Federal Bureau of Land Management stewards who control millions of acres across Colorado and other Western states are considering how best to protect it.
New limits on access may be necessary to preserve treasured landscapes for wildlife and people seeking solace, BLM director Bob Abbey said in an interview.
“In order for us to maintain that kind of experience, we’re going to have to protect these lands,” Abbey said. “We’re going to have to take care of them.”
Today at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Center of the American West, Abbey will take part in a public forum aimed at devising a conservation plan.
The latest data show the number of visitors on BLM land in Colorado increased from 4.7 million in 2000 to about 5.6 million last year.
“There’s more pressure on this land,” BLM spokesman Steven Hall said.
The agency, with a $1.2 billion budget, controls more federal land than any other agency — 253 million acres (13 percent of U.S. land), mostly in 12 Western states — including 8.3 million acres in Colorado. About 17 million acres nationwide and 1 million acres here already are designated for conservation — such as the Canyons of the Ancients and Dominguez-Escalante areas in western Colorado.
BLM managers historically have emphasized issuance of permits allowing grazing and extraction of minerals — treating land primarily as an economic resource. Environmentalists once scorned the agency as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining.
At CU, historian Patty Limerick is coordinating the forum to draw from experts and the public over two days. Center of the American West scholars then will prepare a report to help guide BLM efforts.
Limits to protect pristine rivers and mesas have some support.
“You don’t want to love your public lands to death,” said Mike Chiropolos, lands program director for Western Resource Advocates. “If you don’t kick in visitation and use limits when they are warranted, it’s going to ruin the landscape for human users. And it can crash the ecosystem.”
Environmentalists and some at the BLM worry that oil and gas drilling, grazing and surging recreational use will degrade land — harming wildlife and unprotected cultural treasures, Abbey said.
Yet a strategy scheduled for completion by year’s end will try to keep BLM land as wild and unregulated as possible, Abbey said. “We’re not trying to be a minor league to the national parks system.”
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com
