Post-Election Conservation Message - Jon Hare, Advocacy Director
It is now more important than ever to support HCCA to help protect why you love it here.
In 47 years at High Country Conservation Advocates—our organization has been through several periods of good times and bad times for Conservation.
Most recently, from 2020 to 2024, public lands leaders in the Gunnison Country and Colorado took advantage of a window of broad bipartisan support and proactive leadership to create long-term protections for our local public lands by completing projects such as: the Thompson Divide/Mt. Emmons Mineral Withdrawal which removes new oil, gas, and mining operations on over 221,000 acres of public lands; the Mt. Emmons Land Exchange, Mineral Extinguishment, and Conservation Easements which protect Red Lady and Gunnison County from industrial mining forever; the Great American Outdoors Act provides substantial funding to maintain and restore facilities on our public lands, such as campgrounds and trails; fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Act has helped purchase over 1,000 acres of undeveloped private properties within the Gunnison National Forest to become public lands; and the Inflation Reduction Act has helped improve many of the roads and trails we use to access public lands. There is no doubt the past four years have yielded significant local conservation gains as well as overdue maintenance for overused recreational facilities.
Additionally, HCCA understands from our past experience that the incoming Presidential administration – in combination with the country electing a singular party to lead both houses of Congress in Washington D.C. and a judicial branch led by a Supreme Court which has been pulling back on regulations and environmental safeguards for several years – presents serious threats to the work HCCA and our community have done to protect public lands in the Gunnison Country.
The hard reality is that after making the most of the past four years—we now must pivot tactics to play defense on our public lands for (at least) two years until the next federal election potentially changes the makeup of Congress. Already having worked through the policy and directives of the first Trump administration – these aren’t mere threats – we can expect a continuation of attempts to minimize or avoid environmental law and review processes such as NEPA and the Clean Water Act. When we turn to bedrock environmental laws and protections already on the books—our country will probably see additional legal challenges from the Trump administration to the basic definitions of wetlands and water. Land management staffing and funding could drop to historic lows if there isn’t a lifeline for the current agency budget projections. Unfortunately, we can probably also expect it to get harder for scientists and federal employees to perform their work in an unbiased manner without concern for politics or rapidly changing laws and directives that are contrary to long-term best management practices.
What you can do today is support HCCA to continue our mission to protect the health, integrity, and beauty of the public lands, waters, and wildlife in the Gunnison Country. In order to keep up with the complexities of over two million acres of public lands, HCCA follows a Strategic Tracking Process to keep tabs on everything that is happening on public lands within our area of concern. The primary focus of our organization is advocacy for over two million acres of public lands in the Gunnison Country, which is accomplished through direct participation in public lands processes at the federal, state, and local levels. Each week, HCCA analyzes the proposals and project records of up to twenty government units responsible for the management of Gunnison Country public lands and provides substantive comments to achieve conservation outcomes regardless of the type of project. For almost 50 years, HCCA has employed professional staff to analyze, understand, and problem solve, as well as advocate for conservation in the Gunnison Country.
It’s hard to anticipate exactly what to expect from the results of the 2024 election. HCCA is here understand the laws for our public lands and guard these special places from the whims of any given politician. It’s now more important than ever to support HCCA – hccacb.org – to help protect why you love it here.
