M-44s are designed to kill coyotes, foxes and feral dogs that sometimes prey on sheep and newborn cattle. They also kill at least 150 nontarget species.

On April 15, the Trump administration lifted former President Joe Biden’s M-44 ban on the Bureau of Land Management����ap 245 million acres, and once again, M-44s will be deployed by the .

“I’ve worked since 1994 with countless people who have lost their dogs to M-44s or been poisoned themselves,” said Brooks Fahy, director of , a nonprofit based in Eugene, Oregon. “M-44s can never be used safely. They are indiscriminate killers, and no young child, dog or wild animal can read a warning sign. I firmly believe it is only a matter of time until an M-44 kills a child.”

During Trump’s first term, M-44s were in widespread use but hugely unpopular. The public wanted them banned. In 2019, when Trump’s EPA issued a proposal to keep them registered for use, there was such public outcry that the agency pulled the proposal.

Four months later, EPA reissued its proposal. During the public comment period, it received 22,390 written responses. All, save 10, opposed continued M-44 registration. The Administrative Procedure Act requires federal agencies to consider all “relevant matter presented” in public comments. Yet Trump’s EPA ignored the law, and M-44s remained registered until Biden’s ban.

On April 15, the Trump administration bypassed any public comment period, reauthorizing M-44 use on BLM land via a memorandum of understanding between BLM and USDA.

Wildlife advocates are furious. Predator Defense called the Trump administration’s resurrection of M-44s “insane.” Project Coyote called it “devastating.”

And this from Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action: “Reinstituting use of poison bombs sounds like war tactics from 1970s rebel guerrillas in Angola and not the actions of public lands agencies. Their statutory and moral responsibility is to steward native wildlife, not poison the animals.”

So, who’s pushing M-44s back on public land? Whoever it is, it����ap not sheep producers, explained Carter Niemeyer, employed by Wildlife Services for 26 years and supervising field agents for much of that time. M-44s were created mostly for them, but they now use guard dogs. Littering public land with poison bombs scented to attract canids is the last thing sheep producers want, he said.

Still, Trump spokesmen claim that the M-44 ban was lifted to benefit the wool industry. There’s widespread speculation that Trump ended the ban simply because Biden imposed it.

“M-44s are unforgiving,” said Niemeyer. “Any animal that triggers one is dead. With traps and snares, you can usually release nontargets. Random coyote poisoning — ‘preventive control’ — is killing coyotes anywhere and everywhere because one might someday eat a sheep. When we had, say, two coyotes regularly killing sheep, we’d remove them. That����ap ‘corrective control.’”

Robert Crabtree, America’s leading coyote researcher, found that random killing creates more coyotes. In natural populations, average litter size at birth is five or six. But competition in summer decreases pup survival to one or two. Random killing reduces competition, resulting in higher survival.

Niemeyer found that random killing also creates chaos by replacing older coyotes that have learned the dangers of depredating livestock with younger, inexperienced coyotes that do depredate.

But random killing is precisely what will now be happening on BLM land.

There has been legislation to permanently ban M-44s on federal lands, but it has been in limbo for years. Thanks to public outrage, there’s new life in a bill called “Canyon’s Law,” named for teenager Canyon Mansfield from Pocatello, Idaho. In March 2017, when he was 14, Canyon encountered an M-44 on BLM land behind his house. He thought it was a lost sprinkler head.

When he picked it up, his 3-year-old yellow Lab, Kasey, got hit in the muzzle and died. Some of the cyanide also sprayed Canyon’s face, damaging his eyes. Until his late teens, Canyon suffered from chronic cyanide poisoning. It����ap unclear if he suffered permanent damage.

Americans who love public lands, their dogs and wildlife need to ask their legislators to support Canyon’s Law, H.R. 4180 and S. 2179, banning M-44s. Primary sponsors are Rep. Jared Huffman, D-California, and Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon. At this writing, there are seven cosponsors.

Longtime wildlife writer and author Ted Williams is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. 

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The Bear fire, Willow fire and Spring Creek fire consumed nearly 200 acres this week in Garfield, Eagle and Las Animas counties, fueled by dry conditions and high winds.

Firefighters in Rifle gained full containment on the 10-acre Willow fire on Thursday afternoon, less than a day after the fire sparked in a backyard and raced along Government Creek to an apartment complex, where it destroyed an eight-unit building.

Two apartment buildings remained under mandatory evacuation overnight, but Garfield County officials said people were allowed to return home Thursday morning.

To the southeast, lifted all mandatory evacuation orders for the 150-acre Bear fire, which sparked Wednesday north of Trinidad near the Army’s Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site.

“We ask evacuees who return to their homes to please be vigilant and be prepared to re-evacuate if fire behavior changes,” fire officials said on Facebook.

To the north, almost 100 firefighters continued to fight the Spring Creek fire as it burned in the near the Eagle and Pitkin County lines.

The fire charred 20 acres northeast of Aspen with no containment since it first sparked on Tuesday, U.S. Forest Service officials said.

As of noon Thursday, crews were still constructing hand lines to contain the fire and dealing with critical fire weather, the forest service said.

Mandatory evacuations are still in place near the Ruedi Reservoir, including homes along Eagle-Thomasville Road, also known as Crooked Creek Pass; north of Brush Creek Road; and south of Crooked Creek.

The cause of all three fires is still under investigation.

The Willow fire was first reported at 4 p.m. as a backyard fire that was threatening a home in the 100 block of Willow Creek Circle, Colorado River Fire Rescue officials said in a news release.

“Due to strong winds and heavy fuel conditions, the fire quickly spread beyond the structure into the wildland area along Government Creek,” agency officials said.

High winds continued to push the fire toward Rifle Creek Apartments, and law enforcement officials ordered evacuations near Willow Creek Circle and West 30th Street.

The wildfire spread to the roof of an eight-unit apartment building at the complex and caused significant damage. The building is believed to be a total loss, fire officials said.

“Fire crews remain on scene working to contain the fire, extinguish hot spots and assess damage,” Colorado River Fire Rescue officials said Wednesday night. “The cause of the fire remains under investigation.”

The Willow fire burned an estimated 3 acres, according to the Bureau of Land Management’s fire information dashboard.

People displaced by the fire can go to the Garfield County Fairgrounds, 1001 Railroad Ave. in Rifle.

The canyon is an iconic example of the public lands that make up the fabric of our country, particularly in the West. But increasingly, our public lands are being pulled into partisan debates that treat them as commodities to be sold. Even as support for public lands grows louder, the Trump administration seems determined to hand more of them over to private interests and the highest bidder.

It started with the Trump administration firing thousands of federal employees who manage our national parks and prevent wildfires – just as we stared down a year of extreme wildfire risk.

Then last summer, some Congressional Republicans tried to sneak through a provision to sell off more than three million acres of public lands – all to help fund $4 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations.

The American public was rightfully furious. Our office heard from tens of thousands of Coloradans who deeply opposed the idea. Together with hundreds of organizations, local governments, and conservation advocates like The Wilderness Society, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and the Conservation Colorado, we built a campaign to show Americans what was at stake. We worked with my Senate colleagues from the West, who were also clear-eyed regarding the perils for their states.

Proponents of the sell-off argued that protecting public lands is at odds with economic prosperity. But Colorado has shown that����ap a false choice.

As governor, we united communities, conservationists, and the private sector to protect public lands and strengthen our economy. Short-sighted selloffs mandated by Washington for short-term windfalls undermine those efforts.

In the end, we got Republicans to ditch their effort and keep our lands off the auction block. But their siege wasn’t over.

Last week, the Trump administration rescinded BLM’s new Public Lands Rule – an effort to promote conservation and equal the playing field with uses like mining and grazing – in a blatant attack against the long-term health of our preserved spaces.

Every American should care who leads BLM and oversees 245 million acres of our public lands. We can’t have someone who wants to sell them running the agency. Yet that����ap exactly who President Trump has nominated.

In his time in Congress, former Rep. Steve Pearce backed proposals to open the door to large-scale disposal of federal lands and urged congressional leadership to sell public lands to pay down the national debt, arguing that “most of it we do not even need.”

This December, I came out as the first Senator to publicly oppose Pearce’s nomination. During his confirmation hearing in March, I asked Pearce whether his opposition to public lands has changed and why the Trump administration would consider rolling back methane regulations that reduce pollution, despite broad support. He did not demonstrate that he’d be an independent steward who we need to stand up to the president����ap assault against America’s treasured landscapes.

Senate Republicans are expected to confirm Pearce. I will vote no, but that isn’t the end of our fight.

Last summer’s outcry showed that millions of Americans care about protecting our public lands. We need to come together once again. We’re pushing for several major bills in the Senate, including the GORP Act and the CORE Act, that’d conserve more than a million acres of land. We need to pass them and stop the attacks on our existing protections.

Public lands are part of our shared Colorado heritage. If we fail to protect them now, future generations will lose something money can’t buy.

John Hickenlooper is a U.S. Senator representing Colorado.

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A March heat wave shattered several records for high temperatures across Colorado. the source of at least 70% of the state’s stream flows and water in reservoirs, is the worst on record. Cities along the Front Range have enacted water restrictions.

At a time when snow in the mountains usually has barely begun to melt, several ski resorts have closed. And ranchers are looking for hay in case the rangeland and pastures can’t provide enough food for their cattle this summer.

Problems for Colorado’s cattle industry will ripple through the state’s economy. The state’s cattle herd was the nation’s 10th largest in 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Beef is the state’s top agricultural export, totaling $1.26 billion in value in 2025, the Colorado Department of Agriculture said.

Beef, fresh and frozen, is Colorado’s No. 1 export overall.

“The producers that are in the business now are here for a reason. It’s because they continue to be optimistic. They just keep saying, ‘You know, it has to rain one day,’ ” said Erin Karney Spaur, executive vice president of the

But ranchers are also keeping their eyes on the sky and the forecasts. Karney Spaur said most ranchers have drought plans, which include stockpiling hay and moving cattle around to give the grass time to grow. Worst case scenario, ranchers might end up selling part of their herd.

In past dry spells, people have trucked their cattle to other parts of Colorado or other states in search of greener pastures. The problem this time is the broad sweep of the drought will make those places harder to find.

“What I haven’t seen in my lifetime is the widespread drought all throughout Colorado and the West, for that matter,” Karney Spaur said.

In most areas, cattle producers with federal grazing permits on U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management land have received letters saying to expect reductions in use of the sites unless conditions change, Karney Spaur said.

“Most BLM-managed public lands in Colorado are in severe to exceptional drought,” Colorado BLM spokesman Steven Hall said in an email.

The BLM staff regularly communicates with permittees and with industry associations, Hall said. “Typically the BLM and permittee agree on changes to grazing use during drought.”

Conditions in the Rio Grande National Forest in southwest Colorado range from moderate to exceptional drought, according to the . Ranchers have been advised that if dry conditions continue, the grazing season might have to be shortened or the number of cattle on a site reduced for part of the summer in some areas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in an email.

Decisions will be made case by case and the Forest Service will work with ranchers to explore options, the USDA said.

Much of the federally managed land used for grazing is in western Colorado. On the Eastern Plains, several ranchers have grazing permits on state-owned lands.

Curtis Russell, Colorado Cattlemen’s Association president, ranches in Sugar City in southeast Colorado and is a member of a grazing association that leases state lands. While the area had a good grass-growing season last summer, Russell doesn’t expect producers to move their animals onto the state lands this season until it rains.

The State Land Board closely monitors drought conditions and manages grazing on a case-by-case basis in coordination with lessees, spokeswoman Emily Barbo said in email. The staff is in close communication with ranchers across the state, she said.

“Things are really trying to green up, but it’s just hard,” Russell said. “We had 90-degree days in March. It was pretty hard to keep moisture in the ground with the wind blowing and 90 degrees.”

Ranchers on the Western Slope were battling through a dry summer in 2025 when wildfires erupted and raced through the parched vegetation. The fires scorched some ranchers’ pastures and federal grazing allotments.

Off the charts

Retta Bruegger, a regional range management specialist with Colorado State University Extension, calls snowpack “money in the bank” for ranchers who depend on grasses and plants to feed their cattle. But with Colorado’s snowpack at its lowest-ever levels, the bank is close to tapped-out.

“To be perfectly frank, this year is off the charts in terms of what it looks like and how it’s setting up so far,” Bruegger said. “I think people will be making a lot of hard decisions.”

On a recent trip just over the Colorado border into Utah, Bruegger said the forage looked better than she expected. The outlook could change if the weather does.

“In the world of all possibilities, it could start snowing tomorrow and snow until June 1. I don’t necessarily think that’s going to happen, but that would change some things if it does,” Bruegger said.

Janie VanWinkle and her family ranch in Mesa County. They graze their cattle on land they own and on leases with the federal government, the city of Grand Junction and Colorado Mesa University. The bulk of their grazing in the summer is on Forest Service land and they’re not sure whether use of the allotment will be restricted because of the drought.

“We’ll be having a meeting with our Forest Service range specialist in the next month or so. We’re kind of waiting to see what the weather is going to do,” VanWinkle said.

She finds the uncertainty unnerving after the  forced the family off their usual allotment to another area. VanWinkle and her husband, Howard, spent 122 days on horseback, moving their animals from water to food and at times through flames. The firefighters worked closely with the family to keep them and the cattle safe.

“The good news is we didn’t lose a single cow in the fire,” said VanWinkle, whose son works with her and husband.

As the family heads into what could be another dry summer, wildfires are a concern. “We’ve never talked about this, but I know this is the fear that’s been in my son’s heart. It’s the fear that’s in mine and my husband’s: What if there’s another one?” VanWinkle asks.

The statewide snowpack was at 21% of median Wednesday, the reported. This year’s level is the worst since measurements were recorded starting in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

In addition, the snow water equivalent, the amount of liquid water stored in the snow, was 3.3 inches, just 22% of the 30-year median, as of April 1, said Russ Schumacher, state climatologist and director of CSU’s Colorado Climate Center. The previous low was 9.1 inches in 1987.

“That’s the metric we pay attention to for water because that’s the water that’s going to flow into the rivers” and increase soil moisture, Schumacher said.

A year when the water content is 70% to 80% of average in early April would be considered a bad year, he added. “This year, we’re looking at 20% of the average, which is so far beyond that.”

Colorado has been hot as well as dry.

“That heat wave in March was just astonishing in terms of how unusually warm everything was across the state,” Schumacher said.

It was Colorado’s warmest March on record, according to the . Averaged across the state, the month was 13.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th century average and 4.3 degrees above any previous March.

Relief might come this summer in the form of El Niño, the weather phenomenon that warms the ocean surface in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.

“Globally, it tends to raise temperatures. Here in Colorado, that tends not to be the case. We tend to be wetter and somewhat cooler, later in the summer and fall,” Schumacher said.

The said April 9 that the chance of an El Niño was 61% and a one-in-four chance that it might be strong.

David Gottenborg, whose family owns Eagle Rock Ranch in South Park, is hoping for a change. Park County typically doesn’t get a lot of moisture in winter, but this winter was even drier than usual. And warmer.

“We sit on Tarryall Creek and we’re running about 15, 14 cubic feet per second versus normally about 30 or so. So we’re about half,” Gottenborg said.

The Gottenborgs, who raise cattle and hay, irrigated a little in the last couple of weeks.

“Irrigation season typically starts April 1. In most years, it’s almost kind of a moot point because our head gates are frozen,” Gottenborg said.

Not this year. And there’s no ice now in Tarryall, a tributary of the South Platte River.

Besides cattle, hay is one of the Gottenborgs’ main income sources. They partnered with Colorado Parks and Wildlife to donate 48 tons of hay in December to Western Slope ranchers whose land was burned by the Lee wildfire last summer.

But their hay crop was down last year and they’ve halted sales for now.

“The old-timers here in the valley, they would always keep at least half of what they would need the following year in their stack yards. We’re trying to do that,” Gottenborg said.

The ranch gets calls almost every day from people looking to buy hay. Gottenborg said a woman told him that she had contacted more than 30 people. “We had to tell her ‘no’ as well.”

Karney Spaur of Colorado Cattlemen said she’s heard of hay selling for $300 to $350 a ton. This time of year, she said $150 to $175 a ton is more the norm.

One bright spot for ranchers is that in large part because of low cattle numbers nationwide.

“If you have to sell cows, it’s a good time to sell cows because they’re worth a lot of money,” said Russell, the rancher from Sugar City. “On the other hand, if El Nino comes in like they’re talking about this summer and we get a lot of rain and people have already sold cows and need to buy cows back, it’ll cost a lot of money.”

The slaughter of the buffalo was a tragedy for all Western Indian tribes — including every tribe in Montana — because the animals were everything to Native people. Bison provided food, shelter, clothing and tools. They were central to spiritual practices. Their destruction was also a central part of the federal campaign to subdue and dispossess tribal nations.

But before the last smoke from the buffalo guns had cleared, Native visionaries had acted. A Salish man known as Attice trailed a few surviving bison across the Continental Divide to Montana’s Flathead Valley. That small herd would become critical seedstock for rebuilding bison herds in both the United States and Canada.

Through Attice’s efforts, state and federal agencies across the West were later able to establish small herds on refuges and wildlife management areas. Over the last 50 years, Western tribes have also led determined efforts to restore buffalo on reservation lands.

Tribes have also benefited from partnerships with conservation organizations that share a vision of big, healthy bison herds grazing across large landscapes. Chief among these partners is American Prairie, which for the past 25 years has worked to restore intact grasslands on public and private lands adjacent to Montana’s Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. As part of its work, American Prairie has also provided both technical expertise and buffalo to many tribal nations rebuilding their herds.

Yet even with these initiatives, there are only a few thousand truly wild buffalo today, and they occupy just a tiny fraction of their former range across the American and Canadian prairies. Why?

The persecution of bison continues — nowhere more so than in Montana. Governor Greg Gianforte’s administration has opposed any expansion of wild buffalo populations and has relentlessly pressured the federal Bureau of Land Management to reverse earlier, positive bison decisions.

Bowing to this pressure, the BLM has denied a request by American Prairie to convert existing federal grazing permits from cattle to bison in eastern Montana. What����ap worse, the BLM has terminated other bison grazing permits the organization had lawfully held for years.

Given the stakes, the Coalition of Large Tribes — advocating for more than 50 tribal nations, including the Blackfeet Nation and the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana — has filed a formal protest of the BLM’s unprecedented and unlawful decision. Federal law is clear: statutes affecting tribes must be interpreted in their favor, and ambiguities must be resolved to protect tribal rights.

The consequences of the BLM’s illegal action are immediate and profound. Terminating these permits disrupts herd genetics, intertribal gifting traditions, treaty territories, and longstanding cooperative relationships. It also establishes a dangerous precedent for other federal agencies engaged in tribal co-stewardship and wildlife restoration, not only for Montana tribes but for tribes everywhere. If bison being managed for conservation can be categorically excluded from federal lands, decades of collaborative progress are jeopardized.

Perhaps most alarming, this decision amounts to rulemaking by fiat. In order to reach the result demanded by the Gianforte administration, the BLM acted without meaningful consultation with either tribes or the public.

Federal law is clear. Actions and decisions affecting tribes require consultation, yet no meaningful effort has been made by either the BLM or the Gianforte administration to fulfill this binding obligation. If this failure to consult is allowed to stand, tribes across the West will be harmed by the precedent.

Montana and the federal government face a defining choice: They can cling to outdated policies that ignore history, science, and treaty obligations, or they can honor tribal leadership, uphold the law and help restore a species that once defined this land.

The future of Montana’s prairies depends on that choice.

Tyson Running Wolf is a member of the Blackfeet Nation who chairs the Montana Native American Caucus in the Montana Legislature. Tom France represents Missoula in the Montana Legislature and works with the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council on buffalo conservation issues. Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, is an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.

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Maloy has long criticized this southern Utah national monument that was halved by President Trump during his first term, then restored under President Biden. One million awestruck visitors come here every year and spend money in the two Utah counties surrounding the monument, whose towns total less than 14,000 residents. Yet Maloy discounts data showing the economic value of preserved public lands. She neglects the world-class scientific value of these 1.9 million acres, detailed in Biden’s proclamation.

Rep. Maloy’s attack is wily. She and the rest of the congressional delegation know there’s too much public support to ask President Trump to again chop down the monument����ap size. Nearly 3 out of 4 Utah voters are on record as wanting to keep Grand Staircase-Escalante protected as a national monument.

So Utah politicians are betting the public won’t pay as much attention to management retrenchment as they would to downsizing. They’re using a controversial tactic to force the Bureau of Land Management to abandon the current Resource Management Plan–a blueprint for how the BLM puts the presidential proclamation into effect on the ground.

But monument supporters are paying attention because management plans matter.

After President Biden restored the boundaries of Grand Staircase in 2021, the BLM worked with the public for two years to create the 2025 Resource Management Plan, listening to every conceivable collaborative partner. Such plans guide decision-making for years, and this true compromise keeps ranchers’ grazing permits in place while also factoring in a warming planet, persistent drought, the need for biodiversity, and a sustainable future.

Now, Rep. Maloy has obtained an opinion from the Government Accountability Office to treat the 2025 plan merely as a “rule” that Congress can overturn. This unprecedented allowance can’t be challenged in court and permits the Utah delegation to use the Congressional Review Act to kill the conservation-based plan and bar the agency from issuing any “substantially the same” plan in the future. The Trump-era plan that would take its place leaves much of the monument unprotected from extractive industry and off-road vehicles.

Maloy says that emphasizing conservation “undercuts rural economic development.” From 2001 to 2022, however, real per capita income grew by 41 percent in the monument����ap counties.

She says that local residents and “trail users” oppose the Biden plan. This is cherry-picking. Motorized trail users always want greater access, even though the Biden-era plan left more than 800 miles of dirt roads and trails open for motorized vehicles.

When Maloy talks about “deep cultural traditions” being disrupted by the current management plan, she isn’t listening to Indigenous people who have made this place their home since time immemorial. The six Native Nations of the Grand-Staircase Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition oppose her move, noting that without the “clear roadmap for protection and conservation” provided by the current management plan, “our ancestral lands and … cultural sites within the monument would be at greater risk of looting, vandalism, graffiti, and degradation.”

To support their attacks, Utah’s politicians use their timeworn template to argue exclusively for “the needs and voices of the people who live and work on this land.” These politicians, however, listen only to county commissioners and legacy ranchers, not to a much broader constituency.

This is Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, not Grand Staircase County Park. The environmental, scientific, interpretive, and Indigenous values and potential of these public lands have national and international importance.

This new attack on Grand Staircase-Escalante from Congress–along with a parallel attack on Minnesota’s Boundary Waters—would set a national precedent with no public input that could upend public lands protection for years. Even the deeply conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation said it fears a “Wild West” for land-use planning if Congress acts on Maloy’s radical approach.

The exhausting years-long battle to protect the resources and restorative magic of Grand Staircase-Escalante can wear out supporters. But this place gives us no choice but to speak up once again. Staying silent puts federal agencies in an impossible position and places all of our public lands at risk. Let your members of Congress know that preservation of the monument requires leaving the current resource management plan in place.

Stephen Trimble is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He’s been hiking in Grand Staircase and writing about Colorado Plateau conservation for 50 years.

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Throughout his political career, Pearce has worked to privatize and undermine our public lands. As a New Mexico congressman, he co-sponsored several bills to dispose of national public lands. This alone ought to disqualify him from running the agency charged with stewarding 245 million acres for current and future generations.

In a , Pearce argued that the federal government owns “vast” land holdings, “most of (which) we do not even need,” and called for a massive sell-off to pay down the national debt. Pearce’s vision for our public lands is not conservation or even balanced management — it����ap liquidation.

President Trump has been down this road before: During his first term, he nominated anti-public-lands zealot William Perry Pendley to run the BLM. Pendley never even received a hearing, and the White House dropped the nomination after his record was revealed. Pendley went on to write the public lands chapter of the now-notorious Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Pendley spent his career as a lawyer arguing that the federal government should not own public lands. Steve Pearce has gone even further. From inside Congress, Pearce spent 14 years undermining public lands, seeking to gut wildlife protections and sell off huge amounts of public land.

Pearce’s nomination comes as our public lands are being attacked from all sides. Over the last 10 months, President Trump has elevated officials such as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, both of whom view our public lands as nothing more than assets to monetize through drilling, mining and logging.

These officials are currently working to execute Trump’s vision of selling out public assets for private profit. Pearce would accelerate this effort, liquidating lands to the highest bidder–including corporations and luxury developers.

Even by recent standards, Pearce’s public lands record is radical. It is also unpopular. This spring, Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee tried to include a public land sale provision in the sprawling budget bill, framing it as a housing solution. The measure would have mandated the sale of 2-3 million acres of BLM and Forest Service lands.

But Lee’s amendment triggered immediate backlash from hunters, outdoor recreation groups and Western lawmakers. Within days, he abandoned the effort. If the Senate rejected Lee’s market-rate sell-off as radical, it should be easy now to reject a nominee whose goal is to get rid of even more public land.

That brings us to the Senate Stewardship Caucus, co-chaired by a Republican, Tim Sheehy of Montana, and a Democrat, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. It launched last month to “advance bipartisan efforts to conserve the nation’s lands and waters” with science-based policy. The caucus has been applauded by hunting, outdoor recreation, and conservation organizations as a promising start for defending public access and wildlife.

Pearce’s nomination is the caucus’s first real test. If its members cannot draw a bright line at a nominee who has worked tirelessly to sell off public lands and weaken laws that protect them, then its vision of “stewardship” is nothing but empty branding.

The stakes are immense. BLM’s multiple-use mandate requires balancing energy, grazing, recreation and conservation under long-term land use plans grounded in science and public input. That mission collapses if the agency’s leader believes we must “reverse this trend of public ownership” of the very lands he is charged with managing.

Westerners understand what happens when responsible stewardship is abandoned. Rural communities lose the long-term economic engine that healthy public lands provide. Hunters, anglers and campers lose access they have relied on for generations.

Steve Pearce’s nomination is a referendum on whether Congress believes our shared lands still belong to all Americans. The Stewardship Caucus and every senator who claims to care about the West����ap outdoor heritage should reject Pearce’s nomination. America’s public lands are a unique legacy we pass down to future generations, not a portfolio to liquidate.

Aaron Weiss is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities and co-host of The Landscape podcast.

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The board, in a 4-1 vote, approved the $49.6-million sale of the La Jara State Trust Land property in Conejos County, with most of it going to the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management and the rest to Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

owns 2.8 million acres of land in Colorado and manages it to earn money for the state’s public school system. It began considering selling the La Jara property in 2017 because it was not generating enough revenue. Selling the property would allow the board to invest the proceeds in other, more lucrative land.

After nearly a decade of work, the deal to sell the 45,952 acres to the three agencies seemed rock solid, proponents of the sale have said.

But some members of the State Land Board commission in recent months became concerned about selling the vast majority of the land to federal agencies under the Trump administration, which has repeatedly weakened conservation rules and hollowed out agency staff. Members of the Republican-majority Congress this year have also attempted to sell federal public lands in the West but were defeated amid bipartisan backlash.

The board’s commissioners worried that selling the land to federal agencies could open it to the whims of the administration, while maintaining state ownership would protect it.

“We were all-in until the world went nuts,” said Commissioner Christine Scanlan, who expressed concerns about federal management.

She ultimately voted in support of the sale, saying beforehand: “We are taking a risk in selling it to the federal government in the sense that these threats to public lands are out there and they’re real and they’re not going to go away.”

The parcel is tucked in the foothills of the San Juan Mountains — west of U.S. 285 between Alamosa and Antonito — and is primarily surrounded by BLM and Forest Service land. The parcel includes 30 miles of streams and provides important wildlife habitat.

The Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management will purchase 43,526 acres with $43.5 million appropriated through the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund. The remaining 2,427 acres, around La Jara Reservoir, will be sold to Colorado Parks and Wildlife for $6.1 million.

The early afternoon vote to continue with the sale followed hours of public comment — all in support of the deal. Residents of the valley, the local heads of the Forest Service and the BLM, and conservation organizations testified.

All three drove to Denver to urge the board to support the project, saying it had widespread backing in the San Luis Valley. The deal would protect access to the land that people rely on for hunting, fishing, grazing, firewood and recreation, said Commissioner Mitchell Jarvies. The valley community knows best what to do with the land it relies on, he said.

“This is probably the biggest collaboration for a project that I’ve been a part of in my 15 years as a county commissioner,” he said.

Ken Salazar, a former U.S. senator and Interior secretary who lives in the valley, compared the benefits of selling the land to the creation of , which protected important ecosystems and spurred tourism for the valley.

“This is the project of the 21st century for the San Luis Valley,” he said at the meeting Thursday.

Representatives from conservation groups said they shared commissioners’ concerns about the Trump administration’s public lands policy. However, they said, support from regional agency leaders as well as local land management plans will help safeguard the property from interference.

“We must always keep in mind that landscape conservation and long-term public lands management is at a different timescale than political administrations,” said Jordan Williams, the Colorado regional representative for the .

Lands purchased through the Land and Water Conservation Fund have greater protections from future sale by the federal government, Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper wrote Wednesday in a joint letter to the board’s commissioners, urging them to approve the deal.

“Colorado’s Congressional delegation has led the fight to safeguard public lands by preventing their mass sell-off, championing permanent protections for our most valued areas, and opposing efforts to terminate employees of land management agencies,” the letter states. “Our bedrock public lands management laws and Colorado’s record should give the board confidence that the La Jara transfer will continue to serve the public interest.”

Several commissioners who voted in support of the sale said they were swayed by the community support for the deal. While the risk of changes due to federal politics is real, the residents of the San Luis Valley will be the ones to deal with the consequences, said Deborah Froeb, the president of the board.

“I’ve come to think of this decision now as one (where) our fear of outcomes should not be imposed on those who will face them,” she said.

But the deal to sell the 45,952-acre La Jara State Trust Land property in Conejos County to federal and state land managers is now experiencing unexpected pushback from . Its commissioners are expected to vote on the proposal, which has been in the works since 2017, . Though the deal has garnered a wide spectrum of support, land board commissioners in recent months have requested information about alternatives to the sale.

The questioning caught proponents by surprise.

“We had pretty much put it in our rearview mirror, because it looked like a done deal,” said Mitchell Jarvies.

The board initiated the process of selling the land because it was not making enough money for the agency. Selling the southern Colorado property to land management agencies — with pieces going to the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and Colorado Parks and Wildlife — would allow the board to pursue better investments while also cementing long-term public access to the land, which locals use for cattle grazing, hiking, fishing and hunting.

At the board’s June meeting, the agency’s staff recommended the deal and a majority of commissioners voted in support of moving forward with it.

Since then, however, board commissioners have requested more information and asked staff members to compile alternative plans for the land. Staff put together two alternative plans and is no longer making a recommendation to the board.

“While it is common for staff to provide recommendations when seeking Board decisions, this is a unique situation,” Colorado State Land Board spokesperson Emily Barbo wrote in an email. “It����ap not often that the State Land Board considers disposal of a property like La Jara, given its large size and its location. The Board (members) will make their decision per their responsibility and authority to act in the best interests of our beneficiaries.”

The addition of alternate plans surprised those who have been working for years on the deal. If the board cans the deal, San Luis Valley residents worry that the State Land Board could use the land in a way that restricts access. Or worse, sell the land to a private buyer.

People in the valley rely on the land for subsistence hunting and fishing as well as firewood, Jarvies said. It also draws hunters and their dollars to the rural area, which includes .

“The unknown is what scares people,” he said.

A deal years in the making

The owns 2.8 million acres of land in Colorado and manages it to earn money for the state’s public school system. It leases the land to businesses for agriculture, mining, oil and gas development, and renewable energy projects. It also allows varying levels of public recreation access.

The board aims for its land holdings to make revenue equal to at least 1.5% of the land’s value. According to board documents, the La Jara property’s revenue in recent years amounted to 0.6% of its value. The parcel’s remote location also made it difficult to manage, the documents state.

So the board began exploring options for the parcel — its largest single landholding in southwest Colorado. The plan the agency developed since then includes selling 43,526 acres to the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management for $43.5 million. Another 2,427 acres around La Jara Reservoir would be sold to Colorado Parks and Wildlife for $6.1 million. The sales would be at market value for the land.

Since 2017, a wide range of Colorado agencies, nonprofit groups and local residents have signed on in support of the sale. Supporters include , the Conejos County commissioners, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, San Luis Valley Outdoors and the Colorado Wildlife Federation.

The land is tucked in the foothills of the San Juan Mountains — west of U.S. 285 between Alamosa and Antonito — and is primarily surrounded by BLM and Forest Service land. The parcel includes 30 miles of streams and provides important wildlife habitat.

Over the last week, former U.S. Rep. John Salazar’s phone lit up as word spread through the valley that the board was considering other options besides the sale.

“Everyone that I know of here in the valley supported that transaction,” said Salazar, also a former state agriculture commissioner who farms and ranches in the valley.

On Monday, The Denver Post published an opinion piece urging the board to approve the deal that Salazar wrote with his brother, Ken, a former U.S. senator and Interior secretary.

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet helped secure funding from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund to pay for the purchase by the Forest Service and BLM. That money would likely be forfeited if the deal does not go through.

“Walking away from the project now, and leaving over $40 million in precious conservation funding on the table, is a mistake,” Bennet said in a statement to The Post.

In June, Gov. Jared Polis wrote a letter to the BLM’s Colorado director in support of the deal. He wrote that the state had already invested money in the project and urged that the government “remain committed to seeing this project through,” according to a copy of the letter provided to The Post.

“The state strongly supports this acquisition as a meaningful advancement in our goals of habitat connectivity, heritage preservation and equitable public access to the outdoors,” he wrote in the June 18 letter.

On Monday, a spokeswoman for Polis would not answer whether the governor still supported the deal.

“The State Land Board is an independent board and the Governor respects their ability to weigh this opportunity to protect access to public lands in Colorado, maximize asset allocation, and work with federal partners where it benefits Colorado,” spokeswoman Shelby Wieman wrote in a statement.

The who will vote on the deal are volunteers appointed by the governor and approved by the legislature. Polis appointed all five current commissioners, all of whom began their terms after the agency began exploring selling the La Jara parcel. Two commissioners began their terms in July and Polis hired a new director for the agency in June.

None of the commissioners live in the San Luis Valley and instead are from combinations of Denver, Boulder, Summit, Eagle, Grand and Pitkin counties, .

Vote planned this week

At the board’s direction, State Land Board staff compiled two alternatives to the proposed sale. One would keep the land and attempt to increase the revenue generated from it. The other would sell only the smaller parcel to CPW, while maintaining ownership of the land slated for sale to the federal government.

During the June meeting, board members did not express any criticisms about the proposed deal. But ahead of Thursday’s meeting, agency staff members listed pros and cons of each option in the information packet.

The document lists uncertainty about the direction and stability of the Forest Service and the BLM under the Trump administration as a disadvantage to the deal. Staff cited recent attempts to sell federal public lands and efforts by the administration to reduce regulations that protect conservation.

The exploration of alternatives has left proponents of the deal uneasy.

Jarvies said nobody from the state agency has contacted him or other local leaders about concerns they might have with the original deal. He and the two other Conejos County commissioners will make the 4.5-hour drive to Denver for , which begins at 8 a.m.

Jarvies worries that, once again, the desires of the rural and poor communities in the valley will be sidelined.

“These rural areas are so often the redheaded stepchild,” he said.