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A new report from the Center for Western Priorities finds that not every Western state is living up to its conservation reputation. States like Colorado and Arizona have a proud conservation tradition, but efforts by their elected leaders to conserve public lands have run into the reality of a broken Congress.
The report, Conservation Gridlock, looks at the acres of national public land protected over the past two decades in eight Western states. It finds that in the last decade, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Wyoming have conserved far fewer acres of public lands than neighboring Western states. In fact, these bottom four states, combined, have conserved 23 times fewer acres than the top four states: California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.
“It’s a shame that conservation has slowed over the past decade in states where the vast majority of voters support protecting public lands,” said Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Jennifer Rokala. “There are a number of well-crafted conservation proposals ready to go in Arizona and Colorado, as well as other Western states. Members of Congress should work with President Biden in order to deliver for their constituents by protecting unique and valuable public lands, before it’s too late.”
The lack of progress is not for a shortage of locally-supported public land conservation proposals. On the contrary, lawmakers from Arizona and Colorado have introduced legislation that is widely supported by their constituents, but an increasingly dysfunctional Congress has hampered its progress.
To get locally-driven, publicly popular conservation initiatives moving again, Western senators and representatives should partner with President Joe Biden to realize his historic commitment to conserve and restore America’s lands and waters, while fulfilling promises to their constituents.
“Conserving public lands is always popular with voters,” Rokala added. “They don’t care whether it gets done by Congress or the president—they just want to see the lands they love protected for their kids and grandkids.”
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America’s public lands are no place to honor perpetrators of atrocities against indigenous people. The mountain deserves a name that honors its natural and cultural values, as well as the first inhabitants who considered its forested slopes as their homeland. This is why we are urging that Mt. Evans be renamed as Mt. Blue Sky."
