I’ve hunted elk on Colorado’s public lands for some 20 years, on ground that belongs to all of us — truck drivers, ranchers, schoolteachers, and veterans back home on leave. That’s the quiet miracle of public land: you don’t have to be rich to have somewhere to hunt, fish, or otherwise recreate in the outdoors.
Which is why a decision out of Washington, D.C. last year has us fired up. I’m a member of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and I want to explain what one provision buried in the 2025 budget law actually did. It ordered the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to put any parcel nominated by oil and gas companies up for lease within 18 months — and it stripped the agency of its long-standing authority to say no.
The BLM used to be able to look at a nominated parcel, listen to the people who use it, and hold it back when leasing would, for example, impact elk or mule deer calving grounds, choke off a trailhead, or industrialize high-priority habitat. That discretion is gone. The oil company picks the parcel; the BLM is told to process the paperwork. End of story.
Consider the scale. Some 27 million acres of public land could be impacted across Colorado — land that supports sage grouse; country that feeds the creeks, streams, and rivers we fish and float; winter range and migration corridors big game herds can’t live without. A company can nominate a piece of ground your family has hunted for generations, and the people who know it best get no real say before it’s turned into an industrial zone.
But here’s what truly gets us. When the state’s own experts speak up, they’re automatically overruled. Colorado Parks and Wildlife — the agency that manages our game and fish, paid for in large part by hunters and anglers — can file a formal objection to a lease and watch the BLM approve it anyway. Don’t believe me? It’s already happened. County commissioners, ranchers, outfitters, sportsmen: same story. We flag it. It gets leased regardless. That’s NOT how public land is supposed to work.
This skewed process impacts private land, too. The mandate can pull as much as 4.7 million acres of split-estate land — a family’s ranch on top, federal minerals below — into lease sales, and the folks who own the surface have no real way to object. In Colorado, we ask permission before so much as crossing a rancher’s fence. This flips that principle on its head.
Let me be clear about what hunters and anglers are saying. We’re not against energy development. Plenty of us have worked for the energy industry, and responsible development has its place. This isn’t a left or right issue. It’s about whether the people who have hunted and fished and ranched our public lands for generations get a voice before it’s handed over to industry, and whether an agency full of wildlife professionals is still allowed to use its judgment.
There’s an easy and fair fix already in front of Congress. The Local Input Act, from U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) and Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), does two reasonable things: it requires the BLM to hear from the public and from state, local, and Tribal officials before deciding which parcels to offer, and it restores the agency’s power to hold a parcel back when the concerns are significant.
That’s the whole bill: two pages! It doesn’t stop drilling. It just puts our seat back at the table. And it’s popular across the board — in this year’s Colorado College survey, nearly three in four Western voters opposed letting companies drill where local residents raise concerns about wildlife, water, or their communities.
This February, I had the privilege of visiting my congressman, U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank’s (R-CO) office in Washington, D.C. to talk public lands and was impressed by his big game mounts. Then, as now, I’m reminding Rep. Crank that the people you represent also hunt, fish, ranch, and run small businesses on this land. Backing the Local Input Act tells them their voice still counts when Washington starts leasing their backyard. We’re respectfully asking you to co-sponsor this bill. The country we hand to our kids depends on getting this right.
David A. Lien of Colorado Springs, Colorado, is a former Air Force missile launch officer and author. In 2014, he was recognized by Field & Stream as a “Hero of Conservation” and urges action at backcountryhunters.org/get-involved/take-action. This is his personal opinion and not that of any other group/organization.
Header image by Scott Goodwill on Unsplash
