The Western Slope’s newest congressman wants to reopen thousands of acres of federal public land across Colorado to energy development and reduce protections for wildlife habitat.
It’s a move that conservationists said would reverse years of federal planning, ignore environmental assessments and sideline public input. With Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress and President Donald Trump back in office, U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd’s new bill — introduced Monday — aligns with the empowered political party’s focus on increasing energy production and deprioritizing other uses of public lands.
The Productive Public Lands Act would undo decisions made in 2024 and 2025 under the Biden administration on how to manage vast swaths of Bureau of Land Management land across Colorado, Wyoming, Oregon and Montana. The bill, if passed, would impact 2.3 million acres in Colorado as well as roll back habitat protections for the Gunnison sage grouse and big game species.
“The Productive Public Lands Act would reactivate the resource potential of our public lands,” Hurd said in a news release announcing the bill. “This bill would force the Bureau of Land Management to reissue nine Biden-era Resource Management Plans which locked up access to viable lands throughout Colorado and the West. A reissuance of these RMPs will put us on a path to energy dominance, allowing for a more secure and prosperous United States.”
Hurd was not available for an interview Tuesday, spokeswoman Laila Elagamy said in an email. His office’s announcement stated that the legislation would revisit “unreasonable restrictions” on development on federal public land implemented by the previous administration.
Hurd, a Grand Junction attorney, was elected in November to represent Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, which covers western and southern Colorado. More than half of the district is federal public land.
The Productive Public Lands Act would undo years of work by Colorado-based BLM staff, who work with local governments, the public, businesses, tribal nations and other agencies to craft resource management plans.
The bill would mandate that the agency choose other plans more friendly to oil and gas development, or eliminate the new plans altogether and revert to previous management practices.
“It would essentially require the agency to go back and choose a different outcome for these plans,” said Jim Ramey, the Colorado state director for The Wilderness Society, which participated in the planning process for four of the five Colorado plans included in the bill. “It would circumvent all of the public process and public input. … This would dictate new outcomes from D.C. for these lands.”
Rules for recreation, commercial uses
Resource management plans outline rules on bureau land for recreational access and commercial uses — like mining, grazing, and oil and gas development — and they attempt to balance those uses with ecological and cultural resources.
Before a plan is finalized, the agency evaluates the environmental impact of a variety of potential plans and solicits public input.
Hurd’s bill would mandate different management plans for the following areas:
- 1.1 million acres managed by the BLM’s Grand Junction Field Office in Garfield, Mesa, Montrose and Rio Blanco counties.
- 517,000 acres managed by the Colorado River Valley Field Office in Eagle, Garfield, Mesa, Pitkin and Routt counties.
- 658,000 acres under the Eastern Colorado Resource Management Plan, which covers all BLM land in Colorado east of the Continental Divide.
- 2.8 million acres managed by the Miles City Field Office in Montana.
- 800,000 acres managed by the Buffalo Field Office in Wyoming.
- 3.6 million acres managed by the Rock Springs Field Office in Wyoming.
- 3.2 million acres in the Lakeview District in southwest Oregon.
In each of the Colorado districts, the bill would remove newly implemented limits on oil and gas development on BLM land.
The bill would rescind the resource management plan for the Grand Junction district, reverting to the previous management plan. It would mandate that the BLM undo closures of lands to oil and gas development in the Colorado River Valley Field Office. For the Eastern Colorado Plan, it would mandate that the plan either be voided, with management returned to its prior state, or that the BLM implement an alternative plan that prioritizes commercial uses, like mining, grazing and energy development.
The bill would also reverse decisions made in October — one about how to manage Gunnison sage grouse habitat in southwest Colorado and another that resulted in a statewide measure increasing protections for big game habitat.
The Gunnison Sage-Grouse Resource Management Plan Amendment, finalized in October after a two-year public input process, increased habitat protections for the native bird species, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Under Hurd’s bill, the management plan would be scrapped.
Similarly, a resource management plan called Big Game Habitat Conservation for Oil and Gas Management — also finalized in October — would be undone. The plan increased conservation measures for prioritized big game habitat and migration corridors, and it created consistency in such measures across the BLM districts in Colorado.
Colorado leaders applauded the approval of both the big game and sage grouse plans when they were finalized last year.
Assessing Hurd’s approach
Michael Carroll, the BLM campaign director at The Wilderness Society, said conservationists had hoped Hurd would take a more balanced approach to public lands than his predecessor in the 3rd District, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who won election in a different district in November. They’ve been disappointed so far, he said.
In his first nine weeks in office, Hurd has sponsored a bill that would move the BLM headquarters to Grand Junction, reinstating a move Trump made during his first term. He also co-sponsored a bill that would end a president’s power to establish national monuments through the Antiquities Act and another bill that would rescind a Biden administration rule that made conservation as important a consideration as commercial and recreational use on BLM lands.
“The picture that we’re starting to see around Congressman Hurd as it pertains to public lands is one that is certainly adversarial,” Ramey said.
Carroll noted that the new bill follows the direction of Project 2025, a plan for Trump’s second term that was created by former members of his administration and conservative thinkers. The document outlining the plan for the Department of the Interior, which oversees the BLM, suggested a review of all resource management plans finalized under Biden.
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