ryan zinke
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Colorado Springs resident James Reilly faces first Senate hearing to lead USGS
Colorado Springs resident and former NASA astronaut James Reilly is set for his first hearing to lead the U.S. Geological Survey Tuesday before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The committee includes Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, who supports President Trump’s nomination. If Reilly’s nomination is approved by the committee, as expected, it will…
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TIPTON: Time to move the Bureau of Land Management west
Over the past few years, one question I have often heard in the 3rd District is: why are the federal departments that have jurisdiction over most Western lands headquartered in Washington, D.C. rather than in Western states? Particularly, why is the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) headquartered in Washington, when 99 percent…
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Colorado regional advisory councils for BLM frustrated with Trump administration
The citizen councils in Colorado created to advise the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on local issues have been blocked from meeting for a year by Trump administration reviews and delays, setting off protests and resignations. The regional advisory councils, or RACs, were created by statute in 1995. There are three in Colorado-one each…
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Interior boss Ryan Zinke says he’s still looking westward for new digs
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is pressing ahead with a massive overhaul of his department, despite growing opposition to his proposal to move hundreds of public employees out of Washington and possibly to Colorado or elsewhere in the West. Zinke wants to divide most of the department’s 70,000 employees and their responsibilities into 13 regions based…
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Hopes still afloat for moving Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction
The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction offers an update this week on the West Slope’s high hopes for landing a relocated U.S. Bureau of Land Management headquarters. The upshot? Keep the faith. Reports the Sentinel’s Gary Harmon: “More under this administration than any other administration, it’s highly likely,” Mesa County Commissioner Scott McInnis, a (former)…
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Trout Unlimited says Trump’s new BLM lease plan is bad for fishing
Anglers and environmentalists say President Trump’s plan to reshape the federal lease approval process for oil and gas is a means to muzzle their concerns. The plan will “hand over public lands to the oil and gas industries,” according to the Wilderness Society. The Interior Department released a memo Thursday instructing its field offices “to…
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Colorado College poll: More support for outdoors, little for Trump’s policies
(Editor’s note: This story was updated with comments from the luncheon to release the poll and analyze its contents.) Colorado College’s Conservation in the West Poll released Thursday shows a big gain in the number of Coloradans and Westerners, in general, who consider themselves conservationists. A little over one-third think President Trump is doing a…
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Bears Ears public lands debate in Utah spills over into Colorado
BLANDING, UTAH – A coalition of outdoor recreation businesses in Colorado plunged headlong this week into the war of words between Republican lawmakers and clothing-and-gear maker Patagonia over the President Trump shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah. The move highlights a growing push by Colorado’s outdoor recreation industry to use the more conservative…
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Colorado-based uranium company played a role in reducing national monument
A lobbying effort to reduce the size of the Bears Ears National Monument was churning since the spring in Colorado, the Washington Post reported last week. Lakewood-based Energy Fuels Resources hired lobbyists and made a low-profile federal case that a federal umbrella over 1.35 million acres in southeast Utah could hurt its ability to operate…
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Not a done deal yet: Interior extends comment period on park admissions hike
Those concerned about a 250 percent hike in admission cost to 17 of the nation’s most popular national parks have another month to lodge a comment, after the Department of Interior heeded a request from Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner and others to give people more time. While Gardner, a Republican from Yuma, is asking people…