Senator Bennet for standing up to protect public lands from privatization and urge him to keep leading this fight to keep public lands in public hands.

Thank Senator Hickenlooper for his strong leadership on public lands!

  • Senator Hickenlooper has been on the front lines fighting reckless attacks on our public lands from the Trump Administration and Congress. He was the first Senator to publicly oppose the nomination of “Sell-off Steve” Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management  and has forcefully pushed back against efforts to repeal the Public Lands Rule. Thank him for standing up for Colorado’s public lands and urge him to keep leading the fight as a strong, outspoken champion for the lands we all love.
  • Representative Neguse has introduced the Public Lands Workforce Stability Act, which would halt mass layoffs at the Department of Interior and U.S. Forest Service and help ensure our agencies can continue caring for the lands our communities depend on. At a time when Colorado has been hit harder than any other state by these staffing cuts, his leadership is critical to safeguarding our public lands and the people who manage them.

Get our emails to stay informed about cool events like our Honk and Wave, above, in Glenwood Springs.

Defend Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument!

Utah representatives in Congress are currently trying to fast-track the destruction of the awe-inspiring wonders of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, a 2-million-acre landscape in southern Utah abundant with redrock slot canyons, ancestral sites, diverse ecosystems, stunning scenery, and globally significant paleontological and scientific resources. 

This would be a devastating blow to the monument and could turn it into a wildly different place: one where out-of-control off-road vehicle use, clear-cutting of native pinyon-juniper forests, mining and drilling, and other damaging activities are all possible. We cannot let this happen. 

Click here to contact our members of Congress today and ask them to vote NO on the joint resolutions! By standing together, we can defend our wild public lands across the west.