Despite a growing list of climate change doubters and fossil fuel industry supporters and executives comprising the list of Trump administration cabinet nominees, Democratic Colorado lawmakers and environmentalists are hopeful the state’s clean energy economy and outdoor recreation industry can continue to thrive.

Mostly, though, there’s a growing sense of dread from the conservation community as President-elect Donald Trump picks people like Republican Montana U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke for the post of Interior Secretary, former Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry for Energy Secretary and ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State. Oil and gas industry representatives, meanwhile, are eagerly looking forward to Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20.

About a third of Colorado is owned by the federal government and managed by the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service. Coal mining and oil and gas companies have for the past eight years of the Obama administration lamented environmental regulations perceived as hurdles to energy production on public lands.

“This administration accepts no bounds on its actions, and Western Energy Alliance looks forward to a return to the rule of law on Jan. 20,” said Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma, referring to recent drilling lease cancellations on federal lands in Montana and Colorado. “We are ready to work with the Trump administration to create jobs and economic opportunities that have been prevented for eight long years.”

But environmentalists in Colorado say the Trump administration is signaling through its cabinet picks that it prefers dirty energy over clean energy production and in general over outdoor recreation on public lands.

“The bottom line is that Coloradans need an Interior Secretary who understands the value of protecting public lands, moving towards a clean energy future, and supporting our booming outdoor recreation economy,” Conservation Colorado Executive Director Pete Maysmith said. “We hope that Rep. Zinke will embody those values.”

Maysmith was more critical of the selection of Perry, who infamously flubbed a question on the U.S. Department of Energy during a presidential debate in 2011. Maysmith points out that the DOE is a big player in Colorado, directing the efforts of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.

“Gov. Rick Perry is a miserable choice to lead the Department of Energy,” Maysmith said. “His refusal to accept climate science is alarming and distressing, as is the desire that he articulated in 2011 to eliminate the agency while embarrassingly forgetting its name.”

Trump’s selection of Republican Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head up the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has perhaps raised the most alarms among those who applaud the state’s slow shift away from coal-fired electrical power over the past decade.

While still producing more than 60 percent of its power by burning coal, Colorado has steadily increased the amount of power it generates with cleaner-burning natural gas and renewable resources such as wind and solar. Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper supports the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan, which mandates a 32 percent cut in carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 2030.

However, the fate of that plan, which is currently stalled in the courts by a multi-state lawsuit joined by Republican Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman and opposed by Hickenlooper, is now very much in doubt with Trump’s victory last month.

That puts the spotlight back on Hickenlooper’s proposed executive action on climate change, which calls for a 35 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by 2030.

Hickenlooper spokeswoman Kathy Green told The Colorado Statesman there is “no new news” on Hickenlooper’s proposed executive action, but added the governor’s office is keeping a watchful eye on developments in Washington.

“We are not clear on what the new administration will mean to Colorado’s environmental efforts, but plan to continue to move forward as we always do,” Green said. Hickenlooper at one point was considered a potential cabinet pick in Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s administration.

Democratic state Sen. Kerry Donovan, who will serve on the Senate Agriculture, Natural Resources and Energy Committee in the legislative session that starts Jan. 11, is also cautious about the impacts of the incoming Trump administration and any executive actions by Hickenlooper on climate change.

“The power of the executive has to be exercised very carefully and in circumstances that meet the line of warranting that type of action, and I think we have to wait and see because I don’t think anyone in any party knows what this administration is going to look like,” Donovan told The Statesman. “But if the new administration starts to take actions that threaten the foundational aspects of Colorado, then executive order is of course appropriate.”

Donovan, who successfully ran a bill last session to establish Colorado Public Lands Day in support of how the federal government currently manages the state’s public lands, warned that Democrats will not tolerate attempts to privatize or transfer those lands to state control for the sake of resource extraction.

“Last session the Senate sent a strong message with that Public Lands Day bill that public lands remaining public is a priority that we all stand behind,” Donovan said. “So, this session if [Republicans] introduce bills that either directly address the possibility of the transfer of lands or a different paradigm for how we treat our public lands, then there are important questions to be answered about what changed from last year to this year.”

State Sen. Ray Scott, a Grand Junction Republican and the Western Slope field coordinator for the Trump campaign, predicted in an interview with The Statesman nearly a year ago that the “heavy-handed” management of public lands in Washington was “a 10-month problem.”

“We have to wait for the next election to see what happens, and hopefully we get an administration that, whatever side of the aisle they’re on, can look at these things a little bit differently and say, ‘Wait a second, we’ve gone too far,'” Scott said at the time.

But it seems unlikely Scott will champion public lands state-control bills that have no chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Colorado House or being signed by Hickenlooper this session. Scott more recently told The Statesman he is interested in breaking down partisan divides and coming up with real world energy solutions in the new Select Senate Committee on Energy and Environment.

Trump sent mixed signals on public lands on the campaign trail, alternately advocating for stripping away overreaching federal regulations inhibiting energy production and supporting the current management structure. Turning over federal lands to the states could end badly, he said, because “you don’t know what the state is going to do.” He worried a financially distressed state could sell off public lands if it “got into a little bit of trouble.”

But some environmental groups would like to see much more stringent regulation of industrial activities on multi-use public lands than what the Obama administration has exercised for two terms. A coalition of groups this week sent out a press release blasting the Forest Service for allowing road building on federal lands over an underground coal mine in the North Fork Valley on the state’s Western Slope.

An exception to the Colorado Roadless Rule for bankrupt Arch Coal’s West Elk Mine will allow road building for mining operations on 20,000 acres of Forest Service land, which started on Dec. 19.

“Our public lands belong in our hands, not the hands of Arch Coal,” said Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians’ climate and energy program director. “This shameful giveaway should be a wake-up call for all Americans that we need to stand up more strongly than ever to defend our lands, our climate, and our future from the greed of the fossil fuel industry and their collusion with our federal government.”

U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, a Cortez Republican who represents most of the energy-rich Western Slope, told the Denver Post he supports the Forest Service move and that he generally anticipates far less federal regulation in the coming years: “After an 8-year barrage of overly burdensome regulations, we know there’s a better way to regulate,” Tipton recently tweeted.