GORP Act introduced in Senate
Original article by Bella Biondini, Gunnison Country Times
A new federal public lands bill, with a genesis in Gunnison County, would further protect more than 700,000 acres on Colorado’s Western Slope.
On Thursday, Sept. 26, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet introduced the Gunnison Outdoor Resources Protection (GORP) Act in the U.S. Senate. The legislation, more than a decade in the works, would add another layer of protection to Gunnison County’s 2.5 million-acres network of public lands. The act also includes portions of neighboring Delta and Hinsdale counties.
“If you spend any time in Gunnison, you know how spectacular these public lands are and how central they are to that community’s way of life … At the heart of every discussion over the bill was a shared respect for the generations before us who preserved these lands and a shared responsibility to future generations,” Bennet said during a press call.
The bill is based on a collaborative proposal drafted by the Gunnison Public Lands Initiative (GPLI). Founded in 2014, GPLI is a group with members from across all of the valley’s demographics, from ranching and recreation to conservation and water resources. For the following decade, the group worked together to find common ground and draft a proposal that prioritizes the historic uses of public land, in addition to preserving the open landscapes that power the local economy.
Some of the groups involved include Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Gunnison Trails, High Country Conservation Advocates (HCCA) and the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, among others. Bennet released a draft Gunnison public lands protection bill in 2022 for round of public feedback.
“We spent that time at kitchen tables, sitting down in coffee shops and open houses in our community, drawing on maps, talking about our personal experiences and about how public lands impact our lives [and] our communities … As we move forward with the introduction of the GORP Act today, it’s really just a day of celebration in this community,” said Gunnison County Commissioner Jonathan Houck.
The GORP Act primarily uses two congressional-level designations for portions of the Gunnison County web of public lands: wilderness and special management areas. The bill also would transfer the Pinecrest Ranch, owned by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, into a trust. Pinecrest is located in Gunnison County, south of Sapinero Mesa. Instead of functioning as private property, the parcel would become sovereign land of the tribe.
Wilderness is the highest form of protection for public lands. It prevents new mining and gas drilling, commercial timber harvest and motorized use and the construction of roads. Special management areas also provide permanent protection, but can be tailored to focus management on things like recreation, wildlife habitat or scientific research.
For example, if passed, GORP would create a “Rocky Mountain Scientific Research and Education Area” in the area that encompasses the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) in Gothic. It would expand the existing research area, originally designated in 1961, from roughly 1,080 acres to more than 12,000.
The congressional designation would direct the Forest Service to prioritize research and education in one of the most extensively studied ecosystems in the world, Ian Billick said during the call. Billick is executive director of RMBL and the mayor of Crested Butte.
“It’s critical that we empower future generations, the kids that are going to follow us, with the knowledge that they need to manage the environmental challenges that they inherit from us … I want to emphasize that what the Senator is doing is truly extraordinary. A lot of progress at the national level, historically, over the last 40 or 50 years has been accomplished through litigation, lawsuits and delays on actions,” Billick said during the call.
According to Bennet, the GORP Act has bipartisan support from six Western Slope counties, as well as the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. But it still faces a “fierce” political climate in Washington D.C., Jon Hare told the Times. He is the advocacy director at HCCA.
No large public lands bills have passed in recent years. The CORE Act, another piece of Colorado-based legislation, has moved through the House a number of times, but stalled in the Senate.
But this fall, there could be a chance, based on the outcome of the election, that a number of public lands bills could be gathered together and passed in a “lame duck” session of Congress — the period of time between an election and the beginning of the new session the following January. That would be the fastest path in a process that could take years, Hare said.
“As we see this attrition and the funding losses from our federal agencies, passing public lands legislation is an easy way for our elected officials to protect [them],” Hare said.
