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, including in special places the Roan Plateau and Routt National Forest. 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. Adding to these threats, the Trump administration is proposing to repeal the BLM’s Oil and Gas Rule, which would further limit opportunities for public input on where companies drill and make it easier for industry to leave behind thousands of polluting wells on our public lands.

Weakening Travel Management on Public Lands

The Trump administration is considering changes to longstanding policies that guide where motorized vehicles can travel on national forests and other public lands. The Forest Service’s Travel Management Rule provides the framework for developing local plans that designate roads, trails and areas open to cars, ATVs, dirt bikes and other motorized uses. Built with public input, these plans give visitors clear, reliable information about where they can go, improve safety, reduce conflicts and help agencies maintain access as recreation grows. Weakening or repealing these policies would undermine years of local planning and create uncertainty for recreationists and land managers. It could also increase unmanaged motorized use in wildlife habitat, winter range, watersheds and other sensitive areas while forcing already understaffed agencies to redo costly planning work. Thoughtful travel management doesn’t eliminate access—it makes access more predictable and sustainable while protecting the public lands we all share.

Eliminating Conservation on Public Lands

The Trump administration is repealing key policies that enable conservation of our public lands and waters, including a Department of the Interior review of wilderness policies across the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service. These policies guide the stewardship of nearly 200 million acres of America’s wild public lands, protecting ecological integrity, cultural resources, and opportunities for quiet, primitive recreation. Weakening these longstanding safeguards would open the door to administrative rollbacks that leave some of our most treasured landscapes vulnerable to increased exploitation and degradation. 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. It is moving to eliminate the Roadless Rule, which protects millions of acres of wild national forest from destructive development, and is removing “mineral withdrawals” that protect important landscapes like Boundary Waters and Chaco Canyon from mining and oil and gas drilling.

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.

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

Tell Secretary Rollins to protect Roadless Forests!

  • The Forest Service is proposing to repeal the national Roadless Rule, putting nearly 45 million acres of wild national forest lands at risk of new roadbuilding and logging. Tell the agency to keep these irreplaceable forests protected for clean water, wildlife habitat, recreation, and future generations. Colorado’s state-specific Roadless Rule would remain in place, but this rollback would threaten roadless forests across the country.

Thank Senator Bennet for defending 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.
  • 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.

Thank Representative Neguse for putting local voices back into oil and gas leasing decisions!

Western Colorado’s public lands are more than places on a map. They provide clean water and healthy rivers, critical wildlife habitat and migration corridors, and wild places where we hunt, fish, recreate, and build our local economies. But harmful oil and gas leasing can put these values—and the communities that depend on them—at risk.

Representative Joe Neguse’s Local Input Act would restore the Bureau of Land Management’s ability to listen to community concerns and decline lease parcels when important conflicts are identified. It is a commonsense step toward protecting the rivers, wildlife, farms, and outdoor heritage that make our region special

Thank Representative Neguse for standing up for our communities and the public lands we all depend on.